Saturday Night Live
Scarlett Johansson & Bad Bunny
May 17, 2025
By closing out the 50th season of Saturday Night Live, Scarlett Johansson made SNL history, becoming the most recurring female host with 7 episodes, narrowly beating out Tina Fey and Drew Barrymore. (Alec Baldwin holds the record with 17 episodes.)
As I’m sure you know, Johansson is married to SNL cast member and “Weekend Update” anchor, Colin Jost, and there have been a lot of rumors that this would be his and fellow “Weekend Update” anchor, Michael Che’s final episode. So, was Johansson there to be with her husband on his last appearance on the show? If she was, it wasn’t confirmed during the episode, not even in the “good nights” which I understand were cut off in the broadcast airings.
Instead, all in all, the episode felt like a regular SNL episode: a few good bits intermixed with mediocre ones, and absolutely zero formal goodbyes from any of the cast members, like Kate McKinnon’s “Final Encounter” sketch, or being danced off the stage during the goodnights, like Kristen Wiig. If it was Colin Jost’s (and Michael Che’s and Mikey Day’s and Heidi Gardner’s) final episode, no one was letting on.
That said — Bowen Yang and Sarah Sherman seemed to share a sad moment during the good nights. I don’t have either of them on my Bingo card for leaving next season, but Bowen has made a name for himself in Hollywood already, so it wouldn’t be a HUGE surprise if he were to leave.
But he better not.
As for Scarlett Johansson, she’s an excellent — and obviously experienced — host who helmed a solid finale. She’s a natural fit with the cast, and despite her movie star credentials, she’s unafraid to look silly or be ridiculous. Also, she can rap? Even if it was Jost’s last episode, I fully expect Johansson to return in the future: she’s family now.
Once again, thanks to this clown presidency, our cold open features some corrupt, unconstitutional bullshit our leader has been up to in the past week: this time his trip to the Middle East, where he accepted outright bribes and bragged about how much he loves terrorist-funding regimes — as long as they love him. “Get me to Allah’s country!”
James Austin Johnson then breaks the fourth wall by joining the audience and pointing out that we won’t be seeing him, the funny, more palatable version of President Trojan Horse, for a few months, and will just be stuck in the nightmare that is our actual reality. Yay.
Grade: A-
Scarlett Johansson’s monologue is also pretty meta: a song about monologues and the show in general, sung to Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” The entire cast turns out to join her and tease that Sarah Sherman is leaving the show. (She is not leaving the show.) (She better not be leaving the show.)
Grade: A
Here, Johansson plays an evening news anchor filling in on the morning program, where she adds light-hearted puns to her stories about murder, suicide, and cannibalism in an attempt to fit in with the show’s frothier personality. Silly and harmless.
Grade: B+
After a season where they weren’t featured much, the “Please Don’t Destroy” boys are back with a sketch in which Johansson offers them a vacation in first class, only to learn that they are flying like “ballers” from La Guardia to Newark — and it’s just as terrifying as you think. Bad Bunny helps out by playing an air traffic controller on his first day, and the Lost joke obviously landed with your trusty blogger.
Grade: A
Bad Bunny is back in another sketch, this time playing a put-upon boyfriend who, in the midst of a fight with another couple over a table at a bar, commiserates with the other boyfriend in Spanish while their oblivious girlfriends look on. Spanish! It’s like it’s a whole other language!
Grade: B-
In a follow-up to the brilliant sketch from the Sydney Sweeney episode last season, Bowen Yang is still straight, and still hooking up with Gina Gershon, along with half the female cast, Emily Ratajkowski, and a co-star’s mega-star wife. Still straight and still brilliant.
NO, I’M SERIOUS, HE BETTER NOT BE LEAVING.
Grade: A+
Mike Meyers is back for the finale and NOT doing Elon Musk. Instead, he’s playing himself, trapped in an elevator with Kanye West, some 20 years after the “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” post-Katrina moment. It’s a clever idea for a sketch that never quite comes together.
Grade: B-
“Weekend Update” — possibly the last “Weekend Update” with Che and Jost? Unclear — takes aim at President Grift’s trip ot the Middle East, his tariffs, RFK Jr. swimming in poop, and the adminstration toying with a citizenship game show. It’s all on point.
Grade: A
Ego Nwodim’s “Miss Eggy” is back with jokes about airplanes and food and being menopausal but she doesn’t challenge the FCC to fine them this time, so.
Grade: A-
Finally, it’s the season finale, so it’s time for one last (?) joke swap between Che and Jost. Jost gets Che to apologize to his wife for the gross jokes Che made him make about her lady parts at Christmas; Che gets Jost to demand that Lorne retire so he can take over the show. There’s a lot more racism and sexism in between, and honestly? It’s something of a draw. If it is their last episode, and if this is their last joke swap, they went out on a high — if deeply offensive — note.
Grade: A+
Here, Kenan Thompson plays an intimacy coordinator on an arthouse lesbian film, can’t wrap his head around how sex between two women would work. Straight-up 9th grade humor.
Grade: C+
The cast of a movie of some sort is on a press junket, where the hunky male lead is asked softball questions like “What’s your favorite snack?” and “Was it fun shooting at the lake?” while his female co-stars are asked about taking Plan B, being unattractive, or which is more difficult, being a woman or being Black? It’s funny because it’s true! People really are awful to women!
Grade: B+
The final sketch finds a table of proper “Victorian ladies” (though, to be a pedant, they are wearing Georgian dress) eating a gourmet lunch featuring jellied eels, warm clams, blood pudding, and other disgusting delicacies, all the while trying to not break. They are only moderately successful.
Grade: B
Final Grade: A-.
Saturday Night Live airs at 10:30/11:30 p.m. Saturdays on NBC and streams on Peacock.