Tom Hanks Brings Back David S. Pumpkins in Surprise SNL Halloween Cold Open

Look, some Halloween costumes need a whole crew. Prosthetics people. A budget. Weeks of fittings. Tom Hanks? He needed a pumpkin suit, two old mates, and about a minute of TV to blow up everyone’s Saturday night.

The 70-year-old just showed up — no warning, no teaser, nothing — during Saturday Night Live’s Halloween cold open on October 31, back in the orange suit as David S. Pumpkins. That’s the character he first played ten years ago, and honestly, he slipped into it like he’d never taken it off. One second the sketch is chugging along, the next there’s Hanks, grinning away in Studio 8H as if this is the most normal thing in the world.

And that, really, is the entire joke. David S. Pumpkins doesn’t explain himself. He turns up, does a little dance, says his name like it’s the most important name you’ll hear all week, and steals the whole night. A decade later? Still works. Still funny. Still weird in the best way.

A Haunted Ride, and One Very Familiar Passenger

Here’s how the cold open played out. Newer cast members Grace Reiter and Jeremy Culhane hopped on a spooky ride called “Fright Nights” — your standard haunted-house setup, creepy characters popping out, that slow dread where you know something’s coming but not what.

Then, about a minute in, boom. There’s Hanks, right there next to Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan. Those two helped cook the character up with writer Streeter Seidell back in 2016, so this wasn’t just a cameo. It was the original gang, back together, falling straight into the old rhythm. And the studio audience? They lost it. That specific kind of delighted, slightly unhinged laughter you only get when a joke you love shows up unannounced.

If you somehow missed the original — first off, where were you in 2016? — here’s the gist. A couple goes on a haunted hayride. They meet monsters. Ghouls. All the scary stuff. And then, out of nowhere, a bloke in a pumpkin suit. He’s got two skeleton sidekicks. He dances a bit. He’s not scary in the slightest, and that’s exactly why the whole thing lands. The sketch shouldn’t work. It absolutely does.

After that first airing, the thing just took on a life of its own. Halloween playlists. Costume parties every October. Group chats full of people quoting him. Folks still argue about what the “S” stands for, by the way — the official answer is “Pumpkins,” which, yeah, tells you all you need to know about how this character’s brain works.

Why This One Felt Different

Now, Hanks did bring the suit out before, in the show’s 48th season back in 2022, when Jack Harlow was hosting. That felt like a nice anniversary nod, a little wink to the fans. This time was different, and the difference was simple: nobody knew it was coming.

Surprise guests are SNL’s oldest trick in the book, and here’s the thing — they only really land when the guest actually loves the show, not when they’re just swinging by to plug a movie. Hanks is firmly in the first camp. Ten times he’s hosted. Ten. That’s the Five-Timers Club twice over, plus a history with the show going all the way back to the eighties. So when he walks back into 30 Rock, it doesn’t feel like a celebrity drop-in at all. It feels like someone coming home.

And the timing — come on. Halloween night, Halloween episode, the one night of the year when a man in a pumpkin suit is arguably the most sensible person in the room. Sticking him in the cold open, before the host even gets to do their monologue, meant the whole night started at a peak. Everything after that had to catch up.

Plus, and this matters for the longtime viewers, Moynihan’s been gone from the cast for years. So seeing all three of them together again wasn’t just a costume revival. It was a reunion, smuggled inside a haunted-house ride, in under five minutes. Pretty neat trick, that.

The Rest of the Sketch Didn’t Exactly Hold Back

Of course, being SNL, the cold open had more than one thing on its mind. James Austin Johnson turned up as President Donald Trump, riffing on recent headline-grabbing remarks, and Saidah Belo-Osagie played Nicki Minaj, hot on the heels of her recent appearance with Trump at a rally.

Johnson’s Trump got a line that basically summed up the whole chaotic vibe, joking about Hanks: “We both appeared in 2016. We’re both very loud, very orange and, frankly, very annoying.” Then he wandered off into stranger territory, as Trump parodies tend to do, with a crack about admiring Hanks’ acting. In a cold open already running at full tilt, it landed perfectly.

Honestly, that whiplash is what makes SNL’s Halloween episodes such a good watch. One minute it’s political satire, the next it’s a beloved movie star dancing around in a pumpkin suit with two skeletons. The show has always lived on that gear-change, and Saturday’s opener was a textbook case.

Ten Years On, and the Joke Just Won’t Quit

Take a second to think about how unlikely this staying power is. Most SNL characters — even the good ones — burn out. A few appearances, a peak, then they drift into “oh yeah, remember that?” territory. David S. Pumpkins went the other way. He actually got funnier over time, mostly because the internet refused to let him go between appearances.

Part of it is how dead simple the bit is. No lore to memorise. No catchphrase you’ve got to nail word-perfect. You see the suit, you hear the name, you’re in. Instantly. That’s rare in comedy, and it’s why the character works so well at Halloween — you spot him across a crowded party and you just get it.

The other part, though, is Hanks. Plenty of actors would treat a pumpkin suit as beneath them, or play it with a big wink — you know, “look how silly I’m being, aren’t I game?” Hanks has never done that. He plays David S. Pumpkins with the same straight face he’d bring to a war film, and that total commitment is the joke itself. He isn’t laughing at the character. He believes in him, completely. So the audience does too.

And really, that sincerity is the whole Hanks thing, isn’t it? It’s what made him America’s unofficial dad in Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Toy Story — all of it. Decades into his career, people still turn up for him, because he treats every role, whether it’s a hero, an everyman, or a bloke in a pumpkin suit, with the same respect. Sounds easy. It’s really, really not.

What It Means for the Season

Saturday’s episode was the Halloween show, hosted by Inde Navarrette with Gracie Abrams on music duty, and that cold open set a seriously high bar. SNL has been leaning hard into surprise appearances lately, and you can see why — these days a clip travels way faster than a full episode, and one unexpected moment can own the conversation for days.

The David S. Pumpkins return is exactly that kind of moment. Shareable. Quotable. Great if you watched it live, just as good as a clip over breakfast the next morning. For a show that’s been on air for fifty years, finding fresh ways to make an old joke feel new is no joke in itself. On Saturday night, they pulled it off with a pumpkin suit and a grin.

Will he be back again in another few years? Who knows. Will this turn out to have been his last ride through the haunted house? Also who knows. But given how much Hanks clearly enjoys playing him, I’d be a fool to rule it out. That suit’s probably hanging in a closet at 30 Rock right now, just waiting.

Until then, Halloween 2026 belongs to a 70-year-old movie star, two skeleton sidekicks, and a character whose whole deal is turning up, saying his name, and leaving everyone wondering what on earth they just watched. Ten years on, that’s still more than enough.

Source: Just Jared