“Saturday Night Live” season 52 recap: Shane Gillis returns to host for third time

Andy HoglundSun, October 11, 2026 at 3:28 AM UTC

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Host Shane Gillis and Veronika Slowikowska during ‘Saturday Night Live’ promos on Oct. 6, 2026Credit: Rosalind O'­Connor/NBCThe former ‘SNL’ writer returns to host for a third time, this time with Rosalía as musical guest.

Hey all — it’s SNL in Review with our rubber match for the start of season 52. The consensus from the peanut gallery on the past two episodes seems to be focused on weak writing. Which is a problem when you consider the sheer number of people on the writing staff. No one wants to admit it, but there’s something fundamentally off about the modern show. As Alan Sepinwall put it this week, SNLfrequently is “at sea when it comes to dealing with political turmoil” in the current Trump 2.0 environment.

Tonight’s show will be an interesting test case to that point: it is the return of Shane Gillis. We do not need to relitigate the controversy beyond to say, this is his third time hosting. As Lorne himself put it to Steve Martin in his recent doc: Gillis is easily one of the most significant and successful stand-up comedians working today. (His thrice gigs as host + Lorne’s POV make me wonder if the members of the fanbase that clutched pearls so, so tightly about his hiring feel silly now? Or no.)

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I guess tonight is about threes: third episode of the season, third hosting stint by Gillis. And third appearance overall tonight by musical guest Rosalía. She first appeared on SNL as a guest performer alongside Bad Bunny in 2021, then returned a year later as the featured musical guest when Zoë Kravitz hosted.

Away we go!

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”