James Austin Johnson wasted no time proving why he’s got one of the best political impersonations going, with his Trump helping open the show with an unlikely appearance from Colin Jost as Pete Hegseth with a truly inspired and unhinged performance — who knew Colin could hold his own in a sketch!

The premiere also introduced five new cast members in one of the bigger cast shakeups in quite a few years. As we said goodbye to cast members Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker, and Emil Wakim, we quickly said hello to five (mostly) new faces. Please Don’t Destroy’s Ben Marshall joins the cast, alongside Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, Tommy Brennan, and Veronika Slowikowska, with all five making the cut and appearing in their first-ever show — not something every cast member could say.

Bad Bunny’s second time hosting was a bit of a mixed bag, with some half-baked concepts stretched into full sketches and some truly inspired moments of hilarity. The host struggled a bit with his English at times, throwing off the comedic rhythm, but brought a lot of his usual charm. And yes, he absolutely addressed the Super Bowl Halftime backlash — in his native Spanish!

As usual, we’re ranking all the sketches from worst to first, including the Monologue, Cold Open, “Weekend Update” and any sketches that were cut for time but made their way online. We’ll skip the musical guests, because they’re not usually funny — unless Ashlee Simpson shows up. We wrap up with a look at the cast-member who had the strongest week.

Bad Bunny kept it pretty subdued in his second hosting kickoff, talking about his residency — where he could bring out a “drunk” Jon Hamm again in a cute cameo, as well as a fun appearance by Marcello, nervous that Bad Bunny might be becoming Lorne Michaels’ new favorite Latino. He then shifted to talking about his upcoming Super Bowl halftime performance, saying, “I’m very happy and I think everyone’s happy about it, even Fox News.” With this, he showed a spliced clip of the network praising him, and even saying he should be the next president (which he technically could as a natural-born U.S. Citizen born in Puerto Rico.

I’m very excited to be doing the Superbowl, and I know that people all around the world who love my music are also happy,” Bad Bunny continued, before shifting to his native Spanish to add, “Especially all the Latinos and Latinas across the world, and here, in the United States, all those who have worked to open doors. It’s more than an achievement for myself, it’s an achievement for all of us. It shows our footprint, and our contribution to this country, that no one will ever be able to take away or erase.” He then gave everyone else four months to translate what he’d just said (before his Halftime show, natch!).

Marcello Hernández took the lead on this sketch about the birth of the Spanish language, with Bad Bunny relegated to just a few lines, despite being the leader. After stumbling through English through much of the show, we found it interesting that in this particular sketch, the writers had him sit back and have Marcello do the explaining about the ridiculousness of this new language. We did appreciate some of the reactions from non-Spanish speakers about things like nouns having gender and the use of formal and informal. A random Benicio Del Toro appearance didn’t clear anything up, but allowed them to navigate a way out of the sketch that had something to say, but apparently didn’t figure out how to talk their way out of it.

Kind of a mess, but it was fun seeing newcomer Veronika Slowikowska in her sketch debut, though she wasn’t given even a hint of funny in her role. This one was all about Bad Bunny’s contestant not being able to answer in the form of a question, which is marginally funny but maybe not enough to hold the post-monologue leadoff sketch position. It was all just kind of sloppily executed, and the joke was only funny the first time. Even the twist at the end was too painfully obvious, and then it seemed like everyone forgot their lines or something — or they really didn’t write any sort of ending at all, just letting it peter out.

At a brunch between friends — though we question how close they could be if they didn’t know whether or not Bad Bunny had kids, even if it had been years since they’d met up — KPop Demon Hunters slowly takes center stage. First, Bad Bunny shares his obsession with the Netflix smash, and then eventually the real-life singers behind Huntr/x (Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami) make a cameo appearance in his imagination. Even Sarah Sherman being on the Epstein List and Chloe Fineman writing Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad weren’t enough to derail his focus. Then, Bowen Yang showed up as the demon Jinu from the film and things got even weirder. The sketch may have been “Golden” and touched on the zeitgeist, but it just wasn’t all that funny.

If you’re tired of ChatGPT being a little too friendly, how about a Latino uncle instead? ChatGPTio connects you to Marcello Hernández as the uncle, with Bad Bunny as his amigo. This sketch grew on us as it went along, with some truly ridiculous, off-color and sometimes deeply inappropriate responses to user answers. We also got to see the first cast appearances for Please Don’t Destroy’s Ben Marshall and Tommy Brennan in bit roles as ChatGPTio users. By the end, we found ourselves charmed by the overall silliness of both Marcello and Bad Bunny in their roles, but we’re not ready to call this a laugh-out-loud commercial parody or an instant classic by any means.

The ending was a bit too random for us, but otherwise, this was a fun character piece with both Bad Bunny and Kenan Thompson as two deeply weird individuals shoehorning their way into a discussion between a lesbian couple and their male friend about whether or not he’d be willing to be their donor to have a baby. We were fully into Bad Bunny’s ridiculous offer to “do it” if Andrew Dismukes’ character were to decline, as well as Kenan Thompson’s interest in Bad Bunny’s “stuff,” so we honestly didn’t need the strange musical outro and quick last-second cameo. Sometimes, let us simmer in the weirdness of the characters and that’s enough. We don’t always need some kind of twist ending. It actually hurt what was working here.

