Saturday Night Live is back from its first break of Season 52 with a particularly fitting host for Halloween night. Inde Navarrette makes her hosting debut following her breakout in the summer sensation Obsession, alongside musical guest Gracie Abrams.
Between Halloween, the midterm elections, and a bevy of other current events, the show should have no shortage of material—or potential surprises—to work with.
Here are five storylines we’ll be tracking Saturday night:
Halloween Comes Home
SNL has produced plenty of memorable Halloween sketches, but actual Halloween night broadcasts are a relative rarity.
The last such episode—the show’s first in nearly 30 years—was hosted by John Mulaney in 2020 under COVID restrictions and in the waning days before a presidential election. That Halloween would fade into the background that night is no surprise.
This year has its own consequential election coming (see below), but with a horror star hosting—and Halloween not set to fall on a Saturday again until 2037—SNL could hardly ask for a better opportunity to go all-in on the holiday. An Obsession parody seems like an obvious place to start, but the bigger question is whether Halloween becomes a major theme of the night or simply fodder for a sketch or two.
Barack to the Future
For a few hours this week, social media was buzzing over a purported SNL plan to hand Barack Obama a “Weekend Update” segment to roast Donald Trump. The claim turned out to be satire—but it caught on because Obama has been supplying plenty of late-night-ready material himself this week.
His joke that Trump had made the White House look like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory”developed into a days-long back-and-forth with Trump and his administration, giving SNL an unusually obvious Obama-shaped entry point just days before the midterms.
Obama himself showing up may be far-fetched. But could all the attention be enough to bring former cast member Jay Pharoah back to play him for the first time since leaving SNL in 2016?
There’s no shortage of other Trump material to draw from. His speeches have generated plenty of headlines (and hecklers), his latest falling-out with Bill Maher produced the longest social-media post of his career, and Katie Zacharia’s entire tenure as White House press secretary came and went while SNL was on break.
With voters set to determine control of Congress on Tuesday, the bigger challenge may be choosing what not to cover—and finding a comic premise strong enough to keep the cold open from becoming a parade of headlines.
The Fielder Factor
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s film You Can See Everything has become one of the moment’s biggest conversation pieces, with their Elizabeth Holmes documentary already inspiring late-night parody. Could SNL be next?
Fielder would seem like irresistible material for a show built around impressions. His painstaking questions, uncomfortable pauses, and habit of turning documentary conventions inside out give SNL more to work with than simply putting someone in a wig and recreating a scene. The fun may be in seeing whether the show can parody the peculiar rhythm of a Fielder project itself.
Of course, there’s another possibility: Fielder—who has yet to appear on television since the film was announced in September—could simply show up himself.
Live From Sesame Street?
Muppets have been part of SNL’s history since its first season, but the show has been spending an unusual amount of time with the residents of Sesame Street this week.
A new crossover video on Tuesday brought Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day, Sarah Sherman, and Ashley Padilla together with a collection of Sesame Street Muppets for a writers’ meeting packed with SNL references. Cookie Monster channeled Matt Foley, Elmo pitched “Elmingo,” and even Lorne Michaels received the felt treatment. Later clips extended the bit, including a “Weekday Update” pairing of Colin Toast and Michael ChELMO.
Could all of this be building toward a live appearance Saturday night? After a week spent blurring the line between the two shows, a visit to Studio 8H would make for a fitting payoff.
The Gillis Ghost
There’s one story from SNL’s last episode that the three-week break hasn’t entirely put to rest.
Shane Gillis’ monologue prompted widespread backlash, including a pointed comment from one member of SNL‘s extended family when Ania Magliano used SNL UK‘s October 17 “Weekend Update” to turn Gillis himself into the punchline.
Kenan Thompson also addressed the controversy over the break, noting that the reaction had overshadowed the rest of the episode and that he would want to have a conversation with Gillis if the comedian returned to host.
The question now is whether SNL acknowledges any of it on air.
SNL has revisited its own controversies before. Joe Pesci addressed Sinéad O’Connor’s protest the following week in 1992, while Morgan Wallen’s “God’s country” post became material for both the cold open and “Update” in 2025.
Clearly, something happening on SNL itself doesn’t put it beyond the writers’ reach A single well-placed joke could acknowledge the Gillis controversy without making it the focus of Navarrette’s night. Or the show could simply move on. After SNL UK’s response, the choice will be worth watching.
This weekend’s Saturday Night Live airs Saturday, October 31 at 11:30 p.m. ET / 8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.
Join us at LateNighter.com immediately after for the Saturday Night Network’s live after-show, where SNL experts and superfans share their hot takes on the night’s best and worst moments.
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