It’s Saturday Night Live cast shake-up season, with some big moves happening ahead of Season 52. We already know that star Chloe Fineman is on her way out after seven seasons, while newcomer Kam Patterson is sticking around.
“Weekend Update” anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che have not announced their plans yet, but there have been no indications that they plan to step aside. Che may constantly joke he’s leaving the gig, but this summer would make the 12th year in a row he’s chosen to return.
As the duo potentially head into their 13th season together, they’re five years past breaking the record for longest-running “Update” anchors. They took that title from Seth Meyers with his eight years behind the desk, and Meyers himself took it from Tina Fey after her six-year run.
The trend at “Update” mirrors the trend on the rest of the show: Popular cast members stick around longer and longer. It was once standard for cast members to stay for seven or eight seasons max before heading off into a sitcom or movie career. But that was before Kate McKinnon left after nearly 11 seasons and Cecily Strong stuck around for a full 11. Kenan Thompson keeps setting records with 23 seasons and counting.
While few fans want Thompson to leave, the trend isn’t great for the show. Longer tenures balloon up the cast and put newcomers at a disadvantage. It leads to an unnatural abundance of classroom and movie audition sketches, all seemingly designed less for comedy’s sake and more to ensure that every cast member gets a few seconds of screentime. Most of the show’s best seasons were when the cast was below 15 members, but it hasn’t been that small in over a decade. (Season 51 had 18.)
The show needs a constant turnover of major players to keep itself fresh, which is why it’s time for Colin Jost and Michael Che to hang up their hats. It’s been a lovely 12 seasons so far, but it’s hard not to feel like the party for these two is winding down.
And the moment it became clear Jost and Che’s schtick was getting old came during their Christmas 2025 Joke Swap.
The two have a bi-annual tradition of making each other read jokes on air that the other has never seen before. Che consistently comes out on top in these, which was fun at first because Jost (with his self-admitted “punchable face”) sort of needed to be taken down a peg to win the audience over.
But by 2025 the jokes about Jost being racist or perverted felt a little played out. After trashing on Jost while Che remains unscathed became the established norm, “Update” needed to shake up the formula.
With that in mind, the big twist for this joke swap was that Che had lied to Jost beforehand, telling his co-anchor that they weren’t doing the bit this year. This led to a joke swap segment that wasn’t really a joke swap at all. It was purely Jost being put through the wringer, while Che sat to the side completely at ease.
In the muted laughter as Che announced the premise, you can actually hear the audience’s disappointment.
The joke swap that closed out Season 51 was an improvement, but it failed to solve the growing problem with these segments: It’s too predictable to have Jost always be the last one forced to read off the cue cards. Jost may have once won over skeptical viewers by letting himself be the butt of the joke, but he can only do that for so long before it grows stale. For some viewers, it already is.
It’s easy to see why “Update” keeps returning to the joke swaps. They’re easily the most popular recurring bit Jost and Che do, and their panicked delivery of the lines they’re forced to read keeps going viral. For viewers who don’t watch SNL regularly, it’s always fun to watch clips of Jost and Che breaking on live TV.
But for long-time SNL fans, the constant breaking is losing its appeal. Not only do Jost and Che chuckle and flub their way through every “Update,” but the cast laughing uncontrollably during their sketches has become so common it’s expected. Casual fans may enjoy the clips of the cast breaking as a fun little slip of the mask, but to regular viewers it feels increasingly manufactured.
Breaking is supposed to be a happy little accident that occurs a handful of times a season, not a handful of times a night. As fun as it’s been to watch Cecily Strong’s Jeanine Pirro spit wine in Jost’s face or watch Sarah Sherman seemingly ad-lib another line calling him a perv, after over a decade of these types of stunts it starts to feel lazy.
Making Jost break is no longer enough.
Cecily Strong as Jeanine Pirro, Colin Jost, Michael Che during “Weekend Update” on May 18, 2019.
NBCTo be fair, Colin Jost actually has shaken things up in this latest season of SNL, just not at the “Update” desk.
His recurring portrayal of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is an impressive high-energy performance with barely any breaking at all. Considering his previous political impression had been his lifeless Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 primaries, Jost’s Hegseth has been a revelation, a surprise highlight of season 51. Fans didn’t realize he had this one in him.
Maybe it’d be cruel to have Jost leave so soon after he’s shown us a whole new side of his talents. But it’s important to remember that Tina Fey did not take up her groundbreaking Sarah Palin impression until after she’d left the show. During her actual time as a cast member, Fey stayed largely behind the “Update” desk. That didn’t stop her from being an SNL legend.
Jost leaving “Update” wouldn’t mean the end of his cold open appearances. If anything, it would only make them more of a special event.
Making Jost and Che’s long tenure on “Update” more frustrating is the way we’ve already seen a few natural fits for the desk come and go in the cast.
When apparently false rumors of Michael Longfellow auditioning for “Weekend Update” last summer were going around, fans were excited because he felt like a great guy for the job. He was reminiscent of Seth Meyers, who never quite stood out in regular sketches but thrived the moment he moved to the “Update” desk.
The difference is that Fey left the show after a reasonable number of years and opened up a spot for Meyers, whereas Jost and Che have stayed on indefinitely. Stuck between a sketch-performing role that wasn’t quite working and an unavailable “Update” gig, Longfellow was fired in the summer of 2025. If Fey had chosen to stay on “Update” for 12 years, a similar fate might’ve befallen Meyers.
Admittedly, the 2020s media landscape is far less promising to SNL alums than it was when Fey or even Meyers left. Neither Jost nor Che seem as likely to run their own hit sitcom or host their own late-night talk show. SNL was once a stepping stone for better things, but now the show seems like the best gig many SNL stars will ever get.
Leaving is a bigger deal for Jost since he’s been a writer on SNL since way back in 2005. The guy’s been working at 30 Rockefeller Plaza for nearly half his life. It’s hard to be too mad at him for sticking around.
But change has always been an essential part of SNL, and “Weekend Update” hasn’t changed since the Obama years. Jost has his Pop Culture Jeopardy! gig and his fascinating ferry business with Pete Davidson going for him—not to mention likely never having to worry about money for the rest of his life—while Che will always have his stand-up career.
They will survive without “Update,” and “Update” will thrive with someone new at the helm.
