When Kate McKinnon departed the Saturday Evening Dwell stage in Could 2022, together with a slew of others together with Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant, the clock instantly started counting right down to her return. Davidson had the respect of being the primary amongst that departing cohort to host, earlier this season, however McKinnon bought her likelihood final evening, closing out the yr with SNL’s annual Christmas episode. As she found, it’s one factor to steal the scene and fairly one other to steer the present.

“I’ve at all times felt extra comfy in a bizarre costume,” she admitted in her opening monologue, referring to the numerous oddball personalities she performed on SNL. Since leaving, she jokingly confessed, she’s been struggling to determine who she is aside from these roles, quipping, “I’ve been attempting to assemble a human character.” (Her spin as Bizarre Barbie within the blockbuster Barbie movie maybe sophisticated that effort.) Certainly, McKinnon’s flip—properly earned after 11 seasons that made her one of many present’s longest-running feminine forged members, and simply certainly one of its hottest—revealed the disparity between the highlight of internet hosting and the camouflage of ensemble comedy. McKinnon didn’t appear fully comfy breaking away from the unity of the forged to assertively declare the viewers’s consideration. It made for an evening that was much less a victory lap than a reminder of the delights of collaborative dwell efficiency.

Maybe to melt the duty of internet hosting, the SNL alums Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig joined McKinnon on the finish of her monologue to sing a model of “I’ll Be Residence for Christmas,” its lyrics altered to specific the enjoyment of coming again to 30 Rock. But, reasonably than confine their shock look to that sentimental second, they returned twice extra: for the filmed music video “Tampon Farm,” and the evening’s standout scene, “ABBA Christmas.” The duo’s ongoing presence diverted consideration away from McKinnon and at one level nearly stole the present.

On “Tampon Farm,” an Indigo Ladies–esque tackle a bunch of ladies who develop and harvest tampons, McKinnon adroitly took on the function of the sexually charged lead singer and detailed the varied ladies of the titular farm, which included Rudolph, Wiig, and the previous SNL author and comic Paula Pell. But it surely was on “ABBA Christmas,” a pretend advert for the Swedish supergroup’s Christmas album, the place the goofy mayhem that Rudolph and Wiig are so adept at instigating reached pitch perfection. Throughout one monitor teaser, the foursome depicting ABBA (McKinnon, Rudolph, Wiig, and Bowen Yang) broke into pairs and parodied the “standing shut, dealing with totally different instructions” photographs stitched all through the band’s music movies. Whereas McKinnon and Yang held tight to their placement, Rudolph and Wiig pushed the vanity additional, till at one level their mouths smushed collectively as they sang. That selection made them break and in flip almost cracked the forged member James Austin Johnson because the skilled announcer. It was a revelrous second, and one McKinnon couldn’t match by way of spontaneity or power.

Wiig notably didn’t seem within the evening’s one nod to McKinnon’s catalog of recurring characters, “Whiskers R We,” despite the fact that she’d completed so years in the past. Within the bit, McKinnon performs Barbara DeDrew, an worker at an area cat-adoption company who movies its promo spots with winking sexual overtones, and is repeatedly joined by a rotating co-host. Final evening, the musical visitor, Billie Eilish, portrayed DeDrew’s new intern (and doable daughter) Pawbry Hepburn, delivering showstopper strains like “A cat is a canine that’s a bitch.” The 2 collectively exuded a full of life heat, harking back to Eilish’s time internet hosting SNL’s Christmas episode two years in the past, when she partnered a few instances with McKinnon.

Though internet hosting would possibly’ve appeared a perfect alternative to focus on McKinnon’s trademark weirdness, it actually solely appeared in a broadcast-news spoof from the North Pole, the place a pod of killer whales has damaged by the ice and eaten a bunch of elves. Enjoying a survivor of the assault, McKinnon saved bobbing out and in of the dwell shot to query Santa’s response to the tragedy. Her wacky conspiratorial interruptions, delivered in a thick Scottish accent, injected the acquainted remote-location setup with unexpectedly screwy touches (together with wielding a harpoon in self-defense) that heightened the comedic chaos of the fictional catastrophe.

SNL as an alternative largely gave McKinnon host-type characters, those who’ve to guide the sketch and don’t at all times get a possibility to interrupt free from that stricture. She gamely leaned into them, turning a self-deprecating mom who apologizes for her Christmas items as her kids open them into a seething ball of self-hatred. These bits didn’t take full benefit of her skills, however then, McKinnon appeared completely content material to maintain herself hidden among the many forged. There’s one thing candy about her impulse to share the highlight with everybody else onstage—if solely it didn’t come at the price of the eccentricities which have made her so fascinating to look at.