Saturday Night Live came back with a bang with West Side Story star Ariana DeBose hosting. Also, since this was the first SNL since the majority of Earth’s population saw Spider-Man: No Way Home, the show’s cold open hilariously had James Austin Johnson’s Joe Biden address the nation.
The message from the president starts off by addressing the “cold dark winter” and the spread of the omicron variant which has canceled many holidays, weddings, and “wildfires that started out as gender reveal parties”. This new variant has had many people in a panic state, but Johnson’s Biden has a simple and hilarious solution. “Stop seeing Spider-Man!” The audience got a major kick out of this absurd advice and Johnson’s Biden goes on to say, “Think about it. When did Spider-Man come out, December 17th. When did every single person get Omicron? The week after December 17th. Stop seeing Spider-Man.”
Biden then takes questions regarding his statement and the sketch only gets more absurd from there when a reporter played by SNL’s Bowen Yang asks, “Do you think all COVID will end if people stop going to the movies?” This is when Biden clarifies that, “I didn’t say ‘don’t go to the movies.’ I said ‘stop seeing Spider-Man. See anything else. I saw the first half-hour of House of Gucci. That’s more than enough movie for anyone.” Biden then goes into the data behind his war on Spider-Man claiming that, “Everyone in America has seen Spider-Man eight times. Everyone in America also has COVID.”
However, then the real reason why Biden is urging everyone not to see Spider-Man comes out as another reporter played by SNL’s Ego Nwodim asks the president if he had seen the movie yet. Biden hilariously replies, “I couldn’t get tickets, and I’m on Stubs A-List. Jill and I tried to go last night, but they only had one seat left in the front row. What was I supposed to do? Make Jill see Encanto alone while I sit two inches from the screen like this.” Biden then reenacts every American’s struggle to watch Spider-Man in the front row while they try not to melt their eyeballs.
Biden then starts blaming every problem on Spider-Man. Inflation, it’s all the web-head’s fault. Russian troops surrounding the Ukraine border, that’s a job for the Wall-Crawler, and then he compared Spider-Man’s villains to his colleagues Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. The only difference is,“ if one of Spider-Man’s villains saw Kyrsten Sinema they’d be like, ‘Hey, honey, that outfit is a little much.’”
The sketch finishes with one final question by a reporter played by Andrew Dismukes about the multiverse. “Do you think that elsewhere in the multiverse, there’s a version of you that wants people to see Spider-Man?” A relieved Biden exclaims, “Finally a good question. I actually thought about this a lot.” The skit only gets more off the rails as Biden goes on a very entertaining tangent about him knowing about 3 different versions of himself. His rant about the multiverse goes on for a solid two minutes and then another Joe Biden, played by Pete Davidson, comes out from the multiverse saying that he is from the “real universe.” The universe we all live in is revealed to be a sick joke because the Chicago Cubs won the world series in 2016, but it has gone too far and our universe is about to explode as result. Davidson's Biden invites everyone back to the “real world.” and the sketch ends.
In classic SNL fashion, they always know how to make light of a dark and stressful time. Seeing the President of the United States beg everyone not to see Spider-Man seemingly due to the virus is a very funny sight to behold. It only gets better when you realize he is just saying this because he has not seen Spider-Man yet. It is both so absurd and oddly in line with the president's other real messages throughout this strange time. Johnson’s accurate, yet heightened version of the president only makes the skit that much more enjoyable and hearing him repeatably say "stop seeing Spider-Man" is endlessly smile-inducing.
The comical moral of the story is to go see another movie like Scream or West Side Story, so Biden can finally see his old pal Spider-Man. You can watch the full sketch down below: