The show opened its 51st season by making a case for its pop-culture savviness.
The show opened its 51st season by making a case for its pop-culture savviness.
The moment Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth began berating the military officials assembled at Marine Corps Base Quantico last week, he set Saturday Night Live up for an alley-oop. With his clenched fists, hot temper, and stars-and-stripes pocket square, the former Fox News host—as SNL was eager to point out at the top of its 51st-season premiere—did enough self-parody that Colin Jost didn’t have to add much to nail his take on Hegseth. Jost simply ratcheted up the volume and the attacks on soldiers’ physiques. With its cold open, the sketch series pulled off one of its most consistent tricks: identify an absurdity emanating from the political establishment, make the party responsible say the quiet part out loud, and wait for the headlines and social-media posts to roll in.
But if the show’s send-up of Hegseth established that there are still moments in the broader culture that can get everyone talking about the same thing, the rest of the episode argued the opposite. The sketch that earned the most live hooting and hollering was not the politically topical one, but the pop-culturally zeitgeisty one—about a very particular movie that surprised many with its wild success this summer. In an episode featuring a pair of established Top 40 hitmakers—host Bad Bunny and musical guest Doja Cat—the real-life stars of the animated Netflix film KPop Demon Hunters stole the spotlight. And they underscored SNL’s clear desire to keep up with the shifting center of the pop-culture universe.
The women of HUNTR/X, the fictional pop trio that leads the sleeper hit, provided the kicker to a sketch that poked fun at what it’s like to be on the inside (and outside) of a huge cultural phenomenon. Bad Bunny is the lone KPop Demon Hunters–obsessed member of his friend group, played by Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, and Sarah Sherman.
