Nothing lasts forever, but at 51 seasons and counting, NBC’s Saturday Night Live is trying its very best to prove that old adage wrong. You gotta think that SNL will eventually suffer the same fate as almost every other TV show — cancellation — but it’s tough to imagine it going anywhere in the near future. Though anything is possible, I guess, if the Trump administration decides to continue its crackdown on humor that the president doesn’t enjoy.
But hopefully that won’t happen, because SNL often helps us stay sane by making light of tumultuous current events — and current events continue to be extremely tumultuous in 2025. You could say that SNL provides a public service in that regard.
Is there a new SNL episode on Saturday, Oct. 4?
Yes! Finally, after being on hiatus for what has felt like several decades, SNL is finally returning this week on Oct. 4, with its Season 51 premiere, which will be hosted by Bad Bunny — who is in the headlines as Super Bowl LX’s halftime show — and feature Doja Cat as the musical guest. It’ll be Bad Bunny’s second time as host, and the first time he’s been on SNL without being the musical guest — a role he’s filled three times. By the way, if it feels like you just saw Bad Bunny on SNL, it’s because his most recent stint as the musical performer was the Season 50 finale.
SNL will be on at the usual time — 11:30 p.m. ET / 8:30 p.m. PT.
Upcoming SNL hosts and musical guests
SNL will begin Season 51 with three back-to-back episodes before going on hiatus for a couple weeks, starting with Bad Bunny and Doja Cat on Oct. 4.
Then, on Oct. 11, SNL alum Amy Poehler will host for the third time, with Role Model providing the musical performances. And then this initial run of episodes will come to a close with an episode that has Sabrina Carpenter on double duty as both host and musical guest. That used to be a rare thing, but SNL has done it at least a couple times each season during the current decade, and it did it three different times last season, with Charli XCX, Timothée Chalamet, and Lady Gaga.
Cast changes for SNL Season 51
As is the case every summer, SNL is experiencing a bit of a cast shakeup, with four cast members exiting the series and five new ones being added. The most significant cast members leaving SNL are Heidi Gardner, who’s been on the show for eight years, and Ego Nwodim, who just finished her seventh season. Behind her are Devon Walker and Michael Longfellow, who’d been cast members for three seasons, and Emil Wakim, who had only just been added to the cast for Season 50.
There’s also been a separate shakeup with Please Don’t Destroy, the comedy trio on the SNL writing staff who’ve been making viral digital shorts on the show for a few years now. Ben Marshall is being added to the cast as a featured player, Martin Herlihy is staying on the writing staff, and John Higgins is leaving the show entirely. This won’t mark the end of them as a group, but it doesn’t seem too likely that we’ll see many of their digital shorts in Season 51.
Alongside Marshall, there are four other new featured cast members: Veronika Slowikowski, Jeremy Culhane, Tommy Brennan, and Kam Patterson. Slowikowski is a popular comedian on TikTok who also works fairly regularly as a TV guest actor on shows like What We Do In the Shadows and Tires, Culhane is best known for his work in online sketches and at Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles, and Brennan is a relative unknown who had a bit of a breakout moment in June when he did a stand-up routine on The Tonight Show. Patterson, meanwhile, has already proven to be a controversial pick, since he’s mainly known for being a guest on right-wing edgelord Tony Hinchcliffe’s podcast.
It’s worth noting that Nwodim, unlike the other cast departures, announced her exit only after the new cast members had been revealed — just when it seemed as though the cast was set for the new season, she dropped the bombshell news. Nothing Nwodim has said since announcing her exit indicates there was anything unusual about her circumstance, but the timing of it was pretty surprising.
If there’s any SNL cast member you’re wondering about who wasn’t mentioned in this section, it’s because they’ll be back for Season 51. Yes, that means Michael Che and Colin Jost are back on the Weekend Update desk, James Austin Johnson will onces again play Donald Trump, and Kenan Thompson is coming back for his 23rd season — he’s been around for nearly half of the entire run of this series.
How to rewatch past SNL episodes, including all of SNL50
If watching a new SNL a hankering to revisit some classic old skits, you can check out most past episodes of SNL on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock. You can even stream new episodes live when they air, without any need for an additional TV provider login. So Peacock is your one-stop shop for SNL.
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Last time on SNL
Even though Bad Bunny was listed as only the musical guest, that didn’t stop him from popping up in a sketch or two to show off his comedy chops. In one particularly notable sketch, Bad Bunny and host Scarlett Johansson played a couple in a bar who try to get another couple, played by SNL cast members Ego Nwodim and Marcello Hernández, to stop using “their” table. But the guys aren’t exactly on the same page as their lady friends — they shout at each other in Spanish about how annoying their girlfriends are, while Johansson and Nwodim trash talk each other and obliviously cheer on their men. Check it out below.
