It's Halloween season once again, and it's no surprise that Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are back at it again!
The couple went all out as they do each year for LIVE with Kelly and Mark's Halloween special, this year airing on Friday, October 30, tapping into the year's most notable pop culture references.
© ABC/LIVE with Kelly and MarkKelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos' LIVE Halloween
This year's celebration, titled "LIVE's Halloween Shockin' Eve" even featured a cameo from Ryan Seacrest. They started the show off playing Yelena Belova and Peter Parker aka Spider-Man from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and things progressed quickly from there.
At one point, Kelly and Mark were in the Traitors castle, with cameos from Andy Cohen and Alan Cumming, with Kelly playing Elizabeth Holmes and Mark as Mark Ballas.
The couple first came out onto the studio floor as Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny from the latter's Super Bowl Halftime Show this February, and even returned as Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon from Christopher Nolan's epic The Odyssey, plus an Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander Heated Rivalry parody.
Among their most transformative costumes, though, was a reference to the Toy Story franchise, with Kelly coming to the stage as cowgirl Jessie, complete with the full outfit, down to the bright red hair aka a long braided wig.
Mark complimented her look by going as Buzz Lightyear, with the full larger-than-life astronaut's suit in green and purple, and the bodysuit that covered his head completely. They finished off the second half of their show with these looks, joined by celebrity guests Lisa Rinna, Jerry O'Connell and Kal Penn for the studio audience's costume contest.
© ABC/LIVE with Kelly and MarkWhat Kelly and Mark think of their Halloween transformations
While the pair are more than happy to engage with the biggest and most talked-about moments of each year in costume, that doesn't stop them from needing to first figure out what any of it even means.
"As we get older, we don't know what the hell is going on," Mark quipped to USA Today, with Kelly also adding: "Ninety percent of what we were, we spent screaming, 'What are we?'"
© InstagramHowever, prep work on the show begins early…an entire year early, in fact, with executive producer Michael Gelman telling the outlet: "We start working on the show literally November 1."
"The day after the old Halloween show and collecting things that are building in pop culture, and sometimes we're changing things up to the very last minute because things are happening or becoming talked about."
© ABCKelly even got to speak fondly of having her old co-host Ryan back on set for the special. "He is literally like our oldest child," she joked. "So there's very little daylight between us. Working with him again is...it's as if he never left."
