A lot of performers make some noise about being nervous over the prospect of hosting an episode of Saturday Night Live, and while it wouldn’t be fair to call these claims broadly disingenuous, some are easier to believe than others. Any confessions of nerves from Finn Wolfhard strike me as eminently plausible. He seems to be interested in the show, given that two of his highest-profile movie roles have been in the Jason Reitman orbit of two Ghostbustersrevival sequels and an actual SNL docudrama, and though he has experience performing music live, he’s young enough to still register as vaguely inexperienced (or at least maybe kind of a limited actor?) outside of the Stranger Things universe. There’s plenty of reason to think it would mean a lot to him if his hosting gig, the first of 2026, went well.
Wolfhard certainly made for an endearing host out of the gate, goofing on himself and the very slight aging of his fresh kid-actor face in the monologue, but his first appearance on the episode also set an immediate pattern of calling for back-up: It featured Stranger Things co-stars Galen Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin, who later turned up a second time for a proper parody of their show and shared the episode by fellow cameos Sabrina Carpenter and musical guest A$AP Rocky in the Snack Homiez sketch, plus Jason Momoa incongruously jumping aboard a Harry Potter bit. In aggregate, it all feels like what the show would do to pad out a sports star who has to uneasily play himself in most of the sketches.
I don’t mean to sell any of those cameos short by laundry-listing through them like that. Seeing the Stranger boys do a Sex And The City riff was cute, and I genuinely love that Sabrina Carpenter was down enough with the Snack Homiez to join the ranks of SNL hosts with their own recurring characters. (Her schedule may not permit it, especially if SNL has to split her sktech-comedy time with their old felt nemeses The Muppets, but doesn’t it seem like she has to come back every time they do it now?) The sketch-comedy traditionalists tend to hate the big guest appearances, but c’mon, let the Wolfhard boy bring his friends! And also Jason Momoa! Still, as fun as this stuff was in the moment, it did add up to a pervasive sense of lightening the load for the host.
Snack Homiez is the perfect example: When that sketch grabbed the leadoff position for its second appearance, I thought, oh, right, of course, perfect place to put an actor who (despite having grown up on camera) still reads as young and might be self-conscious about it. But there wasn’t all that much room for Wolfhard to dive into the group dynamic there, with Carpenter hitting the ground running and A$AP Rocky turning up for the guest spot. (Much as I enjoyed his musical performances tonight—and his work in Highest 2 Lowest, for that matter—he was probably one element too many in this sketch.)
As for the sketches that did lean more heavily on Wolfhard, he fared the best in a deeply silly sci-if-show sketch (lots of fake-streamer pretenses in this week’s bits, huh?) where a toady (Mikey Day) insistently feeds an intergalactic ruler (Wolfhard) exotic space snacks, distracting from his imperious menacing. The organic physical comedy gave the scene an unpredictable looseness that made up for the fact that it had no discernible ending. I’m all for the idea that comedy sketches can weasel out of punchline-y “proper” endings (Monty Python did this all the time!) but it’s probably best to find a better joke to exit on than one as mild as another guy volunteering to eat what the imperious ruler has rejected.
Even so, it was a home run compared to another sound premise sketch with arguably even better performances, where Wolfhard played a son confessing to his parents (Ashley Padilla and James Austin Johnson) that he wants to tour with his indie band rather than follow in his dad’s pop-star footsteps. Johnson and Padilla are probably the two best pure sketch actors in this cast, and they were hitting all of their marks, taking everything perfectly seriously; Wolfhard didn’t recess from the scene so much as fail to heighten as far as his co-stars, including the additional cast members stepping in as Johnson’s fellow boy-banders. An admittedly tall order for Wolfhard, granted, but for whatever reason, a reasonably well-written and quite well-performed sketch seemed to more or less die in the room.