Colin Jost and Michael Che had a lot of material to cover since we last saw them in the spring, but they tore through a lot of material, combining the government shutdown with the Cracker Barrel logo, the ongoing war in Gaza to Trump’s Epstein letter, Musk hitting $500 million with RFK and Trump blaming Tylenol for autism, and even “transgender for everyone” with an image of Che we will never get out of our heads. Then, we got a segment we’d happily see more of as Jost proved that what Trump says actually makes more sense if you have Jennifer Coolidge read it.

Newcomer Kam Patterson made his SNL debut where he addressed some of his online critics and tried to say the n-word. Basically, the whole schtick of this appearance was how he says the word all the time in his standup so he wants to say it here, too. Then then lied that he had a bunch of characters, too, like “the guy who plays Kramer” and Paula Deen. All in all, he definitely seemed comfortable on camera and has a lot of charisma, but this material wasn’t all that funny — or maybe it was a little too limited. His appearance also felt shorter than this write-up, so we still don’t feel like we have a sense of who he is as a comic — which kind of felt like the point of this appearance.

Che had a strong second segment, with his take on how Andrew Cuomo would cozy up to voters after Zohran Mamdani asked if they would accept his rose during a Golden Bachelor ad. He then made the most obvious joke about Jane Goodall’s death funny. Meanwhile, Jost tried to get a jihad called on his co-anchor and had the audience groaning and shifting uncomfortably with his “A.I. Actress” Tilly Norwood joke, as well as his take on Long Island.

Bowen Yang delivered another fantastic Update appearance in character, this time as Dobby from the Harry Potter books. He even managed to make a real wardrobe malfunction work, while revealing his true gender pronouns and protecting his “Master” J.K. Rowling. It was a pretty smart parody as it didn’t explicitly tear into the author — though we suspect it still won’t be well received — while standing strong for gender identity … in whatever form it expresses itself.

New cast member Jeremy Culhane got to say the first words of the new season, though it was just to introduce Colin Jost as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for a spoof of the pointless in-person meeting of all the top generals so he could apparently — according to this show — yell at them, “Our military is gay as hell! And I’m not just talking about the Navy.” Colin has never been all that strong in sketches, but he really held his own here, yelling at the generals and doing a better job of holding back a few smiles than some regular players.

Then, the sketch transformed into one of those freeze-frame Trump appearances, which was actually a bit of a disappointment. We know these have gone over very well in the past, but as Trump was there, this was an opportunity to see him both address SNL and its audience, and stay within the realms of a sketch. That said, we can understand the desire to have him threaten the late-night show directly, after what’s happened with Colbert and Kimmel. That said, this material wasn’t as sharp as he’s been in the past. “So sad to see something get old and confused and yet still demand your constant attention,” James Austin Johnson’s Trump said, which is true enough. But while this was still funny, we did find ourselves wondering if they’re already dipping into this format well a bit too often. Let Trump be in the scene and still be Trump.

Ashley Padilla continues to prove why she is one of the strongest sketch additions to this cast in years with another fantastic character piece she carried almost entirely by herself. Andrew Dismukes was a solid foil, but it was Ashley’s smitten principal fawning all over Bad Bunny as Marcello Hernández’s father that brought all of the humor. It’s not about just reading the lines, but about how she embodies these crazy characters that elevates them to the next level. Look, we’re not saying she’s the first or only one to ever do this, but we’re just very impressed at her immersion in only her second season on the show. She’s already so seasoned and confident and, most importantly, funny.

A spot-on parody of an iconic classic Mexican TV series from the 1970s, “The Kid from Number 8” was certainly a surprise subject for SNL to parody, but for Bad Bunny’s Spanish-speaking fanbase, it makes perfect sense. The 1970s series is still airing in repeats on Univision and was a massive, massive hit in its prime. Plus, the outrageous ridiculousness of the characters and premises actually played very well in English for a close-of-the-night sketch — that actually turned out to be the funniest one of the night. The cast was having fun with the childlike zaniness, and that fun translated. In fact, they probably could have done it in its native Spanish and the humor still would have worked.

All five newcomers got to make appearances tonight, though only Kam Patterson was given the opportunity to start to show off his comedic chops. The others were proving they could hold their own in straight roles. The only cast member who didn’t show up (until the goodbyes) was Jane Wickline, who was still trying to find her place at the close of her first season earlier this year.

Not so Ashley Padilla, who continues to prove herself a fantastic sketch performer, easily stepping up as one of the key female performers in a very women-light lineup. That also puts Chloe Fineman and Sarah Sherman in key roles as the veteran women on the cast, after the exits of both Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim.

Marcello Hernández took an obvious lead when it came to appearances — we say obvious because minority cast members always show up more with minority hosts — but his weren’t necessarily the night’s funniest or strongest moments. Andrew Dismukes also had a strong show, with lots of appearances, taking on more of a “glue” role.

Key individual performances included Bowen Yang’s Dobby the House Elf, which was probably the night’s most impressive one-man show, followed by Ashley’s principal, Kenan Thompson’s creepy “stuff” guy, Colin Jost’s surprisingly entertaining Pete Hegseth, and really everyone in “El Chavo.” 

That doesn’t help us pick the night’s strongest performer, though, as things were pretty well spread out among the cast. While Colin, Bowen, Kenan, and Ashley probably had the funniest moments, we’re going to have to give it up for Andrew Dismukes, who can hold together any sketch, whether as a host trying to pull a proper answer out of Bad Bunny, an earnest donor, a teacher trying to keep Ashley’s turned-on principal on task, or a hammer-wielding maniac (in a fun way) on “El Chavo.”

Saturday Night Live returns next week with host Amy Poehler and musical guest Role Model.