Mike Murray hosts The Saturday Night Network’s weekly By the Numbers podcast. Click the embed at the top of this post to watch it live Wednesday night at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT, or catch the replay afterward.
The youngest host in nearly three years, Finn Wolfhard made his SNL debut with the lowest host screen time in over a year. See how he and musical guest A$AP Rocky stacked up against the cast and cameos that included Stranger Things co-stars Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin.
Note: Our screen time calculation method prioritizes face time, meaning that any contiguous off-screen-but-in-scene moments and most partial-body appearances do not count. Screen time in the opening credits, bumpers, goodnights, and cut-for-time sketches is not included, nor do those portions factor into our assessment of the episode’s total running time.
Finn Wolfhard – 18:53 (30.3%)
Wolfhard appeared in all five live sketches and both pretapes, finishing with screen time comparable to previous Gen-Z hosts Jenna Ortega (19:59) and Billie Eilish (18:59), not including musical performances. His longest appearance came in the post-“Update” sketch, “Space Emperor” (04:27), which accounted for almost a quarter of his night. He had prominent roles as Harry Potter in “Heated Wizardy” and reprising his character of Mike Wheeler in “Stranger Things Promo.”
A$AP Rocky – 09:12 (14.7%)
A$AP Rocky became the third consecutive musical guest to appear in a live sketch (after Cher and Lily Allen in December) when he guested as himself on the “Snack Homiez” sketch following the monologue. He performed “Punky Rocky” and “Helicopter” along with the title-track of his new album, “Don’t Be Dumb.” Both performances included collaborators, Danny Elfman and Thundercat. A$AP Rocky is the first musical guest to finish second in screen time for the night since Chappell Roan in November 2024.
James Austin Johnson – 08:22 (13.4%)
Johnson led the cast in screen time for the ninth time in his career and second time the season, leading the Cold Open as Donald Trump (for the 48th time). His standout of the night was playing the leader of a late ‘90s boy band urging his son (played by Wolfhard) to follow in his footsteps. He also appeared as Professor Snape in “Heated Wizardry” and narrated “Stranger Things Promo.”
Mikey Day – 05:58 (9.6%)
Day made his second-longest appearance of the season in “Dark Orbit,” where he played Shegan, a snack servant to the Wolfhard’s emperor. Day also played Mike’s Dad in the “Stranger Things Promo” pretape and led the night’s final sketch, “Free Solo,” playing rock climber Alex Honnold.
Colin Jost – 05:46 (9.2%)
Jost began the night with his fourth appearance as Pete Hegseth (in his third Cold Open appearance of the season) for 01:50. He appeared for just 03:56 on “Weekend Update” —about two minutes under average—with no correspondents on his side of the desk for a second straight episode.
Michael Che – 05:14 (8.4%)
After six straight episodes without an “Update” guest at his side, Che has now entertained the last four segments—going back to Ariana Grande’s episode that featured Bowen Yang and Aidy Bryant’s “Trend Forecasters.” This week, Michael Irvin (Kam Patterson) and online button collector Tamara (Jane Wickline) were on his side of the desk.
Jeremy Culhane – 05:10 (8.3%)
Culhane scored his second-best screen time of his career this week. Of note, two of his five appearances (as J.D. Vance and Dobby the House Elf) were roles that previously went to Bowen Yang. He played Noah Schnapp’s character, Will Byers, in “Stranger Things Promo” and was James Austin Johnson’s bandmate, Cyber, in “Boy Band”.
Jane Wickline – 04:42 (7.5%)
Wickline led the women of the cast for the first time since her second career episode (Nate Bargatze circa October 2024). She made her eighth “Update” appearance (and her first as a solo character) as Tamara, a TikTok user who is collecting 365 buttons, one for every day of the year. She also added a third recurring character to her resume, “Snack Homiez” co-host Kyler. This was Wickline’s fifth-highest screen time of her 30-episode career.
Veronika Slowikowska – 04:40 (7.5%)
Slowikowska led “Guy’s Girl” as Finn Wolfhard’s eager-to-impress girlfriend, Michelle, for 02:30—her second-longest career appearance. Jason, the ‘tween boy co-host of “Snack Homiez” became her first-ever recurring character. She passed the 30-minute mark of career screen time in just her 10th episode, making her the first to accomplish this feat this quickly since James Austin Johnson in Season 47.
