The 7 biggest ‘SNL’ sketches from Ashley Padilla’s first season

We’re on the cusp of a new season of SNL. When Season 52 goes live on Saturday night, it’ll be the beginning of Ashley Padilla’s third season on the show. It’ll also be her first season since being promoted to SNL’s full cast. If you were watching last season, you know this was a formality.

Padilla dominated last season. It didn’t matter that she was a featured cast member.

But what was Padilla’s mark on SNL before her breakout sophomore season? Her first season on the show was the milestone 50th season, a moment that both celebrated SNL and clung to its past. It’s a miracle that any new cast member managed to find tiny moments as Dana Carvey hogged the spotlight, much less that those moments would seed one of the most dominant seasons ever from an SNL cast member.

7. New Barista Training

Padilla spent a good deal of Season 50 in the background. For a sketch like “New Barista Training,” this meant she had to make the most of any moment when she was on camera. While this was Timothée Chalamet’s sketch, Padilla filled her background scenes with the “hey, are you guys making fun of me?” energy that we’d come to expect from her in Season 51.

6. Icebreaker

It was a huge deal that Jon Hamm was hosting SNL during Season 50. Fans of the show had been waiting years for the Mad Men star to return to SNL. What a moment it must’ve been for Padilla to be in a sketch with him. In what would become a classic move for a Padilla character, her support group member in this sketch kept trying to explain her tragic past while the rest of the characters brushed by her story.

5. Italian Restaurant Commercial

In a sign of things to come in Season 51, Padilla’s character in “Italian Restaurant Commercial” repeatedly stole the show from Paul Mescal.

4. Tableside

Padilla wasn’t a main character in “Tableside,” but she held her own between Michael Keaton and Heidi Gardner. It’s wild to think that Lorne Michaels’s bizarro decision to let Gardner go after Season 50 created the opening that allowed Padilla to become SNL’s biggest star.

3. I Got One

If you’re thinking of a Season 50 sketch — one that wasn’t part of Weekend Update! — where Padilla was able to drive the story, “I Got One” is that sketch. Like “Surprise” in Season 51, this Padilla character borrows heavily from “I screwed up, but I’m gonna double down” ethos that we expect from Tim Robinson in a I Think You Should Leave sketch.

2. Trauma Support Group

This is a Bowen Yang sketch. But the yelp that Padilla gave after Yang’s character pushed his cigarette into her leg resounded across the SNL universe. In that single moment, Padilla was able to pull the full attention of the show onto herself.