Saturday Night Live opened its Halloween broadcast on Saturday, October 31, 2026 with a trick inside the treat. Tom Hanks slipped again into the pumpkin-print suit of David S. Pumpkins, the cult character introduced a decade ago. The reunion lasted barely a beat before James Austin Johnson, playing President Donald Trump, barged into the cold open, claimed center stage and steered the sketch toward election talk and self-referential bravado. The collision of nostalgia and political parody framed a night in which the show leaned on a cherished bit to comment on present anxieties.
Set on a theme-park ride called Tombs of Doom, the scene began with stock frights before Hanks materialised alongside his skeleton sidekicks, Mikey Day and returning original co-creator Bobby Moynihan. Johnson’s Trump promptly froze the fun, riffing that he and Pumpkins “both appeared in 2016” and are “very loud, very orange and very, frankly, annoying,” then pivoting to midterm jitters, even name-checking the Texas Senate race. The show’s official account amplified the moment in a late-night post that teased the clip as “history’s most heinous, homicidal haunts,” a wry wink at the sketch’s haunted-ride conceit. The bit wrapped with Trump ushering former press secretary Katie Zacharia into the famous sign-off, only for her to flub the line to comic effect.
Pumpkins’ reappearance underscored how Studio 8H mines its own lore when the culture demands both comfort and commentary. Hanks first debuted the character in October 2016, returned in 2022, and now again for the 2026 Halloween episode, each time serving as a metronome for the season’s mood. With midterm voting days away, the writers placed a beloved oddball beside a presidential impersonation that has become a fixture of the show’s current era, inviting laughter at the recognition and the anxiety. The gambit leaned on memory, and trusted viewers to catch the satire beneath the spectacle. The ride may have been interrupted, but the punchline landed in the familiar rhythm that still closes American television’s longest-running sketch show.
0 Comments