'Saturday Night Live' Scores Biggest Premiere in 22 Years With Season 42 Debut

'Saturday Night Live' just clocked its biggest season premiere in 22 years with the Margot Robbie-hosted season 42 debut.

October 6, 2016

Not Available Lead — Image via Complex Original

Saturday Night Live came out swinging with its 42nd season premiere, featuring some of Alec Baldwin's best work in years as GOP nominee Donald Trump and a Hillary Clinton-approved performance from Kate McKinnon as the Democratic nominee. Even Larry David dropped in on the episode, which was hosted by Margot Robbie and also included a pair of performances from The Weeknd. This proved a winning formula, as Deadline has now declared the episode the most-watched SNL premiere in 22 years.

Almost 12 million humans peeped the SNL debut, with the broadcast's same day haul of 8.297 million viewers leaping to 11.788 million when accounting for three days of on-demand viewings. That's enough to give SNLits biggest premiere since Sept. 24, 1994, i.e. the year classics like Illmatic and Dookie dropped. The host that fateful evening? The god Steve Martin, to the delight of 12.201 million people.

Clinton herself was also quite the fan of this year's premiere, which opened with an SNL-ified version of the presidential debate. "I'll tell you when Kate McKinnon came out with the walker, I thought I was going to fall off my chair," Clinton toldExtra Wednesday. "She makes me laugh anyway, she is so funny just naturally. Oh, my gosh, she was amazing. I wish I could do the jumps, the splits, the somersault."

This week's episode will presumably include more Baldwin v McKinnon action, as well as (hopefully!) some Mary Poppins Return teases from host Lin-Manuel Miranda. The Hamilton creator and recent Complex cover star will be joined by musical guests Twenty One Pilots.