The season finale of Saturday Night Live’s 51st season kicks off in the Oval Office. President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson), fresh from a three-day diplomatic visit to China, commiserates with his vice-president, JD Vance (Jeremy Culhane). Trump apologizes for not taking Vance along with him to China, explaining that “I didn’t want to.”

After giving Vance the boot, Trump takes a nap (using a gold bar gifted to him by Sweden as a pillow), during which he’s visited by the ghost of his good friend Jeffrey Epstein (tonight’s host, Will Ferrell). Epstein has been keeping busy in hell playing mahjong with Stalin and John Wayne Gacy, as well as writing for the recent Netflix Roast of Kevin Hart (this dig clearly comes from SNL head writer Michael Che, who took to social media earlier this week to criticize the roast for hiring all-white writers and giving hosting duties to Shane Gillis).

Epstein shows Trump visions of the future: Kristi Noem (Ashley Padilla) is hawking vacuum cleaners on infomercials (“The best way to clean up that mess your dog made, besides a gun … it can even handle balloon scraps left over from when your husband’s giant balloon breasts popped”), while Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) and Kash Patel (Aziz Ansari) are hosting a booze-soaked podcast following the end of the Iran war (“We came in second”).

Epstein reminds the president that no matter how things go in the future, people will always think of him when they think of Trump. The two then sing a rendition of Just the Two of Us, before almost kissing. As Epstein points out, this Trump presidency has been so insane that the revelation that the head of the DHS’s spouse is a cross-dresser was only a one-week story, so there’s no way SNL could have fit all this season’s headlines into one cold open. Still, this was a game effort, with Ferrell being the show’s best Epstein yet.

In the cleverest opening the show has done in ages, the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer and Ferrell doppelganger Chad Smith attempts to hijack the show after assaulting Ferrell backstage. The real Ferrell comes out and kicks him off stage before taking questions from the audience, where the night’s musical guest, Sir Paul McCartney, is sitting front and center. McCartney confuses Ferrell for Smith, telling him to “get your ass behind the drums where you belong”.

Ferrell then plays a doctor informing a patient (Mikey Day) and his wife ( Padilla) that his appendix surgery went well, except for one little mistake: “Some wires got crossed and I accidentally removed your penis.” Things get worse when he reveals that he also removed one of the man’s testicles. There’s not much to this beyond the premise, and it’s further dragged down by Day’s constant breaking.

A new Midnight Matinee short from Dan Bulla is a musical spin on the Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Ferrell stars as a hobbit who volunteers for a suicide mission to save his band of brothers, only to betray them by attempting to switch sides and join forces with the invading orc army. His plan doesn’t work out, as he’s quickly beheaded, but not before telling the orcs where to find the women and children. These Bulla segments have been hit or miss all season, with very little to distinguish them from other pre-filmed shorts.

A group of high school drama students nervously await the cast list for the spring musical. Ferrell is their intimidating teacher/director, Mr Koeing – a character he played in a cut for time sketch from his last hosting gig in 2019 – who enjoys playing mind games with his fragile pupils. Molly Shannon shows up as a bossy, saucy choir teacher with a special, hands-on technique for getting her male students to hit the high notes. Shannon and Ferrell together again is a sight for sore eyes.

Then, on Weekend Update, Jost and Che sign off for the season with their annual joke swap, where they each blind-read jokes written by the other. As per usual, Che saddles Jost with a bunch of offensively racist material, but this time Jost gets the upper hand by hitting Che with a one-two combo about his dating a little boy and defending The King of Pop (“Michael Jackson did nothing wrong – he was right to molest all those kids!”), supposedly to Jackson family members in the audience. At the last moment, it looks like Che is going to take things further than ever before by having a real barber come out and shave Jost’s “award-winning” head of hair, but they relent at the last second. Too bad too, because if they had gone through with it, it would have made for one of the all-time great Update moments.

Day and Padilla once again play a couple, this time visiting an auto repair shop. There for a simple oil change, their wacky mechanics (Ferrell, McCartney, Marcello Hernández) suggest rebuilding the entire car, though its impossible to make heads or tails of what they’re saying. The two sides finally agree on a price, when the mechanics tell the husband he can “pay in ass”. The sketch ends on a surprisingly dark note, with the trio about to have their way with him.

The show wraps up with a sketch about a young woman (Veronika Slowikowska) introducing her new beau (Andrew Dismukes) to her family. Things start off well enough, until Ferrell’s aloof dad turns around, revealing his entire back-half, including leather bra and panties, on full display. Mom and little brother are likewise half-clad. The initial sight gag earns a big guffaw, but the rest of it is instantly forgettable.

It’s a little disappointing that SNL didn’t give Ferrell more one-on-one screentime with a couple of cast members – namely Sherman and Padilla – whose eccentric comic stylings are often reminiscent of his own. Still, his reliably strong hosting, the great prank that opened the show, a handful of delightful cameos and two killer performances from McCartney combine to make this an above-average close to an above-average season. The new cast is really coming into their own, so it will be interesting to see what Saturday Night Live’s 52nd season will look like.