Considering all of the chaos that's occurred over at Jeopardy! regarding its stop-and-go hunt for a new permanent host, a lot of viewers are no doubt wondering when the hosting status quo might change for Wheel of Fortune. Pat Sajak and Vanna White have been spearheading the daily game show together for going on 39 years, and while it may seem like they're permanent fixtures that will lead the series eternally, that's obviously not very realistic. Both Sajak and White recently renewed their contracts to take them through the 2024 season, but Sajak has a general idea of when he'd like to step down.
In talking about the recently premiered Season 39 and its new elements — including the music that may or may not have riled up some fans out there — Pat Sajak gave Entertainment Tonight both an amusing answer and a slightly more legitimate response when asked how long he'll be sticking around. In his words:
We're certainly closer to the end than the beginning. I'd like to leave before people tune in and look at me and say, 'Ooh, what happened to him?'
By all means, while Pat Sajak has obviously aged over the years, he doesn't look too far off from how he looked whenever he was a slightly more fresh-faced Wheel of Fortune frontman in the '80s. As opposed to, say, Alex Trebek's wildly different looks across his Jeopardy! stretch. It's almost too bad we didn't get a good year of Wheel of Sajak boasting a prominent mustache. Or maybe it's better we didn't. Who knows? So barring his face falling off of his skull in the next few years, we likely won't have to worry about fan horror coming into play.
Now serving as a consulting producer, a promotion that came with the recent contract extensions, the 74-year-old Pat Sajak did offer an endgame hypothesis for his and Vanna White's Wheel of Fortune regime, sharing this exchange with his co-presenter:
SAJAK: I wouldn't bet on seeing us in, like, 10 years, I would say. [To White] Is that fair?WHITE: [Smiles] Probably, yes.
So as it stands, we may only have less than a decade left to watch Pat Sajak and Vanna White guiding contestants through puzzles and spins and (sometimes truly terrible) guesses, oh my. But as long as those years are filled with more hilarious flubs and silly moments like the one below, they'll be just as fun as everything that came before .
Let's not forget that Pat Sajak and Vanna White are also doubling down on their duties for the upcoming second season of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, which will debut on ABC on Sunday, September 26, at 8:00 p.m. ET, right in the midst of the 2021 Fall TV season's biggest premiere weeks.
