Inde Navarrette walked onto the Saturday Night Live stage on Halloween night carrying one of the most talked-about performances of the year, and by the time the goodnights rolled around she had turned her hosting debut into the kind of night her fans will be replaying all week. The Obsession breakout hosted the October 31 episode with musical guest Gracie Abrams, in a show packed with surprise returns, a World Series celebration, and one short film that immediately became the clip of the weekend.
Her monologue wasted no time reminding everyone why she is here. Navarrette opened by slipping into the voice of Nikki, her Obsession character, before introducing the support system in the audience: her boyfriend, Nick Aiello, shown bound and taped to his seat. She then shared the news that she will play Rogue in Marvel’s X-Men reboot, and explained how she is getting into superhero shape. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to be in a Marvel movie,” she said, “so every morning I put on my little whore outfit and I hit the gym.” The line flipped a joke from Shane Gillis’s October 10 monologue, when he complained that women dress that way at the gym, and the studio audience roared at the payback. Cast members followed her out in costume, including Marcello Hernández as a sexy TSA agent and Jeremy Culhane, dressed as Wolverine, making his own pitch for the role she just landed.
The cold open had already set the tone. Kenan Thompson guided a young couple through a haunted house ride that delivered the night’s first surprise: Tom Hanks back as David S. Pumpkins, the Halloween favorite he first played in 2016, flanked by skeleton dancers Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan. James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump soon hijacked the ride to worry out loud about Tuesday’s midterms, but the sketch belonged to Hanks, who also got to deliver the “Live from New York” line.
The performance everyone will be talking about Monday came in a filmed short called “The Inventor’s Wife.” Navarrette plays a widow delivering a eulogy for her inventor husband, a man who, in her careful phrasing, loved his inventions and liked his wife. At home she finds his parting gift in the workshop: a small, sweet robot named PD 44, whose purpose neither of them can figure out. They bond. Six years pass. She finally brings a date home, and PD reveals what the initials stand for, transforming into a giant killer robot and dispatching the man in spectacular fashion. Her conclusion, delivered through happy tears: her husband loved her after all. Variety called the short “a fine showcase for Navarrette’s crack timing and commitment to the bit, and one of the better ‘SNL’ digital shorts in quite some time.”
She stayed busy the rest of the night. There was a Paw Patrol: Special Victims Unit sketch with Navarrette as a no-nonsense Ryder working a crime scene, a telenovela that kept collapsing into soda product placement she had to sell opposite Hernández, a fake airline commercial for a cabin class reserved for unruly passengers (her impression of the viral “she is not real” plane passenger was spot on), and a Queen Mary ghost tour she kept interrupting as the spirit of a 1930s kid.
Weekend Update brought a celebration of Wednesday’s World Series. Bobby Moynihan returned as Drunk Uncle to toast the Milwaukee Brewers, and the bit ended with a genuine surprise: manager Pat Murphy and players Christian Yelich and Brice Turang walked out carrying the trophy, three days after the franchise’s first championship.
Before the goodnights, the show paused for a quieter moment. In tribute to Sir Patrick Stewart, who died Wednesday at 86, SNL aired an archive clip of Stewart introducing musical guest Salt-N-Pepa from his own hosting appearance in 1994, along with one of his promo photos from that week.
Gracie Abrams, making her second appearance as musical guest, staged both of her songs as tributes to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. She opened “Hit the Wall” from behind an aquarium, recreating Claire Danes’ angel look from the 1996 film, then returned for “Here You Come, There You Go” wearing Leonardo DiCaprio’s tropical shirt from the same movie. Both songs come from her album Daughter from Hell.
The reviews rolling in overnight were warm where it counted. The consensus across the recaps is that the episode ran on better energy than much of this season, and that its first-time host was the reason why, which is exactly the kind of notice that travels during an awards season like the one Navarrette is having. The full episode is streaming now on Peacock.