If there’s one takeway from Saturday Night Live‘s 50th season, it’s that there’s no beating Domingo.
Within a week of its debut during SNL‘s Oct 12th Ariana Grande/Stevie Nicks episode, “Bridesmaids Speech” became the season’s most viewed YouTube clip, and it held on to that title straight through the show’s season finale, logging 19.1 million views to date (and counting).
The clip did face a formidable late-the-season challenger in Mike Myers‘ debut as a chainsaw-weilding Elon Musk, but that clip’s 17 million views weren’t enough to knock Domingo from his perch.
Both SNL favorites returned in subsequent sketches, two of which also placed among the season’s ten most-viewed clips.
If there was another general predictor of the types of sketches most likely to draw YouTube views, it was the 2024 election, with three election-themed cold opens featuring James Austin Johnson‘s Donald Trump and Maya Rudolph‘s Kamala Harris earning spots on the list, alongside Nate Bargatze‘s “Washington’s Dream 2,” and Dave Chappelle‘s record-breaking 16-plus minute monologue.
Notably, while the show’s 50th anniversary special drew huge ratings, only two of that night’s (many) all-star sketches were among this season’s most-watched on YouTube.
Consistent with other viewership measurements for SNL‘s 50th season, the show’s most-watched YouTube clips performed markedly better than last year’s at this time. In fact, only two of Season 49’s most-viewed sketches would have even placed on this year’s list: “Beavis and Butt-Head” and “I’m Just Pete.”
The complete list with YouTube view counts (as of this writing) follows below:
- Domingo: Bridesmaid Speech (Ariana Grande/Stevie Nicks) – 19.1M views
- Elon Musk Cold Open (Shane Gillis/Tate McRae) – 17.1M views
- Dave Chappelle Stand-Up Monologue 2025 (Dave Chappelle/GloRilla) – 15.7M
- Harris and Trump Rallies Cold Open (Jean Smart/Jelly Roll) – 12.8M views
- Family Feud Election 2024 Cold Open (Ariana Grande/Stevie Nicks) – 12.7M views
- 2024 Pre-Election Cold Open (feat. Kamala Harris) (John Mulaney/Chappell Roan) – 11.1M views
- Washington’s Dream 2 (Nate Bargatze/Coldplay) – 10.8M views
- Domingo: Vow Renewal (SNL50:The Anniversary Special) – 8.3M views
- Scared Straight (SNL50:The Anniversary Special) – 9.2M views
- Trump Tariff Cold Open (Jack Black/Elton John & Brandi Carlile) – 8.9 views
YouTube is, of course, just one platform where SNL clips can be viewed. Though viewcounts for other platforms like Instagram, Peacock, and NBC.com are not independently verifiable, NBC has said that clips from a given episode can drew, in aggregate, hundreds of millions of views across various different platforms
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