Saturday Night Live Season 51 Blows Up Its Cast Like Never Before

Fan favorites are out, surprise names are in, and the late-night institution looks almost unrecognizable heading into its next run.

SNL just hit 50, which in SNL years means: time to shuffle the deck again. The show does this every decade or so, but this is a pretty big reset — new faces coming in, some long-timers heading out, and a couple of notable writers leaving the room. Season 51 kicks off October 4, 2025, and there may still be more moves before then. Here is who is in, who is out, and the inside baseball you will probably be arguing about in your group chat.

Meet the new cast

• Tommy Brennan — Minnesota stand-up with a Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon set in June that clearly did its job. He is not new to sketch either: he did improv at The Second City in Chicago before pivoting to stand-up. On Instagram, he called the hiring "doesn't feel real, but we'll see you guys on Saturdays!" Curious to see how a club-honed voice plugs into SNL chaos.
• Jeremy Culhane — Upright Citizens Brigade alum with a Dropout TV resume (the artist formerly known as CollegeHumor). He has popped up in scripted stuff like The Sex Lives of College Girls and American Vandal. Years of improv (starting in high school and running through college) usually translates well on this show, so high upside here.
• Ben Marshall — One-third of Please Don't Destroy, the in-house trio behind those office-visit digital shorts with the host. The group as an on-air unit is gone at SNL, and Marshall is stepping out solo as a featured player. He has acting credits beyond the trio’s movie Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, including Peacock’s Poker Face. As for the other PDD guys: Martin Herlihy stays on staff as a writer, and John Higgins is leaving to focus on acting. The trio itself is still a thing, just not as an SNL segment.
• Kam Patterson — Orlando comic known for his stand-up on the Kill Tony podcast. He started hitting open mics in 2021 and opened for Jason Banks in 2022. He is making his film debut in Netflix’s 72 Hours alongside Kevin Hart, Zach Cherry, Ben Marshall, and SNL cast member Marcello Hernandez. Patterson is openly conservative-leaning, which is not exactly SNL’s default vibe. That is going to be divisive by design and could pull in viewers who long ago wrote the show off as too "woke."
• Veronika Slowikowska — Ontario-born actor-comedian with legit credits: What We Do in the Shadows, Poker Face, Murdoch Mysteries, Degrassi: Next Class, and Tires. A 2019 alum of the CBC Actors Conservatory (Canadian Film Centre), she won a Canadian Screen Award in 2025 for starring in Prime Video’s teen comedy Davey and Jonesie’s Locker. She has sketch reps from Baroness Von Sketch Show and a massive social footprint — 1 million Instagram followers — thanks to viral bits she makes with her roommate Kyle Chase. On Instagram, she called SNL her "dream come true."

Who is leaving the stage

Heidi Gardner

After eight seasons, Heidi Gardner is out — which is a surprise given how central she has been. She built a handful of SNL staples (teen critic Bailey Gismert; Angel, the boxer’s girlfriend from every boxing movie), anchored a ton of pre-tapes, and could flip between straight-woman duty and gleefully ditzy with ease. Recently she has been popping up in shows like You and Shrinking, so the TV lane is already open.

Michael Longfellow

"I will not be returning for a fourth season at SNL. Wish I was, but so it goes. It was the best three years of my life so far. Nothing but gratitude for the experience and everyone there."

Longfellow joined three seasons ago, got bumped to repertory status in Season 50, and was getting enough reps that some people pegged him as a potential Weekend Update successor. He often played support but stacked multiple sketches per episode, and he just had a standout bit as Dexter in Goth Kid on Vacation with Jack Black.

Devon Walker

"me and baby broke up."
The show was sometimes "really cool" and other times "toxic as hell." "It’s time for me to do something different."

Walker joined in 2022 and exits after three seasons. He is known for impressions like Michael Strahan. On Instagram he tried to frame the move as progress for himself, but he also did not sugarcoat the tougher parts of the job. That honesty turned heads.

Emil Wakim

A "gut punch of a call to get," but he is "grateful" for the time there.

Wakim arrived last season as a featured player. A lot of his material on the show drew from his Middle Eastern background, and he delivered a memorable Weekend Update monologue about feeling guilty living in America — while, yes, being American.

Writers room exits (and some real inside baseball)

Two notable departures from behind the scenes:

Rosebud Baker spent the last three years writing for Weekend Update, which is basically a weekly sprint to turn bad news into jokes.

"Training yourself to be a sociopath or psychopath because you just read these horrible, horrific headlines and you’re like 'what’s funny, hilarious about this?'"

Celeste Yim, SNL’s first non-binary writer, is also leaving. They were at the show for five years and were promoted to writing supervisor in Season 48. In Peacock’s docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Yim talked about the grind — including the nights spent sleeping at the office — that comes with the job.

So what does this version of SNL look like?

The Please Don't Destroy change is a big swing: Ben Marshall moves onscreen, Martin Herlihy keeps writing, and John Higgins chases acting elsewhere. That leaves a hole in the viral pre-tape lane the trio owned, at least until the show defines a new rhythm.

Meanwhile, Kam Patterson is the kind of hire that will light up comment sections, Jeremy Culhane brings battle-tested improv instincts, Tommy Brennan has the 'just did Fallon' momentum, and Veronika Slowikowska arrives with both sketch chops and a built-in audience.

SNL Season 51 premieres October 4, 2025. It is unclear if this is the final roster or if more changes are coming before opening night — and with this show, it is always safer to assume there is one more twist coming.