In 2009 James Cameron released Avatar. It did pretty well! It’s only the highest grossing film of all-time. Yet, despite that record, to this day people still argue about whether or not it made any kind of cultural impact. But SNL fans know there’s no debate. It did. The movie led to one of the funniest sketches in Saturday Night Live‘s history. In 2017, Ryan Gosling starred in “Papyrus,” a pre-taped sketch about a man obsessed with the big budget fantasy’s uninspired title font. Now, in a lot less time than it took for Cameron to deliver his own sequel, SNL made its follow-up. Ryan Gosling’s return to SNL hosting duties at Studio 8H included starring in “Papyrus 2,” yet another Avatar sketch.
Two SNL alums also returned to the show this past weekend to help Gosling deliver a sequel to the memorable 2017 sketch. Former cast member Kyle Mooney came back to play the man responsible for Avatar‘s logo font, in a sketch written by original “Papyrus” scribe and former Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres.
This time Gosling found himself struggling with a different type of Avatar-related problem. He’d spent years seemingly overcome his deeply held issues. Only, the franchise and its font wasn’t quite done with him just yet. Avatar: The Way of Water was hiding a bold secret.
From there the sketch goes from a traditional comedy sequel to more of an arthouse indie film, as madness takes over and things get weird and deeply emotional. Turns out Gosling’s character has been hiding his own secrets. His font problems go far beyond how the letters of a movie look.
Our only problem is that this didn’t air during the episode. It was an online-only release. Torres had some thoughts on why. On Instagram he wrote, “Not sure how this was “cut for time” just bc it’s 3 times the length of a regular sketch and also I don’t work at @nbcsnl anymore but here this is in case you need it?”
We can debate whether or not SNL should have aired this Ryan Gosling Avatar sketch during the show or not, but it should once again end all debate about whether or not Avatar is culturally relevant or not. How many other movie franchises have ever made us care about the Papyrus font?