Saturday Night Live season 50 is quickly nearing its end with just two episodes left before the show’s milestone season comes to a close. In the penultimate episode of the season, NBC has turned to one of the stars from HBO’s hit drama The White Lotus, with actor Walton Goggins set to host alongside musical guest Arcade Fire.
Given the continued success of HBO’s hit series, it makes sense that NBC would look to tap a member of the cast to host an episode before the season comes to a close. I just think they missed the mark when it came to which member of the cast they tapped to host.
While I’m sure Goggins is going to deliver a fun episode and was absolutely a standout from the third season of The White Lotus, the true breakout star of the season was without a doubt Parker Posey.
Posey gave a scene-stealing performance as Lorazepam-loving Southern housewife Victoria Ratliff. Her now iconic Southern accent and equally iconic pronunciations of words such as Taiwan, Buddhism, and Piper, helped to make her the season’s breakout star, rivaling Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid. After becoming an overnight sensation, inspiring countless memes and whose clips have racked up millions of viewers on social media, it would have been amazing to see Posey get to stretch her comedic chops as host of Saturday Night Live.
Watching The White Lotus reminded us, reminded us just how phenomenal Posey. She’s the kind of unique, unpredictable, and wildly talented performer on which Saturday Night Live thrives on with an innate ability to turn even the most eccentric characters into unforgettable icons – Victoria Ratliff being a perfect example of this. Her razor-sharp comedic timing and improv skills would help her more than hold her own alongside the Saturday Night Live cast, and there is no telling what incredible characters she’d be able to help bring to life in the show’s sketches!
There is no doubt at all that she’d deliver sketches viewers would be quoting all week, just as she managed to take a character such as Victoria and turn her into a cultural icon. It’s just a shame that NBC didn’t feel the same and passed up on the opportunity to bring in the true breakout of The White Lotus season 3 to host the penultimate episode of Saturday Night Live.
Goggins will surely give us some fun sketches, but when looking at The White Lotus season 3 cast, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel as though I’ve been robbed of the opportunity to witness the brilliance of Parker Posey on Saturday Night Live. It’s giving me flashbacks to when we almost got to see Coolidge host the season 48 finale, only for the strikes to rob us of the opportunity to make her Saturday Night Live hosting debut.
All we can hope is that one day Saturday Night Live will finally tap one of The White Lotus’s scene-stealing women to host the show.