For his \u201cSNL\u201d debut (his appearance as a page in the \u201cSaturday Night\u201d feature film<\/a> doesn\u2019t count), Wolfhard got to podcast with the preteen \u201cSnack Homiez<\/a>\u201d crew (including Sabrina Carpenter, who returned for the sketch<\/a>), played an indie rock son rebelling against his pop star dad<\/a> (James Austin Johnson), a well-fed space emperor<\/a> in a wacky sci-fi sketch, and the boyfriend of a too-enthusiastic guys\u2019 girl (Veronika Slowikowska) who fails to impress his friends.<\/p>\n But his appearance will probably best be remembered for a spot-on \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d parody<\/a> set in the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d world (more on that perfect storm of comedy in a bit).<\/p>\n Musical guest A$AP Rocky performed \u201cPunk Rocky\u201d with Danny Elfman<\/a> on drums and \u201cDon\u2019t Be Dumb\/Trip Baby.\u201d Before the closing goodbyes, a title card honored Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who died this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2026, James Austin Johnson\u2019s impression of President Trump is still a rambling marvel, but for the first cold open of the year, the material felt like too much of a recap or retread of previous greatest hits. Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez played a mostly-silent Marco Rubio who Trump berates for speaking Spanish. Tina Fey returned as Kristi Noem with some great zingers (\u201cDo I have the situation under control? Noem, I do not.\u201d), but it was almost a beat-for-beat repeat of the bit she did to better effect when Amy Poehler hosted<\/a>. Colin Jost again played Pete Hegseth as an overly pumped bully. The only new element, apart from Trump looking out windows, was Jeremy Culhane\u2018s debut as vice president J.D. Vance. \u201cI\u2019m here to kick bubble gum and chew ass and I\u2019m all out of bubble gum,\u201d Vance said. The cold open concluded with Trump promising, \u201cThe midterms are canceled.\u201d Which only serves to remind us that there\u2019s likely to be a lot of Trump cold opens between now and November.<\/p>\n For his monologue, Wolfhard was joined by his \u201cStranger Things\u201d co-stars Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin after showing a few jokey clips illustrating how much he grew up on the show, including going through puberty. Wolfhard tried to prove that he\u2019s a full-grown 23-year-old man now, but he\u2019s still got no real facial hair and doesn\u2019t like alcohol (he spits some into Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s face after congratulating him on his new stand-up comedy special<\/a>). Wolfhard and his co-stars reaffirmed their friendship before he declared they are \u201cchild stars who are now ready to do adult films!\u201d<\/p>\n Best sketch of the night: \u2018Heated Wizardry\u2019 is the sexy reboot we didn\u2019t know we needed Sometimes the best \u201cSNL\u201d sketch isn\u2019t just the funniest, but the one that is perfectly timed, with exactly the right host for just the moment in the zeitgeist for it to hit the hardest. Such is the case with this \u201cHarry Potter\u201d parody timed to everyone\u2019s current obsession with HBO Max\u2019s \u201cHeated Rivalry.\u201d Here, Harry (Wolfhard) and Ron Weasley (Ben Marshall) become romantically entangled Quidditch teammates, but the teaser for the fake series promises that everyone is older than 18 and Hogwarts is now some sort of college. There\u2019s pixelated nudity, grudging approval from Professor Snape (Johnson) and Jason Momoa as Hagrid, who says that like Neville, \u201cYou are one long bottom!\u201d Oh, the terrible puns.<\/p>\n Also good: Do you not find these snacks pleasing, emperor? There are those who will tell you that \u201cSnack Homiez<\/a>\u201d is the funniest thing \u201cSNL\u201d has done in a long time; I am not one of those people. Instead, I found this goofy sketch about an enthusiastic \u201cSnack Man\u201d to an evil space emperor on a show called \u201cDark Orbit\u201d to be much sillier and funnier, driven by Mikey Day\u2019s always welcome attempts to push his fellow cast members or hosts into breaking character and laughing. This time, force feeding Wolfhard led to several cast members losing their cool.<\/p>\n \u2018Weekend Update\u2019 winner: Tamara owes you no explanation for the button collecting Kam Patterson portrayed NFL legend Michael Irvin<\/a> in a scattered segment about his devotion to the University of Miami, but it was Jane Wickline (who\u2019s proven divisive among \u201cSNL\u201d fans) emerging as the week\u2019s \u201cUpdate\u201d winner playing the mysterious woman, Tamara, behind the 365 buttons TikTok meme<\/a>. As with the comments that inspired the meme, Wickline played Tamara as someone who refused to reveal why they\u2019re collecting a button a day, sparring defensively with \u201cUpdate\u201d co-host Michael Che. At the end of the segment, she revealed she has a solution to the crisis in Venezuela, but won\u2019t reveal that solution. \u201cI just have to go there and understand how to want to know,\u201d Tamara said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh off the finale of Netflix\u2019s seemingly endless run of \u201cStranger Things,\u201d one of its stars, Finn Wolfhard,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[70294,21538,3258,70292,37195,65291,6227,70295,48,52,51,47,50,49,52823,11391,11393,37492,70293,1519,70291],"class_list":["post-138772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-adult-role","tag-appearance","tag-debut","tag-finn-wolfhard","tag-harry-potter","tag-heated-rivalry","tag-host","tag-james-austin-johnson","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-reunion","tag-sketch","tag-snl","tag-stranger-thing","tag-tamara","tag-trump","tag-wolfhard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768729928_243_hqdefault.jpg\")
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