Nonhuman Weekend Update Characters, Ranked
03/05/2024 20:07
Throughout its nearly 50-year history, Saturday Night Live has had no shortage of ridiculous characters wearing equally ridiculous costumes. From beloved sketches that feature the Land Shark to infamous bombs like Robert Downey Jr.'s Suitcase Boy, the SNL cast members have never been too afraid to look silly on TV. It's just really charming when a show that airs hours past the kids' bedtime suddenly starts feeling like Sesame Street with cast members dressing up like cartoonish aliens or whatever David S. Pumpkins is supposed to be. In a show that's typically focused on parodying our fellow humans, there's something extra refreshing when it goes full weird and surreal, letting its actors play talking geese or Thanksgiving-parade floats.
The Weekend Update desk has strangely avoided this style of humor, opting instead for standard impressions of human celebrities or archetypes — at least until recently. It did feature a few nonhuman characters in eccentric costumes throughout its first 45 seasons (you'll see plenty of them below), but it really wasn't until Bowen Yang joined the cast in 2019 that Update started regularly embracing this style of comedy. Yang loves nothing more than to dress up like a weird little disgruntled gremlin, and the results have been so successful that the rest of the cast is getting in on it. Here we rank 12 of the most memorable nonhuman Weekend Update guest characters so far, with special attention paid to how high-effort the costume design seems and how much fun the actor appears to be having with it:
The Devil (Jason Sudeikis)
First appearing in response to the Catholic Church's child-abuse scandals making headlines in 2010, the Devil quickly became the show's go-to guy for emphasizing how dark a real-life issue is. Sudeikis's Devil is proudly evil, sure, but he's fun evil, not real-life evil. He likes to put annoying pop-up ads on websites, not take advantage of society's most vulnerable citizens. That's why he's horrified to learn the details of the 2011 abuse scandal at Penn State, or that QAnon theorists in 2021 are involving him in their conspiracies. He's the perfect vehicle for the writers to get their shots in on the worst people currently in the news. This person's so bad, the segment argues, that not even the devil would want to hang out with them.
Sudeikis's Devil is ranked at the bottom of this list solely due to how low-effort the costume feels. Just a regular suit dyed red and two measly horns? Yang on an off-day would put this get-up to shame.
Gumby (Eddie Murphy)
Although Gumby was a beloved recurring character throughout Murphy's time as a cast member in the '80s, it wasn't until 2019 that he made it to the Weekend Update desk. Here he's his same abrasive, overconfident self, yelling at Colin Jost and Michael Che the whole time for not inviting him back. In the segment's best moment, Murphy accidentally breaks into laughter. When the audience laughs with him, Murphy snaps right back into character and yells at them with a stern "cut it out" arm gesture.
Gumby's costume looks somewhat old and worn out here, but that only adds to his appeal. This feels like the same Gumby outfit Murphy was wearing all those years earlier, like it's been kept away in a closet somewhere waiting for this very moment. For an episode that was all about appealing to the older SNL fans, re-using what looks like the same exact outfit from the '80s was the perfect choice.
Flaco's Widow (Sarah Sherman)
The SNL writers have seemed oddly obsessed with the untimely demise of poor Flaco the Owl, as they'd already joked about him in the Update segment earlier in the month and let James Austin Johnson dress up as Flaco's grieving cousin in that same episode's infamous Hooters sketch.
Sherman's portrayal still shines here, however, as the grieving widow quickly reveals that her late husband had multiple STDs and a voracious sexual appetite. "Flaco banged anything with a pair of wings," she laments to Jost. "I once caught him dipping tip in a frozen turkey." The sketch has a lot of the typical Sherman humor, including constant below-the-belt digs at Jost and a ton of sexual innuendo, but even if that style of comedy's not to your taste, you can't deny Sherman looked good doing it. That owl costume, from its realistic feathers to the subtle mourning veil, looked like it must've taken days to make and a long time just to put on correctly.
