Pete Davidson’s infamous character Chad returned to “Saturday Night Live” this week, and he was just as careless as ever — but this time, he was also a hero.
“The Astronaut” — clearly spoofing Matt Damon’s “The Martian” — tells the story of a small colony of pioneers on Mars, sent up thanks to host Elon Musk’s SpaceX program. Or rather, it tells the apparent end of their story, as their oxygen supply is running out thanks to a solar storm.
“There’s a backup O2 circulator outside the habitat,” Musk reveals. “One of them just needs to turn it on.”
Of course, it’s a suicide mission, because the radiation levels outside on the surface of the planet are too high for a human to withstand. To that, our hero Chad has just one word: “OK!” Even though he’s about to become a dad — to astronaut Miley Cyrus’ kids, no less — Chad is totally cool with sacrificing himself for the greater good. (“Ha, sack…” Chad says with a chuckle).
He makes it to the oxygen circulator and turns it on with no problems, prompting Elon Musk to make the video feed public, so the world can see the face of a hero. And, because he’s Chad, he takes that super literally and removes his helmet to reveal his face — at which point his head promptly explodes.
And that leaves us with one very important question: Is this truly the end of Chad? He’s died once before, but thanks to some EMTs, he returned. But this looked a bit more permanent — though obviously, we’re hoping otherwise.
As “SNL” fans took to Twitter to make clear, Chad was one of the saving graces of an overall rough show. The memes flowed freely, with one person tweeting an image of a person carrying a giant Oscar, meant for Davidson in their opinion.
You can watch the full digital short, “The Astronaut,” in the video above.