Merrick Hanna

Hanna was born in San Diego, California, to Shawn and Aletha Hanna. He grew up alongside his younger brother, Sagan. Dance runs in the family. His grandmother, Judith Lynne Hanna, worked as a dance anthropology professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and continued taking multiple dance classes weekly into her eighties.

As a young child, Hanna did not speak until he was three and struggled to make eye contact. Playing with toy robots helped him open up and communicate. In late 2023, he began dating pop singer Indi Star.

Hanna began performing on stage as a child, acting in summer productions of Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter's Tale with the Intrepid Theatre Company. He played soccer during his youth. In 2014, he quit soccer to concentrate fully on dancing.

Watching the dance crew Jabbawockeez on America's Best Dance Crew sparked his interest in dance. He took formal classes at the Magdalena Ecke Family YMCA under Cameron Greene. He also trained with Poppin John of the SoulBiotics Krew, developing a fluid robotic popping style often called flo-bot. Before his national television appearances, he modeled for commercial campaigns with Gap Kids, H&M, and Honda, and performed on So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Lip Sync Battle Shorties.

After auditioning for seasons 10 and 11, Hanna secured a spot on season 12 of America's Got Talent in 2017. During his televised audition, he performed an original popping routine portraying a broken robot set to Alec Benjamin's "I Built a Friend." The routine received four yes votes from the judging panel, with Simon Cowell calling the audition one of the best he had seen on the program. The audition clip went viral online, gathering more than 13 million views in three months.

He advanced through the competition by choreographing his own narrative-driven routines. In the Judge Cuts, he danced to "Something Wild" by Lindsey Stirling and Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. In the quarterfinals, he advanced after performing to a cover of "Lost Boy." His run concluded in the semifinals, where he performed to Jon Bellion's "iRobot (The Human Condition)" and incorporated an illusion of floating in mid-air.

Following his television appearances, Hanna expanded his work on digital platforms, joining the content collective VibeCrew in 2020. He gained a large audience on TikTok by posting original choreography and popping routines.

He also took on screen acting roles. Between 2019 and 2022, he portrayed Goth Boy Edward on the Brat TV web series Mani. He reprised the character Edward on Brat TV's hospital drama Attaway General. His television guest appearances include Nickelodeon's The Really Loud House, Disney Channel's Sydney to the Max, and Netflix's Team Kaylie. On film, he appeared in the 2021 drama Alienated and played Skit Guy in the 2023 biographical comedy-drama Dumb Money.