Former Saturday Night Live cast member Andy Samberg returns to host tonight’s show for the first time since he left the show two years ago. There haven’t been any official announcements about any cast members leaving the show following tonight’s season finale, so don’t expect anything out of the ordinary to happen tonight. Although, now that we think about it, Samberg himself didn’t announce he was leaving until a month after the season finale aired in 2012.
So that just goes to show you never know with SNL. So maybe Bobby Moynihan (fingers crossed) will pack it in after tonight’s episode–although, yeah, that seems unlikely. SNL season finales have always been a time for unexpected memorable moments. Let’s take a look back at some of the most memorable moments from season finales past…
2013: Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Jason Sudeikis all left after the Ben Affleck-hosted season finale. For the final sketch of the evening, they sang a farewell song, “It’s a Lovely Day”–with some help from friends Carrie Brownstein, Steve Young, J. Mascis, Kim Gordon, Aimee Mann, and Michael Penn…
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2012: Kristen Wiig announced that her final show would be the season finale, as hosted by Mick Jagger. She was coming off the unexpected hit of Bridesmaids, so Lorne Michaels made the final sketch of the evening all about Kristen–with a graduation ceremony that had Jagger serenading Kristen with “Ruby Tuesday”…
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2011: This year’s season finale with host Justin Timberlake and musical guest Lady Gaga was the highest-rated episode of the series in 11 years. JT & Lonely Island unveiled their third music video together– and though “Dick in a Box” and “Motherlover” are infinitely more popular, “3-Way (The Golden Rule)” is pretty damn good, too…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi7gwX7rjOw]
2009: Will Ferrell returns as host for a second time since leaving the show in 2002, and sings the Billy Joel hit “Goodnight Saigon” with the cast. This was the official send-off for Amy Poehler, who left the show in December, 2008–but still didn’t receive any sort of official goodbye at that time…
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1994: For the late Phil Hartman’s final episode, he and Chris Farley sang a touching duet of The Sound of Music classic “So Long, Farewell.” Unfortunately there’s no video evidence of this online, so here’s the audio portion with a NewsRadio montage for some reason–which is just as sad…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qF43Fxs-vU]
