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Saturday Night Live is arguably at its best when it figures out how to make the best use of its guest host’s talents. Frequently, this means playing with their public persona or a role the are best known for, like when Daniel Craig gamely sent up his own James Bond character, or when David Harbour—who at the time was most famous for playing the grumpy Hopper on Stranger Things—transformed Oscar the Grouch into a Joker-esque antihero.
This week, the guest host was Pedro Pascal. Given that he has starred in some of the most talked-about shows of the last decade, including Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, and most recently HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us, it went without saying that at least one sketch would reference his impressive resumé. And it turned out to be one of the best of the night.
“The Last of Us is a hit, proving a video game can become a prestige dystopian drama,” says the ominous opening voiceover of a pre-filmed segment. “This Spring, HBO is doing it again with another iconic game.”
What follows is a gritty, post-apocalyptic reimagining of Nintendo’s popular Mario Kart game franchise, with prestige TV levels of production values, featuring “all your favorite wacky racers, reimagined as complex, dramatic HBO characters.”
These include SNL guest host Pedro Pascal as an embittered, world-weary Mario, who recreates his surrogate father dynamic from The Last of Us when he accepts the mission of protecting a young Princess Peach, played by Chloe Fineman, who is on the run from the villainous final boss Bowser, played by Kenan Thompson.
The cast of this new epic also features Mike Day as a gun-toting Luigi, and in a twist tha would almost certainly have certain corners of gaming fandom complaining about wokeness, Bowen Yang as a bisexual Yoshi, and Marcello Hernández as Toad (who is also bisexual now). Together, they must navigate a ravaged landscape while dodging attacks from sentient fungus… sound familiar?
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
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