Twitter is celebrating Halle Bailey's first appearance as Ariel in The Little Mermaid

It appears like flipping her fins will go Halle Bailey very far. On September 9, Disney unveiled the first video from the upcoming Little Mermaid live-action film, and fans are already excited to delve under the sea with Bailey’s Ariel. The Grown-ish star can be seen swimming through the ocean to the red-haired princess’s secret grotto, where she beautifully sings a few lines of “Part of Your World” from the 1989 animated Disney film.

Before the film was released on YouTube, the studio first showed it at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, where Bailey addressed the clapping crowd. According to Variety, she told the audience, “I never thought I’d see that come to life, swimming in the pool, pretending I was a mermaid.”

In an earlier interview for the trade publication’s 2022 Power of Young Hollywood issue, Bailey addressed early racial criticism of her casting on social media. Ultimately, it was her grandparents who reminded her of the significance of her portrayal of a Black Disney princess. “It was an inspiring and beautiful thing to hear their words of encouragement, telling me, ‘You don’t realize what this is doing for us, for our community, for all the little Black and brown girls who will see themselves in you,'” she added.

That concern about representation was evident in some early Twitter reactions to Bailey’s Ariel in The Little Mermaid, which opens in theaters in May 2023. One commenter described seeing a Black woman in the part as “actually bawling,” while another described it as “a dream come true.”

That portrayal, arguably, will have the most impact on a new generation of children who may be introduced to the character for the first time because of Bailey’s portrayal. Some joked that they’ll tell their children that theirs is the only Ariel who exists, or at least the only one who cares.