In retrospect, it’s been a pretty starry season of Saturday Night Live hosts—not that the show ever really has predominantly deep-cut host choices, but Sabrina Carpenter, Harry Styles, Melissa McCarthy, Jack Black, Ariana Grande, and Ryan Gosling are some pretty major household names, and that’s before we even get to a trio of extremely well-known figures handling the last three shows in May. Even the token newcomer like Connor Storrie is intensely famous for the one thing he’s famous for, and probably got louder screams from the audience than anyone else all year.
But sometimes what benefits SNL the most is a good old-fashioned character actor, and while Colman Domingo has had plenty of leading roles (including an Oscar-nominated performance in the terrific and underseen Sing Sing), his monologue self-characterized his career (in that distinctively beautiful voice) as an eclectic long haul, not an ascendant superstar. Even if he didn’t actually play “Carly from iCarly” or C3PO, there’s no particular now-or-never reason he’d host this show in April 2026 in particular.
Domingo isn’t exactly a choice that inspires a “why now?” (a phrase I can only ever hear in Bill Hader’s impression of Lorne Michaels, by the way) but it feels telling that he didn’t bother shouting out his supporting role in Michael in the monologue. (Maybe he just doesn’t want to get into it about a movie he shot two years ago, which, you know, fair.) His episode felt free of any promotional or broader-culture obligations; without a signature show or image to kid beyond that of a well-dressed man, Domingo repeatedly used his sonorous authority to play eccentric men attempting to take charge of their circumstances. It’s not that he played these roles as purely grounded, like a Method guy applying himself to comedy, so much as he played them with utter faith in the material, earned or not.
So when he was called upon (or volunteered?) to play ridiculous caricatures like a professor at FIT leading his fashion students in a lengthy and unhelpful interview about a recent robbery or a flat-out pimp attending the funeral of a seemingly whitebread grandfather with secret connections to “the life,” Domingo bit into his lines so gleefully that potentially canned concepts wound up feeling oddly joyful. The vibes he jokingly tried to set up in his monologue somehow carried all the way through to the end of the episode where he slipped smoothly (albeit via pretape) into the bad-guy role for “Beastomorphs,” and promptly looked at a failed teen-to-animal-to-teen transformation as an opportunity for romantic connection. Like his characters in the episode, Domingo seemed to see what he wanted out of SNL and go after it.
What was on
For me, the moment this episode went from charmingly silly to the best outing of 2026 so far was “The Knowledge Hour,” starting with the fact that this very strange sketch somehow got a spot before the musical guest, rather than somewhere between five and fifteen minutes from 1AM (or the internet three days later). In what was supposed to be a vintage PBS program, Domingo played a host intent on showing the audience that not everything is as it seems, mainly by having people dress up as furniture around his set, before expressing his frustration over whether this would really win over his decades-ago crush. It’s a highly specific idea that never pushed too far into pure nonsense-upon-nonsense; I love a sketch where it feels like there’s some kind of invisible system at work in its world, even if we’re not directly privy to it.
Similarly well-realized was the late-in-episode sketch featuring Domingo as an “unconventional” private-school teacher asking his young students to question the answers they’ve always gotten from math, with Andrew Dismukes as the lone voice of confusion amidst kids excited to throw off the shackles of numbers that actually exist. The concept is broadly obvious—it’s the kind of thing SNL UK has favored in some of its sketches, for better and worse, and SNL regular has spoofed the inspirational-teacher cliché plenty of times too—but it was filled in here with a surprising variety of details spread among the various characters. It was just a fundamentally strong sketch, and with something resembling a real ending, too!
What was off
There was a certain oddball innocence to the Artemis sketch painting the astronauts as a bunch of bored goof-offs (mainly Marcello Hernández and Mikey Day) interrupting the one serious-minded guy (Colman Domingo) aiming for poetry, as well as a charmingly old-fashioned staging where the performers had to fake weightlessness for the camera. But in terms of the actual humor, it was pretty wan; basically a less polished version of the “director keeps calling cut” structure.
It also undermined Hernández and Kam Patterson commentating on Update as the two kids from the back of the bus, as that initially inspired and quickly tired bit was basically the same type of thing only more aggressive—and longer. Yes, it’s true by traditional measures of time, the Artemis sketch ran 4:50 and the Update piece squeaked just under it at 4:46. But by my clock, that Update piece went on for at least six additional hours. The punchier SNL UK editions of Update have radicalized me to the point where any time a good cut-for-time sketch pops on YouTube, no matter the circumstances, I’m thinking about the Update desk pieces (or 20 jokes, whatever) that could have been sacrificed instead.
Most valuable player
Domingo himself brought a lot to each sketch, but among the cast, Jane Wickline again had a stealth standout night, playing two of her specialties: the well-deployed foil in the FIT robbery sketch who can’t help but offer a helpful and literal description, and the neurotic and easily rattled young person, this time passing herself off as a Gen-Z sexpert on Weekend Update.
Next time
After a two-weekend break, the season kicks into its final three-episode stretch, starting with the inevitable and much-anticipated host-and-music gig for Olivia Rodrigo. Her first single from the album she’ll be promoting isn’t out yet, and there’s a good chance the second one won’t be by May 2nd, meaning she may be world-premiering a new song on the show.
Stray observations
• Anitta’s songs, both entirely new to me, were fine, and I loved the grass-heavy set dressing of the second number. But they were both sorta over before I could really lock into them.
• God, these cold opens. Chloe Fineman debuting (I think?) her Melania Trump mostly brought to mind two things: (1.) The Julio Torres-penned “Melania Moments” that were very good back in 2016. (2.) Wow, they really let a whole horrible feature film about Melania go by without more than a couple of weak passing mentions, huh? I’m not sure if Fineman has all that strong of a Melania, but, you know, it’s something that might be worth trying out in a world where they’ve been doing nonstop Trump/Hegseth sketches.
• That male-therapy piece about sending mildly troubled white dudes to the barbershop was another why-now sort of moment, but also oddly sweet?
• Not sure we need to see Jost in multiple sketches per night, thanks. Or maybe it’s just weird how nuts the studio audience goes when they see him. I’m always like, oh, is Will Ferrell standing behind him? Have they not cut to Maya Rudolph yet?
• It’s an oft-used, even predictable sketch button, but I still guffawed at the specific newspaper headline following Jeremy Culhane’s starry-eyed declaration that he’d try sex work at the end of that funeral sketch.
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