Country music star turned perpetual controversy machine Morgan Wallen did his usual thing during his long-awaited Saturday Night Live appearance last night. Initially invited to appear on the show in 2020, Wallen had his invitation rescinded after TikTok cameras caught the singer ignoring CDC guidelines and kissing a bunch of randos at the bar during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the show has struggled to keep its cast, guest stars, and audience members safe from the disease, it couldn’t resist having him back. Five years, one N-word controversy, and a reckless endangerment misdemeanor later, Wallen finally took the stage at Studio 8H and abruptly left the stage during goodbyes. Not sticking around to chum around with the cast or guest star Mikey Madison, Wallen exited while cameras were still rolling, prompting speculation of his displeasure at having to spend time in New York City, which we understand has fallen to the C.H.U.Ds. Within hours, a post on Wallen’s Instagram Stories showed a private jet with the caption, “Get me to God’s country.”
The A.V. Club was as confused as the viewers. “What was going on with Morgan Wallen high-tailing it out of the goodnights after five seconds? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone head straight up the aisle that way before, rather than just discretely slipping off to the side or out the back,” our recapper Jesse Hassenger wrote in his Stray Observations from last night’s show. “I do have an answer to what was going on with Morgan Wallen’s music and that is that he sucks.”
Nevertheless, Variety reports that Wallen’s team has denied that his exit or post had anything to do with the singer’s time on the show. His publicists, who, bless them, really have their hands full with this Wallen kid, maintain that he didn’t angrily take off during goodbyes. Instead, he was on autopilot, they say, and was merely and diligently following his blocking and staging from dress rehearsal, unaware that the rest of the cast continued the 50-year-old tradition of waving goodbye to the camera and audience at the show’s end—the consummate performer, Wallen, leaves before the applause has died down. Furthermore, Wallen’s team says his post wasn’t a dig at New York City or the artists and craftspeople who hosted him for a week and welcomed him back to SNL after, you know, his whole kissing strangers during COVID, assaulting different strangers from a rooftop, and casually saying the N-word thing. Perhaps it’s finally time to admit that Morgan Wallen is just kind of a rude guy who sometimes transcends the bounds of rudeness by using slurs and assaulting people on the street.
But it doesn’t matter what he meant anymore because now it’s just more chum for the culture wars, with people on various social media sites already making up their minds. Some praise Wallen for storming off and flipping the bird to the coastal elites at Saturday Night Live, while others think it’s pretty rude of him to dip before the show was over. Either way, it’ll probably just make Wallen more famous because controversy has made him one of the most successful artists of the 2020s.
Morgan Wallen’s fourth studio album, appropriately titled I’m The Problem, hits stores on May 16, 2025.
