It hasn’t even been two years since Alec Baldwin joined Saturday Night Live as a regular guest star impersonating and skewering President Donald Trump. Still, his pouting, Emmy-winning impression has become such a fixture on the series that whenever Baldwin decides to hang up the orange wig and buckets of foundation, it will mark a major milestone for the series. The question prestige-TV fans may be asking after this week’s Tina Fey-hosted season finale, however, is whether Baldwin’s last turn as Trump has already come and gone.
The latest political cold open served as yet another showcase for S.N.L.’s stable of starry political impersonators. But the diner setting and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” on the jukebox were also a reference to the famous (or infamous) 2007 series finale of The Sopranos, in which the lead character’s fate is left hanging in the balance as the screen cuts to black.
The ambiguity of the Sopranos ending persists to this day. Even when fans thought creator David Chase had finally answered the question of Tony Soprano’s fate, he complicated his response with even more ambiguity: “Whether Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point.” Sure, O.K., fine. But what are we to make of the re-enactment in this week’s S.N.L., featuring Baldwin, Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Kate McKinnon, Alex Moffat, Heidi Gardner, and Mikey Day? Was this a “finale” of some kind for Baldwin? The actor has been expressing boredom and frustration with the Trump role for a while now; was this week’s cut to black meant to be a kind of “death”?
Maybe. Or perhaps by invoking Robert Mueller, Michael Cohen, and Rudy Giuliani, S.N.L. was simply acknowledging that by the time the show returns from its summer hiatus, the special counsel investigation could have ousted Trump, or at least radically changed something about his administration. That’s a fine enough interpretation for this cliffhanger, and small potatoes compared to the fan theorizing that has followed the Sopranos finale for over a decade.
But as unlikely as it may seem for either Baldwin or S.N.L. to ever quit Trump, Fey’s monologue, following the cold open, added another wrinkle. A few days ago, Vanity Fair posited that the show’s growing dependence on celebrity cameos wasn’t allowing regular cast members enough time in the spotlight to become stars in their own right. Whether the show was reacting directly to that theory or not, Fey’s monologue addressed the same concern. S.N.L. thumbed its nose at the complaint by including more stars then ever—Jerry Seinfeld, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Rock, Donald Glover, Anne Hathaway, Tracy Morgan, Fred Armisen, De Niro—but also showed Fey agreeing that the glut of celebrities “hurts the show a bit.” Given the premise of the monologue, it’s possible her tongue was firmly in cheek as she said so. But if it was, her delivery was extremely neutral.
Which brings us back to Baldwin’s Trump. The “finale” aspect of the cold open, coupled with S.N.L. making fun of its own celebrity dependence, could mean that this was a fond farewell to the presidential impression that helped give the show unprecedented ratings. We can’t know for sure—and certainly whatever happens, it won’t be a permanent goodbye for Baldwin, whose entire career has been intertwined with S.N.L.
But it’s also true that the show announced zero cast departures before the season finale. If someone other than Baldwin is leaving in the off-season—and there are a few prime candidates, including little-used freshman featured player Luke Null—then they’ll do so without the pomp and circumstance Vanessa Bayer and Bobby Moynihan enjoyed last year. The only person who got a semblance of a goodbye was Baldwin’s Trump.
We’ll have to watch the news closely to see if anyone says goodbye in the off-season. In the meantime, S.N.L. fans, don’t stop believin’ that the show will have it all figured out by the time Season 44 premieres in the fall.
