SNL Makes Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren an ‘Undercover Boss’ on Starkiller Base
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens star Adam Driver hosting 2016’s first episode of SNL, a Kylo Ren sketch of some kind was inevitable. After all, you don't get the actor who plays the villain in one of the biggest movies of all time to appear on your comedy variety show and not have him reprise that character. And we'll give the show this much: we never would have predicted a faux episode of Undercover Boss set on Starkiller Base, with the angry, murderous Kylo Ren going undercover amongst his troops as a radar technician named Matt.
For those who don't know, the premise of Undercover Boss is very simple: the CEO of a major corporation or business pretends to be someone else and spends time working alongside his lowly employees, learning what it's like to be the low man on the totem pole and realizing what everyone really thinks about him. Naturally, the temperamental Kylo Ren is not an especially good fit for such a reflective and humbling exercise. Hilarity ensues, etc.
And hilarity does ensue because this sketch is executed to perfection. Driver's hilarious riff on his own character provides the scene with a strong core, but the straight-faced performances from the rest of the cast (who have to bounce off the silly, moody Driver) and the pitch-perfect production design (which manages to make the Star Wars setting look appropriately dull in that reality show kind of way) make this into a total gem.