A Recap of ‘SNL 50’
Saturday Night Live’s (SNL) 50th season just came to an end on Saturday, May 17 with Scarlet Johansson hosting for a seventh time — let’s look back on great moments from this season!
- Mike Myers as Elon Musk
SNL alum Mike Myers made a couple of appearances during this season, but in three cold openings he took on businessman Elon Musk.
Chainsaw wielding-Myers made the character with his hand gestures and occasional “glitches” in which he would freeze in place while an “Apple” notification sound effect played. He first appeared during “Elon Musk Cold Open” when SNL made a parody of President Donald Trump’s encounter with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenzskyy.
2. Marcello Hernandez Became “Domingo”
When pop artist and “Wicked” star Ariana Grande hosted back in October, an extremely funny sketch was born: “Bridesmaids Speech.”
The sketch involved Grande, Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner and Sarah Sherman as bridesmaids to Chloe Fineman. While creating their own lyrics to the Sabrina Carpenter song “Espresso,” a shocking revelation was made about Fineman’s character, she actually cheated on her husband (Andrew Dismukes) with a man the girls met at the bachelorette party — Domingo (Marcello Hernandez).
Everything about the sketch blew up on the internet, with the clip on YouTube now at 18 million views. Domingo made another appearance when Charli XCX hosted a few weeks later, then again at SNL’s 50th Anniversary Special with Pedro Pascal, Martin Short, Molly Shannon, Bad Bunny and Carpenter herself.
The sketch continued to grow on social media during the entire season and had given Hernandez the attention he finally deserves. Hernandez even made an appearance at one of Carpenter’s concerts as Domingo in Los Angeles.
3. Morgan Wallen Caused Some Controversy
After being the musical guest in the 16th episode with Academy Award Winner Mikey Madison as host, country music star Morgan Wallen abruptly walked off stage right when the goodbyes started.
A few cast members looked confused, such as Kenan Thomson who told Entertainment Weekly: “I don’t know what goes through people’s minds when they decide to do stuff like that. I don’t know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way.”
Shortly after the incident took place, Wallen posted a picture of his airplane window writing, “get me to God’s country.” So many people online became confused over the Instagram Story.
4. Hilarious Trump Sketches
Other than “Elon Musk Cold Open,” SNL cast member James Austin Johnson starred as President Trump in other hilarious cold opens and sketches this season.
The “Founding Fathers Cold Open” from Jan. 26 featured Lin-Manuel Miranda signing the Declaration of Independence, but the event ended up being crashed by Trump.
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Miranda begins the sketch by rapping, similarly to his role in “Hamilton.” After saying “In America we will never have a king,” Johnson comes in as Trump stating “never say never.” Johnson then goes on about DEI, returning to the White House, climate change and more.
Another sketch called “The White Potus” served as a parody of HBO’s “White Lotus” with Trump’s friends and family. As we see Trump vacationing at a resort in Thailand just like in the HBO show, there were also great guest stars such as Johansson, Jon Hamm and former cast members Alex Moffat and Beck Bennett.
5. Timothée Chalamet Did His First “Double Duty”
As his third time hosting the late night series, the “A Complete Unknown” actor Timothée Chalamet proved his newly found musical skills on stage during the twelfth episode of the season.
After playing Bob Dylan in the Academy Award nominated film, Chalamet performed some of Dylan’s well-known songs like “Three Angels” while also serving as host.
6. Kamala Harris Guest Starred
SNL alum Maya Rudolph has been portraying former Vice President (VP) Kamala Harris on the show in various sketches and cold opens for the past few years. Harris herself finally made an appearance on the show just before the 2024 presidential election.
Starring alongside Rudolph, the former VP surprised audiences during the cold open when Rudolph looked in a mirror to see Harris.
You can see how proud and starstruck Rudolph was towards the end of the almost nine-minute cold open. Especially when they both shouted the iconic line “live from New York it’s Saturday Night!”
7. The 50th Anniversary Special Brought in Nostalgia
Premiering on Feb. 16, 2025, SNL’s 50th Anniversary Special was definitely a highlight for the show.
Carpenter and Paul Simon opened up the special by performing “Homeward Bound” with Steve Martin reading his monologue shortly after featuring John Mulaney and Martin Short.
The audience was filled with previous hosts, musical guests and cast members of the show, such as Miles Teller, Seth Meyers, Cher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and more.
Not only was the “Bridesmaids Speech” sketch with Domingo recreated, but there were more revivals of previous iconic sketches as well. “Close Encounter” was back with Kate McKinnon but unfortunately Ryan Gosling was not present. Similar to his songs on SNL in the past, Adam Sandler also performed his very own “50 Years” song. Other sketches included the return of “Black Jeopardy” and “Debbie Downer.”
Appearing as a musical guest, Miley Cyrus performed “Nothing Compares 2 U” alongside Brittany Howard. The song choice definitely could have raised some eyebrows since Sinéad O’Connor performed the same song on SNL back in 1992–except O’Connor used the performance to call out sexual abuse happening in the Catholic Church.
Paul McCartney ended up closing out the show with a mix of “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.”
The special as a whole was very heartfelt and funny, garnering 14.8 million viewers on the night it premiered.
With all of these great moments from the 50th season, SNL will definitely see a good future with their next season premiering in the fall.
Julia Caramagna
