Saturday Night Live saw one of the biggest performers in the latest episode, as Matt Damon walked in as the guest, his third time hosting. The penultimate episode of Season 51, had some major highlights. Add Vermont’s own Noah Kahan as musical guest and the whole night had an unmistakably New England warmth to it. Here are some key moments.
The cold open kicked off with Damon back in character as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joining Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth and Aziz Ansari’s Kash Patel for a round of drinks at a Washington D.C. bar. He boasted about ending abortion, getting a high-five from Jost’s Hegseth, and the trio toasted to a future that sounded both absurd and uncomfortably plausible. Lamenting the male loneliness epidemic, Kavanaugh and Hegseth got excited when Patel showed up for last call, the three of them raising glasses to Donald Trump’s upcoming third term.
Major highlights from Matt Damon’s SNL episode
From there, the episode kept its momentum. Damon played a Navy admiral in a Godzilla parody, a charming husband in a mom-themed romantic comedy trailer, and a concerned dad in a cat litter commercial. He also played an awkward teacher trying to win over his class through dancing, and later wore a cowboy hat and fake mustache as a fast-talking auctioneer in a sketch about a crumbling marriage between two auctioneers.
His monologue was short and direct: a personal Mother’s Day message that managed to be both funny and genuinely sweet, while also slipping in a mention of his upcoming film The Odyssey. Since the next day was Mother’s Day, SNL had planned to fly out the cast members’ moms, but Damon explained that Spirit Airlines had shut down, getting one of the bigger laughs of the night.
Matt Damon first hosted SNL in 2002, then returned in 2018 for a celebrated Christmas episode. His 2018 gig earned him an Emmy nomination. He has made several cameo appearances over the years as well, including a 2024 appearance during Kristen Wiig’s Five-Timers Club induction.
The May 9 episode also served as a promotional platform for his upcoming role as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey, set for release on July 17, alongside Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland. It was a refreshing episode, to say the least, and it was both exciting and interesting to see Matt Damon crack us up, before he takes on the role of one of the biggest characters in Greek mythology with The Odyssey.
Edited by Nibir Konwar