SNL sent Cecily Strong's Cathy Anne to prison and sang 'Blue Christmas' for the beloved cast member

SNL bid farewell to a real one.

On last night's Christmas episode, Cecily Strong took her final bow as a cast member of the long-running sketch series, reviving her windbreaker warrior Cathy Anne while host Austin Butler serenaded her, in his best Elvis vibrato, with "Blue Christmas."

Will Heath/NBC via Getty

Strong joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player in 2012, and the following year co-anchored Weekend Update with Seth Meyers and later Colin Jost. After asking to be moved from the Update desk so she could be featured in more sketches, Michael Che joined Jost in 2014, and Strong went on to make her mark on SNL as one of its best players.

Over her 11-season run, Strong put her stamp on a handful of memorable characters including The Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation with at a Party; Gemma, the aspiring but untalented Brit pop star; and Cathy Anne, Michael Che's drug-addicted, chain-smoking (if she can just get her cigarette lit) "neighbor."

Strong trotted out Cathy Anne for one last rodeo because, turns out, she's going to prison. But she's not too sad about it since she's got two friends on the inside — cut to mugshots of Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon, who both left SNL last season. Cathy Anne also mentions hosting Update with Jost, then when describing her time on the show, Strong breaks and gets visibly emotional.

"I feel really lucky that I got to have so many of the best moments of my life in this place with these people that I love so much," Strong says, before slipping back into character. "But I guess take that with a grain of salt being that I have addiction issues."

As EW SNL recapper Andy Hoglund noted, though Cathy Anne's bit was "cute,"  it didn't "eclipse Strong's Jeanine Pirro swimming in wine" and slurring the lyrics to "My Way." Continued Hoglund, "That was the right moment to go, and a fun, dramatic lasting image."

Strong does, however, pay a bit of a tribute to that admittedly untouchable high with Cathy Anne slurring, "I did it highchair!" And she finally got her cigarette lit.

There was some more singing in the final sketch of the night and the year. During a Radio Shack team meeting, manager Frank Lasagna (Kenan Thompson) celebrates employee Cecily's last day on the job.

"Honestly, I don't think that Radio Shack would've survived this long without Cecily," says Lasagna. "Every time she came to work, she had a new character, or a new accent, or a new impression that would just blow you away."

While that sounds like a fun, or exhausting, Radio Shack (do they still have those?), Frank Lasagna is clearly talking about SNL and how much he and everyone else will miss Strong being on it. Noted Elvis impersonator Austin Butler then comes out and sings "Blue Christmas," and before long the entire cast is onstage singing farewell to, with this episode, Saturday Night Live's longest-running female cast member.

Now SNL doesn't bring out the musical goodbyes for just anyone, so you know Cecily Strong will be missed.

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