Ben Marshall – 04:26 (7.1%)
Marshall fell just three seconds shy of tying his career high, which came in Glen Powell’s episode. He continues to dominate the pretapes, adding Ron Weasley in “Heated Wizardry” to the list. He also made three supporting appearances in live sketches totaling 02:52. He ended 2025 with a modest 00:36 in Ariana Grande’s episode, but brought up his screen time average to 03:02 after this week.
Chloe Fineman – 04:11 (6.7%)
Fineman continues her stat hot-streak, making 26 appearances across the last five episodes, though her screen time dipped about 90 seconds this week. After reprising her role as “Snack Homiez” host Brayler (her eighth recurring character), she made three small appearances, most notably as Nancy in “Stranger Things Promo” and playing opposite host Finn Wolfhard in “Dark Orbit.”
Marcello Hernández – 03:38 (5.8%)
Hernández scored his 200th SNL appearance when he dropped by for a toast during Finn Wolfhard’s monologue. He made five appearances for the night for the eighth time in his career. Reprising his impression as Marco Rubio in the Cold Open and playing “Boy Band” member Curtis 5000 contributed to a night just 17 seconds below his career average.
Ashley Padilla – 03:36 (5.8%)
After averaging an incredible 07:39 per episode in Season 51’s first eight shows, Padilla has averaged 03:19 in the last two. She appeared in small roles as Professor McGonagall in “Heated Wizardy” and Karen Wheeler in “Stranger Things Promo,” totaling 12 seconds. Her longest appearance came as the mother of Finn Wolfhard’s character in “Boy Band” (02:28). Padilla has been on top of the Season 51 leaderboard since Sabrina Carpenter hosted in October, but is in danger of losing that title to Colin Jost, who trails by just 96 seconds after 10 episodes.
Kam Patterson – 02:35 (4.1%)
Patterson bookended his 2025 SNL campaign with appearances on “Weekend Update,” and started the new year continuing the trend, this time as Michael Irvin discussing Miami in the NCAA National Championship with Michael Che. It was not the only former NFL player he appeared as this week, also making a nine-second appearance as O.J. Simpson teammate/famed Ford Bronco driver Al Cowlings.
Sabrina Carpenter – 02:29 (4.0%)
Carpenter reprised her role as “Snack Homiez” cohost Tayson, a sketch that originated from the episode she hosted in the fall. She has now appeared in four of the last 31 episodes, amassing a whopping 45:07 of screen time (53:01 if you count the SNL50 anniversary special).
Gaten Matarazzo – 01:54 (3.0%)
Matarazzo dropped by Wolfhard’s monologue and reprised his Stranger Things character, Dustin, in a Sex and the City-style re-imagining of the Netflix hit. (Matarazzo previously appeared in Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain in 2023 with Ben Marshall.)
Caleb McLaughlin – 01:46 (2.8%)
McLaughlin joined Wolfhard and Matarazzo in the monologue and reprised the role of Lucas Sinclair in “Stranger Things Promo.” Fun fact: He appeared in the 2023 film The Book of Clarence with this week’s SNL host, Teyana Taylor.
Kenan Thompson – 01:23 (2.2%)
Thompson saw a big boost in screen time following Cecily Strong’s departure midway through Season 48 (clocking 20 minutes over the two subsequent episodes), but that is not the case so far in the post-Bowen Yang SNL landscape. More than 75% of his screen time this week came in the night’s final segment, “Free Solo,” a live sketch he led with Mikey Day.
Andrew Dismukes – 01:18 (2.1%)
Dismukes snapped his nine-episode streak of four-plus minutes per episode with his lowest episode total since Martin Short’s 2024 Christmas show (00:38). He played a member of James Austin Johnson’s boy band and headlined Steve Harrington’s spinoff in the “Stranger Things Promo” pretape.
Sarah Sherman – 01:01 (1.6%)
Sherman had her lowest episode total since Kristen Wiig hosted in April of 2024 (00:45) in a light night that gave her just two brief live appearances–13 seconds in “Boy Band” and 48 seconds in the night’s final sketch, “Free Solo.”
Tommy Brennan – 00:32 (0.9%)
Brennan had a feature cut from “Weekend Update” (but made available on SNL’s YouTube channel), contributing to his current cold streak. He’s had just 01:40 of screen time over the last three episodes, after averaging 04:08 per episode over the previous five. As a result, he has dropped to second-to-last in the cast in the season’s total.
Jason Momoa – 00:19 (0.5%)
Momoa made a surprise appearance in the first pretape of the night, playing Hagrid in “Heated Wizardy.” Momoa previously hosted twice (2018, 2023) and cameoed twice (2019, 2020).
