In one of Saturday Night Live’s wildest sketches in recent memory, Ariana Grande played the role of Kevin McCallister in a violent reimagining of Home Alone.
In the episode of SNL that Grande hosted on Saturday (Dec. 20), Grande plays McCallister at the end of Home Alone when his mother (played by Ashley Padilla) arrives at home, worried about her son’s wellbeing.
In the original film, Kevin rigged the house with hilarious kid-friendly traps to stop two would-be house robbers from stealing their valuables and potentially harming him.
Grande replayed this heartwarming reunion with a sinister twist: the household traps are still activated, and they’re set to kill instead of injure any intruders. When the rest of his family arrives (with various members played by Mikey Day, Colin Jost, and Bowen Yang), they accidentally activate the traps, leading to some wild deaths that wouldn’t be out of place in a Saw movie.
From a door-activated flamethrower and a phone-activated saw, to a paint can that turns a fan into a razor-sharp death machine, the traps horrify Kevin's mother—until she realizes that she’s been seeing a hallucination of what could have potentially happened, brought on by the fact that she hasn’t slept for three days in her efforts to get back to her child.
It ends with a helpful neighbor hitting her in the face with a snow shovel and leaving the scene in a panic.
In the same SNL episode, fan-favorite actor Yang took his final bow in an emotional closing skit with Grande and Cher. In it, Yang played a retiring Delta Air Lines club attendant who served eggnog to passengers on his last shift. During the bit, Yang spoke about his job as an attendant with words that could have also explained how he felt about being a part of SNL.
“I just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here, and I just wanted to enjoy it for a little bit longer, especially the people. I’ve loved every single person who works here because they’ve done so much for me, especially my boss,” he said.
Yang’s emotions began to flow as he sang “Please Come Home For Christmas” to close the skit.