Great news for anyone suffering from an absence of Bowen Yang, or political cold opens of wildly varying quality, in their lives: Saturday Night Live is just a month away from coming back. The long-running sketch series announced its October 2 (a Saturday, we believe) return on Twitter last night, via a video that was light on sketch comedy or recognizable sketch comedians, heavy on empty stages and cheerful screaming.
Indeed, the teaser video/date announcement for the show’s return seems to be going hard on a “look at our long legacy of title cards” vibe, which is a little strange, given that this is season 47, and not one of those big round numbers our brains all like so much. (Sorry, we just absolutely exhausted ourselves by briefly imagining what a circus SNL50 is probably going to end up being.)
Despite the announcement, it’s still a tad early to have a firm grasp of what this coming season of the sketch series is going to be like. The series is running with a higher-than-average group of long-time cast members at the moment, with Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant, Colin Jost, Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, and Michael Che all having been at the show for seven or more seasons—a lot more, in a couple of cases—which is the standard length of an SNL contract. There was also, per Deadline, a lot of “big farewell” energy from several of these people, plus Pete Davidson, in the show’s season 46 finale, so it’s anybody’s guess what this coming roster is going to look like.
Meanwhile, the show also hasn’t announced whether it’s picking up any new additions this year. (Last year’s announcement, which brought Punkie Johnson, Andrew Dismukes, and Lauren Holt into the rotation, landed on September 16, ahead of an October 3 premiere.) All this as the series continues to navigate the realities of production of a show with this many moving parts mid-COVID, and while it’s yet to address the looming allegations against former star Horatio Sanz, who was accused of grooming an underage fan at a number of SNL afterparties under NBC’s watch during his tenure on the series.