On the Saturday Night Live season premiere, host Bad Bunny delivered a glorious response to a week of sweaty MAGA noise around news of his Super Bowl halftime gig. And the kick-off to the 51st season of SNL read like a Stefon monologue of President Trump’s least favorite things: a late-night comedy show back on the air with a superstar host from Puerto Rico, who never thanked him for that one roll of paper towels and then endorsed Kamala Harris; Colin Jost taking a searing run at Pete Hegseth; and James Austin Johnson back as the president himself.
Leading up to last night’s premiere, a clip from Bad Bunny’s SNL monologue during his first time hosting back in 2023 played heavily on social media. In it, he muses through his thick accent, “People are wondering if I can host this show because English is not my first language, I don’t know if they know but, I do whatever I want.”
That’s because Bad Bunny is a sexy fancy cat who wears two diamond chains around his hairless neck and shirts without top buttons. He is unbothered, purring, and resolute. This is the Bad Bunny way. Of his being tapped to headline Super Bowl half-time, he said, “I think everyone is happy about it, even Fox News.” The screen then jumped to a supercut of the network’s various hosts declaring that the Puerto Rican megastar is “my-favorite-musician-and-he-should-be-the-next-President.”
Like he did in 2023, Bad Bunny delivered the most impassioned part of his monologue in Spanish, promising his Latin base that the Super Bowl show would be as much their triumph as his. “It’s an achievement for all of us,” he said. “Demonstrating our footprint, our contribution. No one will ever be able to remove or erase it.” His trolls can stomp and fume and insist that “real” Americans should feel disrespected, not stupid but tricked and left out by a mainstream star daring not to always speak directly to them. Our evening’s host offered an elegant prescription for their conniption. “If you didn’t understand what I just said,” Bad Bunny purred of his Spanish riff, “you have four months to learn.”
Before Bad Bunny, the cold open went straight into the CrossFit belly of Trump’s inner cabinet. Jost was a too-natural Hegseth, all puffed up chest and Crood arms, broviating at Quantico about how the military needed to stop being so gay and start clocking more kipping pull-ups. Johnson’s Trump put Jost in a frozen time-out as he strode into frame, warning that he had SNL in his cross hairs. “I know late night TV like the back of my hand,” he warned, revealing a crater of mold that no makeup could cover. He got in some barbs about the loss of so many cast members (Godspeed Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, and Michael Longfellow) and enlisted the crew to keep an eye on Marcello Hernandez for him. “Remember, Daddy’s watching,” Trump warned, as Mikey Day as Brendan Carr scuttled behind him.
Bad Bunny’s best sketch of the night was his defense of his love of KPop Demon Hunters, insisting the HUNTRA/X catalogue is not made up of mere songs but weapons against the dark side. Him grooving to “Golden” is pumpkin spice in a frame, as was Bowen Yang jumping up and down with the actual singers EJAE, Rei Ami, and Audrey Nuna during the cast goodbye.
Bad Bunny’s best co-star of the night was Hernandez. From the monologue to a skit titled “ChatGPTío,” these two felt like they were pitching Hollywood a future buddy comedy for themselves.
The best joke of the night came during Weekend Update, when Jost highlighted that Elon Musk had become the first person reported to be worth more than $500 billion. “Wow, shout-out to Tylenol!”
And finally, the best laugh of the night came courtesy of Yang, who appeared during Weekend Update as Dobby the House Elf, tasked by his “Master” J.K. Rowling to publicly weigh in on trans people. Noticing that his humble tunic had come loose after a bout of self-flagellation, a bare-chested Yang gasped “Dobby’s come undone!” Later his Dobby jumped the desk and bashed his rubber head into the camera, apologizing for his very existence. “House elves are somehow always the problem even though we are only 1% of the population,” he said. But the real victim in all this, he reminded us, is Master Rowling, who suffers terribly at the hand of people on Etsy creating t-shirts that say such hateful things—like the one that will be sold out by tomorrow that reads “They K. Rowling.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
Decoding The Life of a Showgirl
-
All the Stars at Paris Fashion Week 2025
-
Zohran Mamdani and the Future of American Politics
-
The Onion Is Gunning for an Oscar—With an Epstein Mockumentary
-
The 6 Grisly Films Inspired by Serial Killer Ed Gein
-
Charlie Kirk, Redeemed by the Media
-
A Brief History of Cinematic Showgirls
-
Meet Hollywood’s First AI-Generated “Actor”
-
The 25 Best Movies to Watch on Netflix This October
-
Dakota and Elle Fanning, Together at Last
-
From the Archive: The Hollywood Secret Katharine Hepburn Helped Bury
The post Bad Bunny Used His Saturday Night Live Gig to Roast MAGA, During a Punchy 51st Season Premiere appeared first on Vanity Fair.
