Saturday Night Live returns from the holiday hiatus to catch us up on all things Trump: the president (James Austin Johnson) addresses the nation from the Oval Office, bragging about his favorite Christmas present: “My very own somebody else’s Nobel prize … and in my stocking: Maduro … we did a reverse Santa on him.”
Joined by cabinet members “Little” Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) and JD Vance (Jeremy Culhane, taking over for departed cast member Bowen Yang), who are all trying to “help me do so many legal-ish things to try to get people to stop talking about Epstein.” Said things include an impending invasion of Cuba, “trans in menswear”, new tariffs, and Greenland, only to be interrupted by Trump wandering behind them and looking out the window in a senile fugue state.
He boots Rubio and Vance off the stage to make way first for DHS head and “Secretary of War on America” Kristi Noem (Ashley Padilla), who gives a shoutout “to my hair and makeup team who absolutely hate me” and makes a plea for people “currently wearing a Punisher T-shirt” to grab a gun and join ICE. She’s followed by “Secretary of War on world” Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost), who, between guzzling creatine and pitifully pumping a kettlebell, crows about the Venezuela attack and threatens Iran: “You don’t dare kill your protesters – that’s our thing!”
While not a particularly sharp or memorable cold open, it was at least made up entirely of current cast members playing the real-life figures. A low bar perhaps, but it’s a start. Meanwhile, Jost continues to steal the show as the uber-aggro Hegseth.
Fresh off the massive pop culture event that was the Stranger Things finale, actor Finn Wolfhard hosts for the first time. The young actor talks about what it was like having “400 million people … watch me go through puberty”, before moving into a jazzy, spoken-word performance about how he’s now a man, showing off his single facial hair and taking his first sip of alcohol (which he immediately spits into the face of Hernández). Before he signs off, he’s joined by Stranger Things co-stars Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin, “child stars who are now ready to do adult films”.
First up is a new episode of Snackhomiez, the roundtable podcast hosted by four 12-year-old boys (Sabrina Carpenter drops by to reprise her role as one of the broccoli-haired bros). Wolfhard plays their guest, a Twitch streamer and “looks-maxing gigachad”. The use of Gen Alpha slang seems on point, but the audience is mostly dead for it, at least until musical guest A$AP Rocky pops in to “body” show punching bag Jason, aka Unc (Jane Wickline) and sling his new flavor of (the apparently real) Rap Snacks: Fashion Killa Dilla Pickles. Rocky’s screen charisma absolutely dwarves both Wolfhard’s and Carpenter’s.
Wolfhard then plays Harry Potter in the new HBO adaptation of the books, which has been turned into an erotic romance between him and fellow Hogwarts student Ron Weasley (Ben Marshall) to cash in on the smash success of the channel’s gay hockey drama Heated Rivalry. Lots of expected and obvious double entendres – “You can Slyhterine to my bum”, “They should call you Neville, because you are one long bottom” – ensue, as well as a surprise appearance from Jason Momoa as the queeny groundskeeper Hagrid.
Next, Wolfhard plays a graduating highschooler who dreams of touring with his indie rock band, much to the disappointment of his former popstar father (Johnson), who wants him to follow in his footsteps. A decent enough premise, and it’s fun to watch Johnson swing from uptight suburban dad to gyrating boy bander, but the resolution comes out of nowhere, making this feel like a sketch of a sketch.
Netflix announces the return of Stranger Things via endless “sequels, prequels, requels and spinoffs”, including a Dangerous Minds-style teaching show featuring Joe Keery’s (Andrew Dismukes) character as an inner-city schoolteacher; a Sex & the City-esque gabfest with Wolfhard, Matarazzo and McLaughlin reprising their roles; and finally, the baselessly rumored secret 9th episode, in which Eleven has been recast with Kenan Thompson. One long bit of fan service, but at least it has slightly better jokes than the earlier (and similarly lame) Harry Potter sketch.
A$AP Rocky takes the stage, backed up by a rock band featuring Thundercat on bass and none other than Danny Elfman on drums. It’s an awesome and bonkers act, with the stage turned into as backyard mosh pit. It ends with some jacked shirtless guy showing up out of nowhere to beat down everyone, including the band (he punches Rocky through the set). The best musical performance the show has had in ages.
On Weekend Update, Michael Che reports on ICE terrorizing residents of Minnesota: “Officials in Minnesota have sued the Trump administration, claiming that their large-scale ICE actions are an unconstitutional federal invasion, while the Trump administration claims that ‘Yep’!” Jost notes that a federal judge ordered ICE not to retaliate against peaceful protesters, “but if ICE agents listened to judges, then their ex-wives would be getting those checks for child support.”
Kam Patterson joins the desk as ever-excitable sports commentator and Miami Hurricanes alumni Michael Irvin (“My resting heart rate is a perfect score: 16,000 … my mother was a hummingbird, my daddy was a brick of cocaine.”)
Later, Wickline shows up as confused viral TikTok button girl Tamara (“My plan is one button each day … it’s just 365 buttons … it only has to make sense to me for me to do it”). Patterson and Wickline continue to shine on Update.
Dark Orbit is a gritty space epic in which Wolfhard’s galactic emperor’s evil wheeling and dealing is continually having his gullet stuffed with strange “delights” by his right-hand snack master (Mikey Day). Almost right away, this goes off the rails with Wolfhard choking and breaking, although in this case it feels of a piece with the general goofiness of the sketch.
A boys day hangout is interrupted when one of the guys invites over his new girlfriend, gross and boorish “guys girl” Michelle (Veronika Slowikowska). This is the biggest showcase for Slowikowska yet, which doesn’t bode well considering how annoying she is. Granted, she is supposed to be playing an annoying character, but she doesn’t bring anything else to it. One of the lowlights of the season thus far.
A$AP Rocky returns to perform not one, but two tracks off his new album. Then, in the fourth sendup of a streaming show this episode (and the second to parody Netflix specifically), Day plays free climber Alex Honnold, who plans to scale one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world: Tapie 101. He’ll be joined by Reggie (Thompson), a narcoleptic rando who knows nothing about climbing but hasn’t cared if he lives or dies since Taco Bell discontinued the Baja Blast pie. Another premise with potential that leads to nothing.
This was a weak return for Saturday Night Live, despite several big-name cameos. I’m sure the Stranger Things stans loved it, but if the live audiences’ reactions are any indication, everyone else will have been left unimpressed. Wolfhard wasn’t an outrageously awful host, but he was noticeably stilted and showed little penchant for comedy. That said, A$AP Rocky nearly redeemed the whole enterprise with some solid acting and two ace performances, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.
