Sweeney did not ask to stop playing Pat on “S.N.L.” But after a 1994 movie based on the character, “It’s Pat,” was a resounding commercial and critical flop, she said, “To me, that was it — it had a natural end.” She left “S.N.L.” that same year.

But the impact of the character has lasted well beyond Sweeney’s time on the show. Soloway said that Pat was emblematic of an era in “S.N.L.” history when the program was tilted toward its male cast members, who often performed in drag, and when it “used gender as a way to say, A, we don’t really need women around to make women, and, B, we’re going to make fun of how ugly we are when we’re dressed as them.”

Soloway said that Pat had taught a generation of viewers to see gender nonconforming people as outsiders, rather than people who have the right to participate in art, media and comedy.

“We’re looking to be the person who decides what’s funny,” Soloway said. “The dream is to be able to walk into a room, being the subject and not the object — to not be afraid that we’re going to be pointed at for not fitting in.”

Soloway expressed admiration for Sweeney, describing her as “important to the history of comedy and the history of women in comedy.” While Soloway said they wished that Sweeney would offer “a huge blanket apology to all nonbinary people for making fun of their essence,” the fact that she did not, Soloway said, “doesn’t make her a bad person. But times have changed so quickly that even things that seemed right three years ago are no longer right.”