2025 closed out with a pop culture shocker, as Bowen Yang revealed his exit from Saturday Night Live, which had already gone through quite a few casting changes ahead of Season 51. It’s not clear just yet when he’ll return to the 30 Rock studio, or when he’ll be back on the big screen, but fans will 100% see him putting on the RITZ, so to speak, for one of many star-studded ads airing throughout Super Bowl Sunday.
For its first high-dollar Super Bowl commercial airing in 2025, Ritz looped in Aubrey Plaza, Michael Shannon and Bad Bunny, but this time around, the cracker company brought Yang in to join Jon Hamm and Scarlett Johansson on RITZ Island. (Fun facts: Hamm has hosted SNL 4 times, while Scar-Jo has hosted 7 times, and I don’t think either of them have ever visited RITZ island before this.)
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Nicole Fischer, director of the food conglomerate Mondelēz International, shared with Little Black Book that the goal with this ad was to bring “new salties, new personalities, a new setting” into the mix, rather than doubling back and trying to spin something else with Bad Bunny & Co. Patricia Ortiz, group creative director for the ad agency MARTIN*, shared this:
Year two was about evolution, not repetition. We took what resonated last year – the salty dynamic, the humour, the product love – and pushed it into something bigger, funnier, and more cinematic, while staying grounded in the role RITZ plays as the great unifier.
Part of me wants to come up with a lightheartedly snarky response to calling RITZ crackers "the great unifier," but I eat a ton of them, and cannot make myself say anything directly negative. Except maybe "it sucks that I'm not chowing down on any right now."
Check out the shortform teaser for the longer ad, which centers squarely on Bowen Yang and an awesome seashell phone. (Note to RITZ: turn that phone into merch.)
Speaking to the decision to cast this trio of superstars, Nicole Fischer said that those three entertainers were specifically chosen this time around to represent the idea that there isn't only one kind of a RITZ consumer. As she put it:
We don’t only target or get consumed by one specific niche consumer. All generations, ethnicities, ages, households with kids and without kids consume RITZ crackers, so we wanted to make sure that we were casting in a way that is representative of the brand.
Bowen Yang does carry quite a few more representational qualities than Hamm and Johansson, as he was born in Australia to Chinese parents before moving to Canada as a young child, and is also a gay man who's been open about the struggles he's faced throughout his life on that front. He's also gone from a no-named Broad City role to Emmy nominations and global stardom in a decade's time.
So if anything, he should be the one hosting parties on RITZ Island in the longer ad seen below, but I guess I can understand why Scarlet Johansson would also be a proper pick.
It's not clear exactly when these RITZ ads filmed, to be able to tell whether or not Yang had already quit SNL, or if it was produced before his final ep as a cast member. Given the ad's existence was only unveiled in late November, it's even harder to gauge.
Fans who don't want to wait for Super Bowl Sunday can always check out Bowen Yang's podcast Las Culturistas, which he co-hosts with Matt Rogers. The comedian will also be in the cast of the upcoming The Cat in the Hat adaptation starring fellow SNL vet Bill Hader.
