What To Know
- John Oliver returned for the Season 13 premiere of Last Week Tonight with a rapid-fire recap of major news events from the past three months.
- He humorously highlighted bizarre stories such as a new coal mascot, a stolen walrus penis, and Miss Norway’s salmon dress at the Miss Universe pageant.
- Oliver also covered Winter Olympics drama, focusing on Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid’s public cheating confession and French gold medalist Julia Simon’s credit card theft scandal.
John Oliver recapped the last three months in the opening monologue of the Season 13 premiere of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. And he had a lot to catch up on.
On Sunday, February 15, the late-night host, 48, returned from his show’s holiday hiatus. “We’ve been off for the last three months, and we have missed a lot — and I mean a lot, a lot,” Oliver, 48, began.
Over the next five minutes, he rapid-fire listed major events that happened since November, when the Season 12 finale of Last Week Tonight aired.
“Trump was awarded the first ever FIFA Peace Prize just weeks before kidnapping the president of Venezuela,” Oliver shared. “The latest batch of Epstein files got released. Measles numbers exploded across multiple states, which I know seems bad. But to be fair, not if you’re the measles.”
He continued, “[President Donald] Trump repeatedly threatened to take over Greenland — or, as he now seems to refer to it about half the time, Iceland. The Beckham family went through some s***, and Trump said this while promoting whole milk in the Oval Office.”
The late-night host then played a clip of the POTUS explaining that the “whole” in “whole milk” begins with a “W.”
Oliver conceded, “I mean, I guess he’s right there, it is actually whole milk with a ‘W,’ not hole milk. Which I know sounds like nonsense, but it’s actually the official beverage of the absolutely real new Netflix show Detective Hole starring — and this is true — Detective Harry Hole. Apparently, it’s based on a Norwegian series of novels, and it’s supposed to be pronounced Hu-la. But respectfully, nah, Norway, it’s pronounced hole.”
Additionally, he noted that Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York mayor, and Eric Adams launched a meme coin that he claimed would “fight antisemitism.”
“And the Department of the Interior announced a new coal mascot called Coalie, which really felt like an attempt to bait us into coming back early,” Oliver added. “It wasn’t even the only time that we were tempted to do that, because there was also the headline ‘Beloved walrus penis stolen from New Jersey cheesesteak icon. Owner is blubbering mad.’ You don’t think if we’d been on-air back then, we’d have tracked down that walrus penis and donated the proceeds to Doctors Without Borders or something? Are you new here?”
In the opening monologue, Oliver also showed a video of Miss Norway, Leonora Lysglimt-Rødland, wearing a dress that looked like a salmon in the Miss Universe pageant.
“That happened. Miss Norway wore this as a costume,” he said. “And I guess to be fair, it does sum up Norway nicely in an image. I mean, what else was she gonna dress up as? Detective Harry Hole?”
To wrap up the recap, Oliver explained drama related to the Winter Olympics, including Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid confessing publicly that he cheated on his girlfriend after winning a bronze medal.
@thetelegraph Ex-girlfriend of cheating Olympian: I am struggling to forgive him Sturla Holm Lægreid, who won bronze in Tuesday’s 20km individual race, revealed during a tearful post-race interview that he had been unfaithful to his girlfriend but that she was still the love of his life Click the link to find out about his ex-girlfriends reaction #WinterOlympics #milanocortina2026 ♬ original sound – The Telegraph
“Wow. That is usually not the kind of declaration of love you see in public,” he pointed out. “It is why stadium jumbotrons generally say things like, ‘Will you marry me?’ and not ‘Sorry I f***ed your sister, are we cool?’”
“The point is, that guy won a bronze medal, then immediately begged for his ex-girlfriend of six months to forgive him and seemed optimistic that it might work,” Oliver continued. “There is definitely not [a happy ending for the athlete] because she’s since put out a statement declining to reunite and saying, ‘We have had contact and he is aware of my opinions on this’ — a response that could only be more brutal if she delivered it after winning silver in his event.”
After noting that Lægreid was banned from the biathlon World Cup after accidentally shooting his gun in the team’s hotel, Oliver brought up another Olympic athlete, who won gold in the women’s biathlon 15km individual race.
“Meanwhile, in the women’s competition this year, Julia Simon competed for France despite the fact that last October, a French court gave her a three-month suspended jail sentence after she admitted to stealing the credit cards of her teammate and an unnamed French staffer and making $2,300 in online purchases,” he revealed. “She apparently said, ‘I can’t explain this. I don’t remember doing it. I can’t make sense of it. And I don’t know how this story could get any juicier unless she turns out to be the woman that that guy cheated on his girlfriend.
Oliver concluded, “Because at that point, someone please call Andy Cohen, we have a new hit Bravo series on our hands,” showing a title card mock-up of a show called The Real Biathletes of Milan.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Sundays, 11/10c, HBO