Larry the Goose (Andy Samberg)
One man's hero is another man's villain, which is why it should be no surprise to learn that the heroic Captain Sully (who pulled off an emergency plane landing in the Hudson River in 2009) is enemy No. 1 to the geese community. Showing up the week after the incident, and again a year later to honor the goose victims, Larry describes the event as "the Day the Crazy Loud Big Thing Came At Us Out of Nowhere" and urges Seth Meyers to take his pain seriously, even as Larry's absurd goose squawking makes that impossible to do.
At first glance, Samberg's costume doesn't seem that high effort here — for his beak, they just paint his nose yellow — but Samberg deserves credit for how he subtly added signs of aging to Larry in his second appearance. Samberg also proved his love for playing birds in Cameron the Blackbird, a 2011 Update segment where he plays a gay bird in love with a gay fish (Taran Killam). These segments were never huge hits, but they're still pleasant enough to warrant a rewatch.
Baby Yoda (Kyle Mooney)
Introduced in 2019, this is easily one of the most controversial recurring Update guests. Baby Yoda, once the cute standout character of The Mandalorian, is here transformed into a Gen Z slang-spewing monstrosity, with a grating voice and delivery meant to mock the worst of TikTok influencers. "If that's what Baby Yoda looked like on the show, the Mandalorian would have let him die," reads the top comment on his biggest sketch, and it's hard to argue otherwise.
Still, Baby Yoda deserves props for the sheer amount of effort that went into the costume. Kyle Mooney is nearly unrecognizable in the role, and there's a specificity to the character's quirks and intonation that proves that laziness, at the very least, is not the problem here. Mooney was famous for having his best sketches cut for time, so this character feels like a testament to just how much work he had to go through to get his moment in the spotlight. This might not be Mooney's best work on the show, but at least it repeatedly made it to air.
Spotted Lanternfly (Bowen Yang)
By the time this segment aired in 2022, it was already at least the third time Yang played a bug on SNL. Is it healthy that Yang likes to perform flamboyant, antagonistic insects this often? Probably not, but with results this funny it's hard to complain. Responding to the constant PSAs in northeastern America that spotted lanternflies are an invasive species and you should kill them on sight, Yang's Spotted Lanternfly introduced himself as a parody of a loud, defiant, trashy reality-talk-show guest.
Even the audience gets into it, booing Bowen's character while he soaks it all in. It's a delightfully campy Update character, one of what must be dozens from Bowen at this point, and it also works as a genuinely effective PSA. The attention to detail on Bowen's fabulous bug suit (which he flaunts to a booing audience) means that millions of viewers now know exactly what a spotted lanternfly looks like, and they're more motivated than ever to squash it dead.
Lenny the Lion (Colin Quinn)
Shortly before Norm MacDonald was fired from his Update anchor gig for making one too many O.J. Simpson jokes, he was visited by his future replacement, Colin Quinn, in a lion suit. The joke here is that Lenny, despite being a zoo lion, is basically just a repentant former criminal trying to better himself. "It's all about my father, I was just acting out his rage," he tells MacDonald. "I know that now." It turns out that lions aren't so scary; they're just going through their own complicated emotional journey.
This is the earliest nonhuman Update guest to make the list, and the funniest part about it is just how bemused MacDonald is throughout the whole thing. The whole schtick is beneath him, he sure seems to think, but he's delighted to see it through anyway.
Charlotte the Pregnant Stingray (Ego Nwodim)
Another entry from this year, Nwodim plays the famous stingray in a North Carolina aquarium who got pregnant under mysterious circumstances. To this day, people are still trying to figure out what happened there, but luckily the Stingray came out on Update to set the record straight. Yes, she really is pregnant, and the father is Michael Che.
Dressed in an adorable stingray costume, Nwodim doesn't just throw in a ton of raunchy bestiality jokes, but she also makes history as one of the first guests to properly make Che squirm. Usually it's poor Jost being thrown through the wringer, forced to suffer through joke swaps or roasts from Sherman, but here it's Che who's finally blushing with embarrassment. This dynamic would be dialed up to 11 with Caitlin Clark's later appearance, in which she humbles Che once and for all for his constant lazy WNBA jokes, but Charlotte deserves credit for doing it first.
