Saturday Night Live is feeling pretty good right now. The long-running sketch show aired its Season 42 premiere (hosted by Suicide Squad's Margo Robbie) to its biggest season premiere audience in 22 years. A lot of that is due to the election -- which already feels like an SNL sketch -- but it doesn't hurt that the episode itself was really solid. Now it's trying to keep the good times rollin' and announced that the lovable Tom Hanks will be returning to host.
According to NBC, Tom Hanks will return to host Saturday Night Live for the ninth time on October 22. Hanks will be there promoting Inferno, his latest collaboration with Ron Howard and the sequel to The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. The movie star was also most recently in Sully (directed by Clint Eastwood), so we can expect to get a mention of that for any stragglers who haven't made it to the movie theater yet. Joining Hanks will be Lady Gaga as the musical guest, but she's bound to make at least one sketch appearance given her recent acting on American Horror Story.
All in all, that's shaping up to be a pretty stacked episode of SNL. Tom Hanks always brings a lot of energy and commitment with him when he appears on the show, so fingers crossed SNL can keep the streak going. The season premiere was a really solid episode with some big winners (Kate McKinnon doing pretty much anything) but not without its duds. SNL is usually strongest during an election year and its bound to get a lot more coverage even after November.
In other good SNL related news, the October 15th episode will be hosted by Emily Blunt. Blunt will be making her hosting debut on the show with musical guest Bruno Mars, who also once hosted the show. The actress will be plugging The Girl on the Train, a crime mystery thriller in the vein of Gone Girl. The film has gotten mixed reviews so far but one of the universal praises seems to be that Blunt's performance is amazing. So that's two good weeks of SNL right there!
To get ready for Tom Hanks' episode, check out this clip from when he hosted the show for the fifth time back in 1990, joining the infamous Five Timers Club.
You'll be able to see Tom Hanks host the show for the ninth time on October 22, but before that, you can watch Lin-Manuel Miranda host this week's episode.
