Austin Butler pays tribute to the late mom in the "SNL" monologue

The final show of the season started on a sweet note

"Saturday Night Live" opens the season on a sweet note, with host Austin Butler tenderly recalling watching a late-night comedy show with her late mother, Lori Anne Howell.

"I loved my mom, and some of my favorite memories growing up were watching 'Saturday Night Live' every week," and despite this "extreme shyness," he would do anything to make her laugh – including parodying "Gollum" The Lord of the Rings. ”

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"Now, my mother is not with us anymore, but I've been thinking about her this week, just imagining how proud her son would be standing on this stage now," Butler choked up.

"Any time you see me making funny noises or grimacing, that's for the damn," he said. Butler also joked that he grew up in Anaheim, California, and therefore had a "Southern accent" and said he always sounded like Elvis.

"I do want to solve some problems. Some say that since I played Elvis, my voice has changed — deeper, more like Elvis," he said. "But that's not true, I sound like that all the time, and I can prove it. This is a snippet from my interview 10 years ago. ”

The show switched to an interview promoting "Carrie's Diary," where he had a high voice.

"We've stopped testing," he said.

Butler also said that although last year's holiday show was almost canceled due to COVID, the show has a foolproof plan in place to ensure that doesn't happen again.

Butler also spoke of the "weirdness" of growing up homeschooled with his sister Ashley, who was present to celebrate her birthday. "A lot of people don't know that I started acting as a kid," he said, "learning 'Raging Bull' or 'Taxi Driver.' "Put down the knife, you're scary, Love Carrie," Butler was expressionless.