Sometimes that’s more an indictment of the audience than the show, but I do wonder if in this case the muted reaction exacerbated by timing broader than the mere matter of Wolfhard syncing up with his scene partners. The outdatedness of Backstreet-style boy bands was part of the joke of Johnson and company’s shtick—love the characterization of those acts’ dominance as “the year and a half before 9/11”—yet the whole sketch felt like existed out of time alongside it. Wolfhard’s generic indie bandmates read more as mid-’90s alterna-rock (complete with obligatory Pixies influence), which of course warps the timeline further, although Jane Wickline’s completion of the runner where boy-band members flirt with Padilla’s character was aces.
The slight mustiness pervaded the episode, especially for one built around the still-young star of a current (albeit now finished) pop-culture phenom. Elaborate Harry Potter sex jokes? Riffing on 2018’s Free Solo? Still having no idea how to parody J.D. Vance? What year is this?! This installment still managed to get by on broad charm, two engaging A$AP Rocky numbers, and keeping the worst stuff to a minimum. But if the idea was to propel Finn Wolfhard out of the Stranger Things promo tour, he might need a little more assistance to make that happen.
What was on
If Snack Homiez is going to be a three-times-a-season recurring bit from now until Chloe Fineman leaves the show (so… somewhere between four and sixteen months?), I’m good with that. The show can use a youth-culture-spoofing hangout sketch, even if skews a little closer to Jarret’s Room than Wayne’s World. Also, the sci-fi sketch was exactly the kind of pushy ridiculousness that Mikey Day does especially well.
What was off
Look, Veronika Slowikowska has an energy about her that seems very right for SNL. But her showcase this week as a girlfriend who goes into grotesque overdrive trying to be one of the guys was so aggressively one-note. Points for the complexity of that note: overfamiliar in the broad strokes, yet distended enough by her distinctive vocal style to not really play as a classic high-concept run-through. It felt like a belated audition in the worst way.
Most valuable player
For the show’s first post-Bowen Yang outing, no one really stepped up. Naturally, cast veteran Mikey Day jumped in. He may have almost broken in both sketches where he was heavily featured, but he got to be the weirdo and the straight man in quick succession.
Next time
Teyana Taylor is this season’s designated Oscar-season get (unless Jessie Buckley makes it a double in March, closer to her likely victory and/or the release of The Bride!). Because the show has zero women of color in the cast, she will also be the first non-white woman performing in any sketches for Season 51! So that’s kind of a bummer! I also see that I have one (1) week to get on board with Geese or risk sounding monumentally old. I bought their album (like I said: old) and I’m not feeling it, guys!
Stray observations
• God, the Trump Parade thing that we have to sit through for at least half of the season’s cold opens… just as an experiment, could someone write a political sketch where a thing happens besides Trump reciting stuff, introducing people, and generally MCing straight to the camera? I’m not saying it would be a walk in the park. It would probably be kind of horrific. But just as an experiment! There have been funny ones like this, albeit not involving Trump.
• I don’t know from the buttons-resolution girl online, but from what I understand, she was already a Jane Wickline character.
• Noah Schnapp not exactly brought into the Stranger Things lovefest, huh? As a moderate fan of the show who has enjoyed in large part as something to watch with my kid, I admit the dig at Will’s coming-out scene got me. I know Stranger Things is set in a very different time, but your average Degrassi: The Next Generation character could use the same allotment to come out 10, maybe 12 times in a single season.
• Not one to get my hackles up about the sanctity of respecting your elderly and complacent boss, but I would be genuinely fascinated to know how or if Lorne Michaels reacts to Kam Patterson, who did a funny-enough Weekend Update bit this week, calling the show “gay as fuck” on a Kill Tony special. Not for any implied insubordination, mind, or any perceived insult connected to the supposed gayness of the most middle-of-the-road sketch show on TV… more for a temp check on how he feels about hiring someone who calls anything “gay as fuck” on a Kill Tony special. (There’s probably a Norm Macdonald-style setup-is-the-punchline joke somewhere in here.) Michaels probably doesn’t much care and in fact probably brought on Patterson for those kinds of scorching-hot attacks against our feminized, super-gay PC culture or whatever. But I’d still love to eavesdrop on someone asking him about it.