Trick or Treat in 8H, Inde Navarrette Hosts SNL on Halloween

Inde Navarrette, the 25-year-old star of this year's horror hit Obsession, hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time on Saturday, October 31, a Halloween-night episode with Gracie Abrams as the musical guest.

It was the show's first night back after a two-week break, NBC said in its announcement. Outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza the city was in costume. Inside Studio 8H, the costumes were the job.

Who Is Inde Navarrette?

She is the actress who played Nikki Freeman in Obsession, the horror film that opened May 15. NBC puts its haul at more than $263 million in North America and more than $523 million worldwide. By our arithmetic, that makes it a film that earned almost exactly half its money at home, about 50 percent.

Before that she played Sarah Cortez on Superman and Lois from 2021 to 2024. She was born in Tucson in 2001. NBC says she is set for an upcoming X-Men film and for The Waffle House Index.

Her character even got a second job this fall. Universal Studios Hollywood put Nikki into its 2026 Halloween Horror Nights lineup, according to NBC.

What Happened on the Show?

The night opened with a man in a pumpkin suit. Tom Hanks came back as David S. Pumpkins, the character he first played in the 2016 Haunted Elevator sketch, with Mikey Day and the cast alum Bobby Moynihan as his dancing skeletons, NBC Insider reported. Jeremy Culhane and Grace Reiter played the couple on the ride.

James Austin Johnson's Donald Trump interrupted to talk about Tuesday's midterms, TV Insider reports, and the skeletons got the last word. Hanks and his dancers delivered "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

Navarrette's monologue was quick. The reviewer at SNL Rankings says it included a dig at Shane Gillis, who hosted three weeks earlier, and a visit from Marcello Hernández, dressed, in the reviewer's description, as a sexy TSA agent. The same reviewer thought the Gillis line was not much of a joke.

The sketches did better. SNL Rankings singled out a short film called The Inventor's Wife, with Navarrette as a widow, Ben Marshall as her date and a robot named PD-44, as the best pretape of the season. A telenovela sketch built around a soda product placement, with Navarrette and Hernández as the lovers, ranked as one of the season's strongest. The reviewer called it the best show of the season.

The reviewer called it the best show of the season.

Not everything landed. A Paw Patrol take on Special Victims Unit broke her up mid-sketch, and a late dinner sketch, in the reviewer's words, "runs out of steam."

Who Sang?

Gracie Abrams, on her second turn as musical guest. Her first was December 14, 2024, when Chris Rock hosted, NBC Insider notes. This time she sang "Hit the Wall" and "Here You Come, There You Go" from Daughter from Hell, her third album, which came out July 17.

New Yorkers had a closer look a week earlier, when she played a sweepstakes-only show at Irving Plaza. Her Look at My Life Tour starts December 2 in Denver.

The show also paused for Patrick Stewart, who hosted in season 19 and died earlier in the week, with a clip and a classic bumper, according to the season's Wikipedia episode log. We wrote about his last Broadway years on 48th Street.

Where Does She Fit on the Halloween List?

Near the end of a short one. NBC's list of earlier Halloween-night hosts runs Dabney Coleman in 1981, Donald Pleasence in 1987, Catherine O'Hara in 1992 and John Mulaney in 2020. On our count, the gap before Navarrette was six years. The gap before Mulaney was 28.

Season 52 so far, in order, is Jalen Brunson, Dakota Johnson, Shane Gillis and Navarrette. Druski hosts November 7 with The Strokes, and Mulaney is back November 14 with Phoebe Bridgers.

The horror star came to Rockefeller Plaza on the scariest night of the year. The scariest thing in the building was a pumpkin who wanted to dance.