Finn Wolfhard kicked off his Saturday Night Live hosting debut with a Stranger Things cast reunion — and the tongue-in-cheek revelation that he’s ready to do “adult films.”
“I know that a lot of people still see me as a kid but I’m 23 now. I’m proud to officially announce that I am a man,” Wolfhard, 23, declared during his SNL monologue on Saturday, January 17.
Wolfhard demonstrated his personal growth by having the SNL cameraman zoom in on his single facial hair, before he spit his first-ever taste of alcohol directly in cast member Marcello Hernández’s face.
“Stranger Things is over and I’m not a kid anymore,” he declared.
The live studio then cheered as Wolfhard’s Stranger Things costars Caleb McLaughlin and Gaten Matarazzo stepped on stage to declare, “Neither are we!”
The trio asked viewers not to refer to them as “child stars” anymore because they are now officially “former child stars.”
“Whenever you read ‘former child star’ in a headline, it can only mean good things,” Matarazzo, 23, quipped.
Wolfhard brought his Stranger Things castmates in for a group hug, as he assured them: “Even though we’re men, you’ll always be my boys!”
The Stranger Things cast members closed the monologue with Wolfhard hilariously announcing that he and his friends are “former child stars who are now ready to do adult films.”
Earlier in the monologue, Wolfhard made light of one of the awkward teenage milestones that Stranger Things’ global fanbase went through alongside him.
“This past year was very bittersweet for me. My show Stranger Things ended,” he began. “It started when I was 12 and I’ve gotta tell you, it feels so amazing that 400 million people got to watch me go through puberty. What a dream!”
The trio later starred in a filmed Sex and the City-style spoof of Stranger Things where Mike (Wolfhard), Dustin (Matarazzo) and Lucas (McLaughlin) had gossipy catchup about their love lives and Mike’s newfound cocaine habit in the 1990s. The sketch built up to the miraculous return of Eleven — though played by SNL‘s Kenan Thompson rather than Millie Bobby Brown.
Wolfhard’s Saturday Night Live hosting debut followed on the heels of Stranger Things releasing its final episodes on New Year’s Eve 2025.
The series finale, “Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up,” left fans with plenty of lingering questions — including whether Mike’s hopeful tale of Eleven living peacefully away from Hawkins was real or a fantasy.
Sadie Sink — who played Max Mayfield — offered a “hot take” during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on January 5 when she theorized that Eleven is genuinely “dead.”
“I think Mike’s story is one last story,” Sink, 23, argued. “Then they say goodbye to childhood, but that is one final tale. It is a coping thing. It is stronger [if Eleven died]. That is my interpretation.”
Her costar Charlie Heaton — who played Jonathan Byers — exclusively told Us Weekly on January 8 that he viewed Mike’s story as a way of “coping” with losing Eleven.
“I love that for Mike, that’s what he tells us, you know, that’s coping, right?” Heaton, 31, mentioned to Us. “The stories that we choose to believe and the versions of our reality that we choose to believe to cope, and I think it’s really beautiful.”
Another major fan theory emerged with the release of Netflix’s documentary One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5. A scene in the documentary showed creators Ross and Matt Duffer organizing their ideas for the finale in a Google Doc — though a tab shown on screen appeared to be open to ChatGPT as well.
One Last Adventure director, Martina Radwan, subsequently told The Hollywood Reporter that she was not “even sure they had ChatGPT open.”
“There’s a lot of chatter where [social media users] are like, ‘We don’t really know, but we’re assuming.’ But to me, it’s like, doesn’t everybody have it open, to just do quick research?” she pointed out.
The filmmaker added, “Nobody has actually proved that it was open. That’s like having your iPhone next to your computer while you’re writing a story. We just use these tools … while multitasking. So there’s a lot going on all the time, every time.”
Saturday Night Live continues on NBC January 24 at 11:30 p.m. ET with host Teyana Taylor and musical guest Geese. Stranger Things is available to watch in its entirety on Netflix.
