Bowen Yang says goodbye to 'SNL' with help from Ariana Grande, Cher and Aidy Bryant

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Just a little over a year after an all-time performance as “Saturday Night Live” host (one of the best of that season, truth be told), Ariana Grande returned again to show off some of her talents: mimicry and comic timing, dance moves and, of course, a spectacular singing voice.But she also showed a lot of grace by ceding the spotlight to her “Wicked” co-star Bowen Yang, who confirmed before this week’s episode that he is exiting “SNL” midway through his eighth season.At several turns of this week’s show, particularly in a closing sketch about a retiring Delta Sky Club employee that served as Yang’s emotional goodbye, it was clear that Grande understood the assignment: this was Yang’s night, not hers.

Television ‘SNL’ favorite Bowen Yang, who spent seven seasons as a cast member and one as a writer, is expected to leave the NBC sketch comedy show.Which isn’t to say Grande wasn’t great.She started strong with an “All I Want for Christmas” takeoff in her monologue, played an Elf on the Shelf who’s been cut in half in a support group sketch, exchanged a costume soul patch with Marcello Hernández as one of two dramatic dance instructors, and perhaps most memorably in this outing, played Macaulay Culkin‘s character Kevin in an extremely bloody parody of “Home Alone.”She dated The Grinch (Mikey Day) in a “Love Is Blind” reunion sketch, played a judge in a courtroom scene featuring Black Santa Claus (Kenan Thompson) before portraying Katy Perry and Celine Dion in a promo for a Peacock special that mashes up different singers like the viral David Bowie/Bing Crosby “Little Drummer Boy” video.But in his last show as a cast member, Yang got to appear in nearly every sketch as well, from a brief appearance in the “Home Alone” sketch to playing Yoko Ono in the Peacock special skit to reprising his Trend Forecaster character on “Weekend U...