“Can everyone say ‘Happy Mother’s Day to Yoko’?” The 2024 Oscars were moving exactly as planned: speeches, the wrap-it-up music kicking in, everyone getting ready to exit the stage… and then Sean Ono Lennon swerved at the very last second. He didn’t add anything about the win, didn’t promo, didn’t drag out a long tribute — he simply grabbed the mic and said Yoko Ono’s name in front of the entire Dolby Theatre. What made the room freeze wasn’t that the line was dramatic — it was the timing. The music was already pushing him off, time was basically up, but he still insisted on “borrowing” one small moment for his mom. “My mother turned 91 this February,” Sean said quickly — then asked the whole audience to say happy Mother’s Day (since it was Mother’s Day in the U.K.). And just like that… thousands of people spoke in unison, like an unexpected chorus.

Sunday (March 10) marked the date of the 2024 Oscars, but it’s also Mother’s Day in the U.K. And during Dave Mullins and Brad Booker’s emotional best animated short win for WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko, Sean Ono Lennon — the son of Yoko Ono and late Beatles legend John Lennon — made sure to give his mom an extra special shout-out.

Ono Lennon, who served as an executive producer on the short film, took the stage at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles alongside Mullins and Booker. After the director and producer gave their acceptance speeches, Sean squeezed in a tribute to Yoko Ono — even though the “wrap-it-up” music was already playing.

“My mother turned 91 this February,” he told the crowd. “Can everyone say ‘happy Mother’s Day to Yoko’?”

At his request, the audience in front of him wished the “Give Peace a Chance” artist a happy holiday in unison.

Sean is Ono and John Lennon‘s only child, born in 1975. The famed artist is also mom to a daughter, Kyoko Chan Cox, whom she shares with her ex-husband, film producer Anthony Cox, while John also had son Julian Lennon from his marriage to first wife Cynthia.

According to IMbD, WAR IS OVER! — which Sean co-wrote with Mullins but who is not a winner for the Oscar — is set at a World War I front, where “a carrier pigeon delivers moves messages between two soldiers playing a chess game, unaware they are on opposite sides.”

Ono and her late husband collaborated a number of times before Lennon was fatally shot in 1980, notably on “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” The track has gone down in history as a classic Christmas tune, reaching its latest peak of No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022 — more than 50 years after it was first released.