10 Times Saturday Night Live Perfectly Roasted Star Wars

If a parody is done right, most people don’t mind being in on the joke. Theate night sketch institution predates George Lucas’s first Star Wars movie by two years — SNL premiered in 1975, Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977. Therefore the pop culture phenomenon has had plenty of time over the past 50 years to drop in on the famous galaxy far, far away and leave us laughing. And when actual Star Wars icons are in on the joke? All the better. Here are Saturday Night Live’s top ten Star Wars sketches.

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10) “Casual Friday on the Death Star” – 2001

As funny a concept as a dressed-down Vader is, there’s clearly a reason this sketch was cut for time back in 2001. Host Charlie Sheen and Chris Kattan trade their imperial ranks for the fashion police. The reveal of Vader dressed down in a Hawaiian short and shorts is funny at first, not even Tina Fey’s smack-talking Princess Leia can salvage the sketch, which includes at outdated homophobic joke. Also working against the scene is the lack of Star Wars knowledge, that helps the other entries on this list soar and be enjoyed by die-hard fans and casual viewers alike.

9) “Star Wars Toy Commercial” – 2015

The critique of covetous and overly possessive adult Star Wars fans is fair, however this sketch also burns through its fuel a bit too quickly. Yes, it’s funny to watch the adult fans interrupt the younger fan’s play and what the toys were ostensibly intended for, however the sketch doesn’t build to a satisfying, hilarious twist at its conclusion. It ultimately comes off as more mean-spirited than a playful roast that can have fans of the franchise laughing along with them.

8) “Weekend Update: Jimmy Fallon on the New Star Wars Movie” – 1999

In what was a recurring bit for Fallon, he playfully gives the top hits of the day “Every Morning” by Sugar Ray, “My Name is” by Eminem, and “Livin’ La Vida Loca” the Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace. The lyrics are catchy and the songs now serve as a potent piece of late 90s nostalgia, capturing the anticipation for the first Star Wars movie in over a decade. Since the film hadn’t been released yet, it’s hard to fault Fallon for lacking any real parody of the The Phantom Menace, but perhaps a little more color commentary could have brought the house down, or at least the “Weekend Update” desk.

7) “Monologue: Natalie Portman Answers Questions About Star Wars” – 2006

While Portman’s monologue also doesn’t paint Star Wars fanboys in the most flattering light, it shrewdly and humorously acknowledges the gatekeeping that can happen between fans of different genders. Portman embraces her role of Padmé Amidala with the aplomb, and the fanboy audience plants (Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis) are good-naturedly put in their place. Too bad Chris Parnell’s underage joke aged like milk.

6) “Weekend Update: Baby Yoda” – 2019

SNL alum Kyle Mooney deserves major props for the amount of prosthetics and makeup he donned for this segment on the show. Baby Yoda’s banter with “Weekend Update” is delightful and captures the moment when Grogu burst into the zeitgeist and captured our collective hearts in The Mandalorian. Mooney’s Grogu is seemingly enjoying the perks of fame a rapper typically does, making for a hilarious contrast to the character’s silent and wholesome nature in canon. Particularly funny is his insinuated beef with Baby Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.

5) “Shopping at Home Network: Mark Hamill for Sale” – 1997

This sketch is bonkers in all the best ways. Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan play overzealous tv salespeople who intend to sell Mark Hamill himself to their viewers after running out of the rest of their Star Wars merchandise. The sold-out Jawa ashtray and Chewbacca baseball card are delightfully odd, and Ferrell and Kattan are consummate funnymen, but what really sells the skit is Hamill’s acceptance of his fate as a commodity. Hamill descends into this more and more as the sketch goes on, negotiating with Ferrell and Kattan’s hosts about how much he’s worth and his diet, in a sneakily brilliant commentary on celebrity and consumer culture.

4) “Star Wars: The Force Awakens Teaser” – 2014

As the world eagerly awaited the kickoff of the next Star Wars trilogy, SNL seized the cultural moment and spliced in vignettes of the aging original cast with actual footage from Star Wars Epsiode VII: The Force Awakens teaser. The sketch is imaginative on how it integrates typical “old person behavior” into the Star Wars universe: the Millennium Falcon has a handicapped plate, Luke uses a walker made of lightsabers, and Princess Leia struggles with working Artoo’s tech. In doing so, the skit walks the fine line of playfully roasting the advanced age of some of the franchises’s actors and fans without alienating them.

3) “Undercover Boss: Where Are They Now” – 2020

SNL was admittedly reheating their nachos here, but Driver’s performance as Kylo Ren, the impeccable set and costume design, as well as the new cast members allows for Driver’s second Kylo Ren Undercover Boss sketch to be nearly as delightful as the first. The intern angle works wonderfully, Driver is as intense and awkward as ever, and the regular cast rises to the occasion in what isn’t only a laugh-out-loud Star Wars parody, but also a fun satire of modern workplace culture. Turns out the nachos still taste pretty darn good, even four years later.

2) “Lando’s Summit” – 2018

Only a performer as charming as Donald Glover could not only play a convincing young Lando Calrissian, but reprise the character in a sketch to call out the lack of representation in the franchise…and leave us all laughing. In this skit, Glover’s Lando hosts a summit for all the Black humans in the galaxy, but only four people show up. Glover and the other actors — Kenan Thompson, Chris Redd, and Leslie Jones — lean into the awkwardness and banality of the moment, while also making a salient point about Star Wars‘s casting until that point. It’s stilted and funny and ends on a literal high note with Lando singing an original composition “Making Love in Space.”

1) “Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base” – 2016

“Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base” isn’t only the best Star Wars SNL sketches of all time, it’s one of the show’s strongest ever. Kylo Ren from Star Wars and Undercover Boss belong to different universes of media, however writers and actors in the sketch Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan, both fans themselves, stuck the landing so well that now fans cosplay at Matt the Radar Technician. SNL’s production team also deserves praise for recreating the Starkiller base so well that we could actually believe that Ren had indeed signed up for a reality show from Earth. Lastly, having Driver himself make the sketch an undeniable hit, and gave the Academy Award-nominated actor a chance to flex the comedic chops we almost forgot he had.

The skit’s success is clear. It’s been viewed over 68.3 million times on YouTube, spawned a sequel sketch, and gave us one of the most quotable lines of all time: “A buddy of mine saw Kylo Ren take his shirt off in the shower, and he said that Kylo Ren had an eight-pack. That Kylo Ren was shredded.”