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With four cast members (and counting) not returning for Saturday Night Live<\/a> Season 51, the post-anniversary season of\u00a0SNL\u00a0looks like a bit of a bloodbath, and that\u2019s because it kinda is. And that may be by design.<\/p>\n Before the first bit of the drip drip drip of cast exits started to come through, creator Lorne Michaels<\/a> warned that this could be the case. He talked to Puck<\/a> last week and explained his rationale for making big swings in the cast changes this year.<\/p>\n Season 50\u2019s cast had some exits as well \u2014 Punkie Johnson<\/a>, Molly Kearney<\/a>, and Chloe Troast<\/a> \u2014 but Michaels said that because he was planning an anniversary event for the landmark year, \u201cthere couldn\u2019t be those kind of disruptions or anything that was going to take the focus off.\u201d So most of the major players came back.\u00a0However, for Season 51, he admitted to feeling pressure to reinvent the show.<\/p>\n So far, that has included the departures of Devon Walker<\/a>, Emil Wakim<\/a>, Michael Longfellow<\/a>, and the most veteran woman castmate Heidi Gardner<\/a>, plus writers Celeste Yim and Rosebud Baker<\/a>. The sheer volume of exits has given many people pause about what\u2019s really happening. On Longfellow\u2019s Instagram post about his exit, for example, Johnson (who had some experience in this department) wrote, \u201cwtf is happening\u2026 This is like the departed.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the writing has been on the wall for a while as far as some long-timers of the show have been concerned. Back in May, record-setter Kenan Thompson<\/a> told Page Six<\/a> that he expected the show\u2019s cast to be upended ahead of Season 51. \u201cIt feels like there\u2019s maybe, possibly, a lot of change next year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Plus, Gardner herself indicated that she might be ready to follow the exit sign out, saying on a podcast<\/a>, \u201cI will say the only thing that I\u2019ve started to feel a little bit is just sketch fatigue, or idea fatigue. At this point, after doing Groundlings and SNL for so long, I\u2019m, like, \u2018I\u2019ve written a lot of sketches.’\u201d<\/p>\n There have been other\u00a0SNL stars who\u2019ve indicated that they might be done<\/a> ahead of Season 51 as well, but their fates remain unclear as of this writing.<\/p>\n In other words, even though it seems like\u00a0a lot of\u00a0SNL stars have been wiped from the cast list for\u00a0SNL Season 51, it\u2019s not that terribly unexpected.<\/p>\n