Grace Reiter and the New Era of SNL
By: Greta Buysse, Staff Writer Edited by: Olena Conrad
“SNL isn’t funny anymore.”
Grace Reiter says, “Hold my beer.”
For years now, Saturday Night Live has struggled with the perception that it’s lost its edge, particularly among younger audiences who increasingly find their comedy online. After all of this criticism, SNL is once again working to mend its reputation. Their solution? A witty, unapologetically bold, 25-year-old internet comedian by the name of Grace Reiter.
And if Reiter has anything to say about it, SNL might have to get a little weird again.
If you’ve spent any time online, you may already recognize Reiter’s particular brand of comedy. Her sketches often spiral from ordinary situations into something increasingly unhinged. Often, Reiter’s humor isn’t about delivering the perfect punchline. Sometimes, it’s just about seeing just how far she can take a joke.
One of her most iconic examples of this is The Hunger Games (but better), a 42-minute parody that Reiter and her friends created entirely from memory for her 24th birthday. If this sounds like a recipe for absolute chaos, that’s because it is. But that chaos and over-the-top style of comedy is exactly what got the project its current 16 million views. The parody demonstrated that her appeal extends beyond the bite-sized sketches that first introduced viewers to her work. Even when working in a longer format, Reiter embraces the chaotic, collaborative spirit that has helps internet comedy thrive. That combination makes Reiter an interesting addition to SNL. She represents not only a new comedic voice, but also a generation whose sense of humor has developed alongside social media.
For decades, SNL has relied on its weekly broadcast to deliver sketches to its viewers. Today, however, a growing part of its audience encounters those sketches somewhere else entirely, that being TikTok Instagram Reels, or YouTube shorts. A viewer might never sit through an entire episode but still recognize a recurring character, quote a viral punchline, or repeatedly watch a sketch that appears on their feed.
In 2025, the show generated approximately 7.86 billion social media views, a whopping 53% increase over the previous year, according to TheWrap. These numbers suggest that SNL’s cultural reach cannot be measured by traditional television viewership alone. Short-form clips make the show’s comedy easier to discover, share, and revisit, especially in an age where fewer and fewer are choosing live TV over streaming services. For younger viewers accustomed to scrolling through an endless stream of content, a 45-second sketch can be an entry point into a show they might otherwise never watch.
Reiter’s career reflects this shift, though her early performance on SNL suggests that the show may be doing more than simply borrowing the internet’s audience. In her third episode as a featured player, Reiter clocked 8 minutes and 17 seconds of screen time, the third-highest total of any performer that night (notably, only topped by host, Shane Gillis, and veteran cast member, Colin Jost), according to LateNighter. For a newcomer, that’s a substantial showcase, and a sign that SNL is willing to give an emerging comedian room to truly establish herself.
But Reiter is hardly the first comedian to make the jump from internet fame to Studio 8H. In the 2000s, The Lonely Island—a comedy trio that found their fame online—helped bring internet-born humor to SNL through their digital shorts. Similarly, the comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy caught the attention of the show through their short-form internet sketches that went viral during the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, Jane Wickline and Veronika Slowikowska have brought their own Gen Z and internet-adjacent humor to the show. Wickline’s deadpan musical performances on the segment Weekend Update and Slowikowska’s exaggerated characters in sketches like “Snackhomiez” demonstrate how internet humor can translate to television without losing its distinctive awkwardness and absurdity.
These performers’ success on the show also challenges the idea that SNL must choose between its traditional format and the internet. Despite the viability of the internet, the show can still produce a live broadcast while allowing individual sketches to circulate independently online. The relationship between television and social media is no longer simply competition; each can help the other reach audiences it might otherwise miss.
Of course, an online following doesn’t guarantee success on television. Reiter must still find her place within an ensemble and adapt to the demands of live comedy. But her arrival reflects a broader recognition that comedy careers, audiences, and even the meaning of watching comedy have changed.
Grace Reiter cannot single-handedly redefine Saturday Night Live, nor does she need to. Her significance lies in the fact that she offers Gen Z the rare chance to see its own sense of humor reflected in a mainstream dominated by older generations. And Reiter’s screen time suggests that the show is genuinely giving her kind of comedy that chance.
With billions of social media views drawing attention to sketches beyond live broadcast, the stakes extend beyond one new cast member. If SNL can let comics like Reiter be their own brand of comedy, it may give younger viewers a reason to look up from their feeds and see what else the show has to offer. The internet has already given Reiter a stage. Now, SNL has given her the opportunity to show the world what she can really do.
© 2026 by FETCH COLLECTIVE
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