It has been one week since Morgan Wallen broke tradition and abruptly left the “Saturday Night Live” stage during the show’s sign off, and the late-night sketch comedy show had some thoughts.
Jack Black returned to Studio 8H to host “SNL” for the fourth time on Saturday, April 5, alongside musical guests Elton John and Brandi Carlile.
The week prior, Mikey Madison made her hosting debut fresh off of her win at the Oscars, while Wallen returned as musical guest for the second time. In a puzzling moment at the end of the show, Wallen left the “SNL” stage early, rather than mingling with Madison and the rest of the cast.
His exit became the punchline of a joke told during the “Weekend Update” segment by co-anchor Colin Jost, while he talked about the economy and the recent stock market plunges.
“Just in the past two days, investors have lost over $6 trillion,” Jost said. “Money is leaving the stock market faster than Morgan Wallen at goodnights.”
Wallen was also referenced earlier in the show during the cold open, which featured a sketch about President Donald Trump’s recent tariffs. These included 10% tariffs placed on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which are located in the Antarctic Ocean and are mostly populated by penguins.
“You know, no country is safe from my tariffs. I even put tariffs on an island that is uninhabited by humans,” cast member James Austin Johnson said in his Trump impression. “It’s called Heard and McDonald Island. Ooh, McDonald Island. I’d love to visit there, right?”
Johnson had some mockup artwork made of “McDonald Island,” which featured a Big Mac wearing a grass skirt on a beach surrounded by chicken nuggets which were drawn up with arms, legs, eyes and a mouth, and palm trees with French fries as fronds.
“I want to go to there,” Johnson said. “Get me to God’s country, right?”
Johnson referred to the Instagram story that Wallen shared after his abrupt exit from the “SNL” stage. In the early hours of Sunday morning following the show, he posted a photo from inside of an airplane on the tarmac and simply wrote, “Get me to God’s country.”
Days later, Morgan even began selling merchandise with the saying on it, including a baseball hat and t-shirt.
Kenan Thompson discussed the incident during a recent interview, expressing his confusion over the event. He told Entertainment Weekly, “I don’t know what goes through people’s minds when they decide to do stuff like that.”
“I don’t know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way,” Thompson added. “You see somebody before you get a chance to say hi or say good job or anything like that, they just dipping.”
Thompson said that he “thought maybe he had to go to the potty or something” and commented that “it’s definitely a spike in the norm.”
“We’re so used to everybody just turning around and high-fiving us, everybody’s saying, ‘Good job, good job, good job,’” Thompson said. “So when there’s a departure from that, it’s like, ‘Hmm, I wonder what that’s about?’”