Old-Fashioned Cigarette (Michael Longfellow)
One of the bitterest ironies of the modern world is that we almost put an end to adolescent smoking, but then those pesky vape pens swooped in and rendered years of effective TV PSAs useless. So in came young cast member Longfellow with his surprisingly detailed cigarette costume, complete with smoke somehow rising from the top, to defend the OG cancer causer. "Smoking makes you skinny and popular," he tells the impressionable kids at home, all while declaring vape smokers to be "dorks" who lack confidence. Is this the most socially responsible segment in Update history? Probably not, but Longfellow deserves props for his charming, chaotic delivery, and for the sheer attention to detail on that ridiculous outfit.
Robocall (Will Forte)
Although the amount of misinformation being spouted throughout the 2008 election paled in comparison to what we regularly see today, it was still a big enough problem to grab esteemed cast member Will Forte's attention. Naturally, he dressed up as a giant silver telephone, telling Seth Meyers in a robotic voice all about how Obama is a gay terrorist. The tragic part is how Robocall knows this job is beneath him, but he just really likes the attention that comes with lying to elderly voters. This is easily one of Forte's funniest Update characters, and one of the most high-effort costumes of any Update guest ever. Future cast member Aristotle Athari would pull off a similar trick 13 years later, but Forte's far more adorable telephone robot wins out between the two. It's a shame the segment still hasn't been posted on the official SNL YouTube channel; if you want to watch it today, you'll need a Peacock subscription.
Earthquake and Eclipse (Marcello Hernandez and Kenan Thompson)
When that 4.8 magnitude earthquake hit New York in April, we knew SNL would do some sort of sketch about it, but we didn't know they'd do it via a parody of two WWE wrestling stars trash talking each other before a match. (Fittingly, this aired the same night as Wrestlemania XL.) Marcello's earthquake brags about how he gave New York "a bunch of teeny-tiny punches like a scary massage," but Kenan Thompson's eclipse comes out to set him straight. "Come Monday, all of America will be covered in eternal darkness!" he taunts. But much like the earthquake, his big talk is undermined by how the eclipse would only last a couple minutes, and only a small section of the country would get to fully see it.
Marcello's costume is the most effective. There is no intuitive way to design a costume for an earthquake, so giving Marcello a hat with a trembling Manhattan on top feels like a stroke of genius. Kenan's costume is a lot more straightforward — SNL already pulled the same basic trick with Timothée Chalamet and the moon — but it still got the job done. This is one of the most energetic Update segments in recent history, and in the years that come, it should prove to be a quaint little time capsule of what life was like during this one very busy week in April 2024.
Iceberg Who Sunk the Titanic (Bowen Yang)
Everybody always talks about those poor souls who perished on the Titanic, but nobody talks about the poor iceberg who was just minding his own business before a giant boat crashed into him. (Half his ass was gone, guys!) This is the basis of one of Bowen Yang's greatest characters and the greatest nonhuman guest in Update history. Yang's iceberg is a total diva, an ice queen who just wants to relax, look good, and make music. But unfortunately all the media wants to talk about is how "30 or 40 people died or whatever." But what about the Iceberg's new album, guys? Surely that's more important.
When watching this segment, one gets the impression that Yang's been workshopping this bit for years. He seems to have understood that a premise this stupid needs to be pulled off with perfection, and everything from his line delivery to the breathtaking ice hat rises to the challenge. This was a moment that changed Weekend Update history, that proved that an inanimate-object character could go just as viral as Stefon or Drunk Uncle. Yang proved that going full stupid could make for a work of art, and the rest of the cast has spent the past three years following in his footsteps. The Titanic may not have successfully led its passengers to a better life in America, but the Iceberg Who Sunk the Titanic did lead Update to a more adventurous array of weekly guest characters, and that's worth some celebration.
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