Paul McCartney made his return to Saturday Night Live for the Season 51 finale, and the whole episode treated his arrival like a major event. The 83-year-old rock icon served as the musical guest for the May 16, 2026 broadcast hosted by Will Ferrell, marking his first regular-season appearance on the show in nearly 14 years and his fifth time on SNL as a musical guest overall.
He opened with “Days We Left Behind,” the lead track from his upcoming album The Boys of Dungeon Lane, due May 29. McCartney then shifted into “Band on the Run,” one of the most recognizable songs in his catalog, before later returning for an encore performance of “Coming Up” during the show’s goodnights. That final song had a built-in layer of nostalgia, since McCartney first premiered it on SNL back in 1980.
The evening also leaned hard into comedy. Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith sat in on drums for McCartney, and the show used Smith’s long-running resemblance to Ferrell as a running joke. During Ferrell’s monologue, Smith showed up first pretending to be the host, only for Ferrell to interrupt and turn the whole thing into a staged bit of absurdity before eventually drawing McCartney into the moment too.
McCartney did more than play the hits. He also appeared in a sketch as a mechanic alongside Ferrell and Marcello Hernández, giving the finale an extra dose of star power beyond the musical performances. The episode’s cold open set the tone with Ferrell playing Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost, while the rest of the show kept mixing political satire, nostalgia, and celebrity chaos in a way that fit the finale’s celebratory mood.
By the time the credits rolled, the show had squeezed in one more McCartney moment and turned the finale into a loose, high-energy showcase for one of pop music’s most enduring figures. The combination of a new song, a classic Wings anthem, a surprise encore, and a handful of comedy cameos made it feel less like a standard TV booking and more like a miniature McCartney festival with SNL doing the stage managing.
