‘Saturday Night Live’ promotes Michael Che, Leslie Jones, Pete Davidson, Colin Jost

While it went by in the blink of an eye on the “Saturday Night Live” premiere, you may have noticed one major change during the opening theme song: The promotion of a variety of formerly featured players from this past season.

Officially, Michael Che, Colin Jost, Pete Davidson, and Leslie Jones are now formal cast members on the show, and were introduced at the start of theme in the same way as everyone else. This was a cause of great celebration, especially for Leslie given the roller-coaster summer that she had in the headlines.

At the end of the theme song, the show also introduced new regulars Alex Moffat, Melissa Villasenor, and Mikey Day. These three will help to usher in potentially a new generation following the departure of Taran Killam, Jay Pharoah, and Jon Rudnitsky. We’re excited to see what everyone does, but the reality here is that this is not a cast and a show that will find its footing one week in. While tonight’s episode got off to a great start, it typically takes a few weeks for an episode of the show to start to get into a little bit of a groove.

Following tonight’s show, we’re going to have an appearance from Lin-Manuel Miranda in one week’s time. For fans of “Hamilton,” that is certainly a cause for excitement. Emily Blunt has been thrown out there as another host for this month, but that has not been officially confirmed as of yet by NBC.

If you want to read our full review of this weekend’s “SNL” premiere, be sure to head over to the link here now! Also, sign up over at this link to score some other TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)