Saturday Night Live opened with Christopher Walken making a surprise appearance as “the ghost of All Hallows past” while President Joe Biden (Mikey Day) looks over his Oval Office decorations in anticipation of Halloween.
The sketch begins with Biden attempting to climb a wobbly ladder to attach a purple bat to some drapes, only to nix the idea. “On second thought, let’s do that later,” he says, before ambling down and then picking up what appears to be a rubber arm on the Resolute Desk.
“Oh shoot,” he says upon closer examination. “That’s not a decoration; that’s an arm our dog, Commander, ripped off a Secret Service agent!”
The president, seeking help putting up some cobwebs, then mistakes the new Speaker of the House, Louisiana GOP Congressman Mike Johnson (Michael Longfellow), for a White House aide.
Johnson, who was elected Wednesday, has to explain who he is to the president, who keeps forgetting his forgettable name.
“I’m now second in line to replace you,” Johnson says, “so I’m excited to see more of this ladder thing.”
After Johnson departs, Biden seeks someone who “could help me explain the true meaning of Halloween.”
Walken, wearing a black and orange cape, enters.
“I’m the spirit of Halloween. The ghost of All Hallows past. In South America, they call me, ‘Papa Pumpkin.’ I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve never been.”
After explaining that he came in not through the chimney, but the toilet — “the Halloween way,” as he puts it — Walken reads aloud a poem he has prepared for the occasion:
Trick or treat, smell my feet
Give me something good to eat
If you don’t, I don’t care
I’ll pull down your underwear.
The appearance marked Walken’s first appearance on a live SNL episode since 2008.