"Zoom in on Finn Wolfhard's chin hair. It's barely there, but it's there. The Stranger Things actor is ready to reintroduce himself as an adult now that the show's over. "I gotta tell you, it feels so amazing that 400 million peoplegot to watch me go through puberty," he says in the monologue. It makes sense, then, for his first time hosting Saturday Night Live to be a way to establish himself outside of being Mike Wheeler."
"When his co-stars Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin joined him at the end of the monologue, you could sense Wolfhard feeling more at ease. That's not to say that he didn't do well across characters; in addition to reprising Mike Wheeler (well, sort of) in a Stranger Things pre-taped sketch, he played horny Harry Potter, an annoyed space emperor, and a too-confident child Twitch streamer. But it felt like there was something holding him back from fully taking the reins as host."
"This was also the first episode since Bowen Yang left. In my last recap, I mentioned feeling like he was poised to fill the void left by departed cast members - well, I was pretty wrong about that. I miss him! But despite the absence, the episode was pretty strong. The cold open kicked things off by cycling through the brutality of Trump's cabinet members, like Colin Jost's fratty, impish Pete Hegseth and Ashley Padilla's Kristi Noem recruiting ICE agents."
Finn Wolfhard's chin hair is barely visible as he reintroduces himself as an adult after Stranger Things ended. He quips that 400 million peoplegot to watch him go through puberty during his monologue. Hosting Saturday Night Live functions as an attempt to establish a career outside of Mike Wheeler. Wolfhard has pursued comedy and demonstrated comic instincts, including a notable spit take. He appeared somewhat nervous but relaxed when co-stars joined him. He performed several varied characters yet occasionally seemed restrained. The episode was the first since Bowen Yang's departure and opened strongly with a cold open lampooning Trump's cabinet.
Read at Vulture
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