Kate McKinnon bids emotional goodbye to SNL by reprising one of her all-time best characters
Kate McKinnon’s character Colleen Rafferty bids farewell to Earth as she boards an alien spaceship. The sketch marked McKinnon’s final SNL episode. (YouTube/Saturday Night Live)
After a decade on Saturday Night Live (SNL), Kate McKinnon bid farewell to fans and the Earth during a hilarious interstellar sketch.
McKinnon reprised her role as Miss Colleen Rafferty – a tough, cigarette-puffing, down-to-earth woman who has had numerous alien encounters. Rafferty pops up after each time she’s abducted, but it always turns out that she’s had a less than optimal experience.
In the cold open for the season 47 finale, Rafferty shared stories of her rough encounters with the Third Kind opposite fellow abductees played by Cecily Strong and this week’s host, Natasha Lyonne.
Both Strong and Lyonne described how they were “gently lifted” onto a spacecraft where they met “aliens made of pure energy, almost like angels”.
But Rafferty, sitting spread-legged alongside the other abductees, had a much different experience.
“I wasn’t so much gently lifted as I was yanked skyward by some sort of claw machine device,” Rafferty recalled. “And mind you, I’m popping a squat on the median at the time so I slide right out of my slacks, and I’m being rocketed up to the ship with my coot coot and prune chute.”
She told the National Security Agency agents (played by Aidy Bryant and Mikey Day) at the Pentagon that she was then “dumped on board the bottom of the ship” when she saw her “old pals”, the “little grey aliens with the big dumb eyes”.
Rafferty quipped that it then hit her: “Colleen, this might be the most stable relationship you ever had.”
The other abductees said the aliens showed them the “five elemental forces that knit the fabric of reality together” and how there’s an “universal language that bonds the universe together”, which could be described as “love”.
Rafferty said it was a little “different down in third class” as the grey aliens were “standing in line waiting to bat my knockers around” and her “beast” was there in “full view” as her “skivvies” were “real loose”.
The sketch took an emotional turn after the agents revealed that the aliens had been in contact with the US government. According to the agents, the aliens offered to let the government use some of their technology if one of the abductees agreed to go with them permanently.
“Well, I can read the room. It’s me right?” Rafferty exclaimed. “Sure, why not? I always kind of felt like an alien on this planet anyway.”
Kate McKinnon got visibly emotional as her character boarded the spaceship and turned around declaring, “Earth, I love you.”
“Thanks for letting me stay awhile,” she said, getting teary-eyed. “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night.”
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) May 22, 2022
The out of this world sketch was a fitting sendoff to McKinnon as it was her final episode as an SNL cast member. McKinnon has been on the show since 2012, and she’s been nominated for nine Emmys during her SNL stint, winning twice.
The beloved comedian has made a name for herself for her dead-on impressions including Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elizabeth Warren and Kellyanne Conway – just to name a few.
According to EW, Kate McKinnon has welcomed fans to the show 75 times by uttering SNL’s iconic opening line – the second most of any cast member, just behind Darrell Hammond. She also holds the title as the longest-tenured female cast member in the history of SNL.
