It may have been the middle of May, but inside Studio 8H, Saturday Night Live decided Christmas had arrived early — only this version came wrapped in political chaos, uncomfortable laughter, and one of the most talked-about cold opens of the year.
The season finale opened with a bizarre and aggressively dark parody of A Christmas Carol, reimagining President Donald Trump as a sleepless leader haunted not by Dickensian spirits, but by the ghost of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — played with unsettling enthusiasm by returning host Will Ferrell.
The sketch instantly detonated online
Longtime Trump impersonator James Austin Johnson opened the segment as the president returning from an exhausting diplomatic trip to China. Sitting inside a parody Oval Office, he apologized to Vice President JD Vance — played by Jeremy Culhane — for not bringing him along.
“I would have,” Johnson’s Trump shrugged, “but I didn’t want to.”
The jokes escalated quickly. Trump presented Vance with a gift supposedly sent by Chinese President Xi Jinping — only for it to turn out to be a cheap Chinese finger trap. When asked what he gave Xi in return, Johnson delivered the punchline that immediately lit up social media:
“Taiwan.”
From there, the sketch spiraled into increasingly uncomfortable territory. Trump drifted off to sleep using a gold bar as a pillow — joking that Switzerland had given it to him “as a straight-up bribe” — before suddenly being visited by Epstein’s ghost, portrayed by Ferrell in chains and shredded robes like a grotesque Dickens villain.
“Jeffrey, I thought you were dead!” Johnson exclaimed.
“I am,” Ferrell replied with a grin. “Remember? I killed myself. Wink.”
The audience gasped before erupting into uneasy laughter.
That tension became the defining tone of the entire sketch. Ferrell leaned fully into the absurdity, portraying Epstein less as a realistic figure and more as a chaotic supernatural troll sent to torment Trump with visions of America’s future. At one point, he complained that the afterlife was “really, really hot,” while Trump worried aloud that his approval ratings had fallen into the 30s.
“Gross,” Ferrell answered coldly. “Call me when it hits 17.”
Even Johnson briefly broke character, muttering, “Dark. Very dark.”
The sketch continued escalating with a series of surreal future visions. Ashley Padilla appeared as former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, now working on a shopping network selling vacuum cleaners “strong enough to clean up anything your dog leaves behind — besides a gun.” Meanwhile, Colin Jost showed up as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosting a podcast alongside guest star Aziz Ansari as FBI director Kash Patel.
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The fake podcast advertisements became some of the night’s biggest laugh lines, including a fictional cologne called “Incompetent,” allegedly made from forehead sweat and marketed as “a smell so powerful it crosses your eyes.”
At one point, Trump seemed relieved that Hegseth was podcasting instead of working at the Pentagon.
“I guess that means the war in Iran is over?” he asked.
“Yep,” Ferrell replied. “We came in second.”
The combination of political satire, bizarre imagery, and shock-value humor instantly divided viewers online. Some fans praised the finale as classic fearless SNL chaos, while critics argued the Epstein material crossed a line even for modern late-night television.
But the cold open was only the beginning.
When it came time for the opening monologue, viewers were briefly confused after someone who looked exactly like Ferrell walked onto the stage — only to discover it was actually Chad Smith, the longtime celebrity doppelgänger of the comedian. Smith, who was performing alongside musical guest Paul McCartney, jokingly pretended to steal Ferrell’s monologue before the real Ferrell stormed onto the stage claiming he had been attacked backstage.
“Lorne had to give me mouth-to-mouth,” Ferrell shouted breathlessly.
McCartney remained onstage during the bit as Ferrell repeatedly interrupted himself just to praise classic Beatles songs the music legend had written. Later in the show, McCartney performed “Band on the Run,” “Coming Up,” and “Days We Left Behind,” while also appearing in a comedy sketch involving auto mechanics.
Meanwhile, over at the Weekend Update desk, Jost and Michael Che continued hammering Trump’s China trip with rapid-fire jokes. Jost described the summit as “14,000 miles round trip for something historians are already calling ‘could’ve been an email.’” Che followed with jokes about China greeting Trump like “the guy from the hats we make,” while also mocking international diplomacy, Cuba’s oil crisis, and America’s increasingly awkward relationship with Beijing.
The finale closed with a sequel to one of Ferrell’s most beloved lost sketches — a chaotic high school theater bit that originally went viral online after being cut from a 2019 episode. Ferrell reprised his role as an emotionally unstable drama teacher alongside returning cast members Mikey Day and Kenan Thompson, with surprise appearances from former SNL star Molly Shannon helping push the sketch into full comedic meltdown territory.
By the end of the night, viewers weren’t just talking about the jokes.
They were debating whether SNL had delivered one of its boldest political finales ever — or whether the show had finally crossed into territory so dark that audiences could no longer tell where satire ended and pure chaos began.
