‘The Masked Singer’: Joel McHale Takes a Few Digs at Raccoon After His Week 3 Performance

Joel McHale might have made the joke of the night on The Masked Singer‘s upcoming episode. A preview published by Entertainment Tonight gives fans a taste of McHale as a guest panelist, and it looks like he keeps the whole crowd laughing. The actor lands one solid punchline on The Raccoon.

“Well, I’m speechless. Much like The Raccoon was during his song,” McHale says after the Raccoon finishes singing “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. The other panelists, the crowd and the performer all laugh uproariously, interrupted only by Jenny McCarthy saying: “Don’t make fun of my boyfriend!” McHale continues: “So, I’m in trouble. And I can’t believe Mickey Rourke is back.”

The Raccoon’s gravelly voice has drawn plenty of comparisons to Rourke already, although Rourke was a guest in Season 4 as The Gremlin. That means someone else is under the mask and is behind Raccoon’s debut performance of “Wild Thing” by The Troggs.

In some ways, the Raccoon has been the most frustrating contestant for fans, who feel like they should be able to recognize his distinctive voice even with the mask. His clues and backstory also indicate that he should be more familiar — in his introduction, he said: “Sometimes, to get the happy ending, you have to go through hell first.” This was followed by images of the Racoon in a jail cell.

“In my darkest days, I faced death. In an effort to stay sane, I recited my favorite story, The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” he said. “I was Quasimodo, locked away. The only difference was, he was innocent, and I was actually a monster. I promised God that if I got a second chance at life, I’d only do good. And I’m still fulfilling that promise to this day.”

So far, fans have been pretty confident in guessing who the Raccoon really is, but he will need to be unmasked first to be sure. As Week 3 of The Masked Singer Season 5 picks up, fans are developing more and more theories on each contestant, even with months left to go before they are all unmasked.

The Masked Singer airs on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. The series will be without its usual host Nick Cannon again this week. There is still no telling when Cannon will return from his COVID-19 recovery hiatus.