Bowen Yang's Final 'SNL' Sketch Is an Instant Classic

The year is 1994. SNL is ending its 19th season with a rendition of So Long, Farewell, with many of them dressed as their more popular recurring characters. It ended the season and also served as a send-off to Phil Hartman, one of the most legendary cast members in the show’s history. The last moment featured him snuggling up with Chris Farley and belting the final tune. I remember seeing this sketch as a kid, aware of the added context (both men would be dead within four years) and thinking about how much of a classic it was.

It wasn’t just the morbid tragedies that surrounded it. That aspect was more of an extra detail that soured an otherwise tender moment. While their death is indelibly tied to the sketch, it is not what gives it classification as an all-timer. This bit carries on because Hartman was beloved and got to leave the show on his own terms, surrounded by people he cared for and who cared for him. It had a whole different energy, and we saw something very similar surrounding Bowen Yang this weekend.

Yang’s departure was announced on Friday and was truly shocking. Plenty of people have left halfway through the season before, but people thought Yang would leave at the beginning of the season. The fact that he stuck around made it seem like he would at least last the year. That was not the case. Instead, he took his final bow on Saturday night, riding the highs of one of the best episodes of the season. He ended his tenure spraying Kenan with eggnog and singing with Ariana Grande. Pretty perfect.

The sketch found Yang playing a Delta lounge employee who serves eggnog and is working their last shift. The meta-nature of things got the correct response from the crowd, who dropped plenty of “awwwws.” It becomes clear pretty quickly that Yang is emotional, and the sketch is that much better for it. There is also a hefty dose of theater-kid energy that really makes it work. They’re certainly performing for the crowd, but this moment is about the people on the stage, and that gives it a kind of magic.

It’s also very funny. There are several references to Yang’s time on the show, which are so thinly veiled that it pushes past cringey and self-congratulatory into hilarious and heartfelt. Bowen can’t seem to get the eggnog machine to work correctly, to the point that I can’t tell if he sprayed Kenan by accident or not (though Yang’s reaction suggests the former to be true). Additionally, the joke that Kenan’s character is someone who is forced to meet his biological son, and then it turns out he is playing himself, got me real good.

Grande and Yang are also incredible here. They aren’t playing up the jokes; they’re playing up the emotion. Grande walks over to Yang at one point, and his reaction makes it look like it wasn’t planned. Their very real friendship gives the whole thing a profound boost and makes it feel like something that will be in clip shows for years to come. It immediately cemented itself as a part of the show’s storied history, and it included an appearance by Cher, just to make it even more magical.

Y’all, I cried for so much of this sketch. It was really fantastic. I remember being part of a review show in my freshman year of high school. My school had significantly cut the theater budget, and our musical director had had a nervous breakdown, so we weren’t able to do a proper Spring musical. It was a lot. But we ended up putting on a show regardless, with black boxes and black clothes, and it was mostly about us and what it took to put a show on. It was cathartic and led to lots of tears on stage, especially when we did a performance for the rest of the school. A lot of our classmates didn’t understand what we were doing, but we didn’t care.

Obviously, this sketch got a much more positive reaction than my fellow theater kids and I. Still, the sentiment was the same. It was about having a moment with these people that you’ve worked so hard with. It’s about soaking in those last moments, making magic together. You want to see Farley nuzzling up to Hartman. You want to see Bowen say “thank you, Ariana,” under his breath while fighting back tears. It is a special kind of magic that is hard to reproduce, and when you see it, you can feel it, too. Best of luck, Bowen. Thanks for sharing with us.