After a meaningful and prolific goodbye tour, Stephen Colbert said good night to the viewers of “The Late Show” for the last time Thursday night with a perfect episode of television that felt more like a celebration than a funeral. If you thought you were going to make it through“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” series finale without feeling your feelings, then you thought wrong.
The final episode, which aired on CBS and streamed on Paramount+ at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT, was a proper send-off that encompassed the end of an era for Colbert and for the ever-changing landscape of late night television.
Before delivering his monologue, Colbert addressed viewers along with those sitting in the audience inside the Ed Sullivan Theater.
“Folks, we have done over 1,800 of these shows and most nights I come out here I talk to the audience beforehand, and tonight I thought I’d talk to the audience in here and out there at home,” he said. “This show has been a joy for us to do for you. In fact, we call this show the joy machine because to do this many shows, it has to be a machine. But the thing is, if you choose to do it with joy it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.”
The talk show host went on to thank everyone who worked on “The Late Show” as well as the viewers, who he said provided an important energy to do the best possible show they could each night. After a montage of clips featuring iconic late night hosts over the years, Colbert walked on stage for the last time to a standing ovation, joined by his band Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine. When fans yelled out “boo” in response to Colbert saying tonight was his final broadcast, he interrupted them by saying, “No, no. We were lucky enough to be here for the last 11 years … can’t take this for granted,” prompting everyone to clap again.
Instead of putting on a special iteration of the show, Colbert said he and his staff decided to plan tonight’s episode as they always did. It was business as usual as he joked about sinkholes across New York City and updates regarding the hantavirus outbreak, except for when celebrities and friends of Colbert’s Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd and Tim Meadows interrupted his monologue pleading to be his final guest.
“This show ending has one upside: I won’t have to talk about the inevitable rise of the machine overlords,” Colbert joked in his monologue. “A lot of people have been asking me what I plan to do after tonight, and the answer is drugs.”
While CBS and parent company Paramount have maintained the cancellation of “The Late Show” was purely financial since they announced the news last July, the network’s decision came shortly after Colbert criticized the company on air for paying a $16 million settlement to President Trump over a 60 Minutes interview, calling it a “big fat bribe.”
Trump has been vocal about his joy over Colbert’s cancellation, writing on Truth Social that he “absolutely loved” that the late night host was fired. The President has all but waged a war against network late night hosts, having also vehemently encouraged ABC to cancel “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Now without anyone else stepping in to succeed Colbert, “The Late Show’s” timeslot was bought by billionaire Byron Allen, who plans to air his comedy talk show “Comics Unleashed” in its place starting Friday.
It’s hard to ignore this pivotal shift in the landscape of entertainment, media and politics, and what the end of “The Late Show” means for the future of late night television, political satire, and the increasingly blurred line between comedy and power.
In spite of all that, Colbert spent the final weeks of his show doing what he’s always done best: Make people laugh in the face of turmoil and uncertainty. His final week felt like the greatest hits album of his career, including interviews with his fellow late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver, who all rallied around him. Jon Stewart and Steven Spielberg joined him on Tuesday, May 19, along with a special performance by Talking Heads singer David Byrne in which Colbert joined along. Bruce Springsteen performed on Wednesday’s penultimate episode.
Thursday night’s finale was no exception. Colbert leaned into his classic comedic charm, opening up his “Meanwhile” segment of news bits at a rapid fire pace. When discussing the owner of the “Peanuts” catalog suing companies and the U.S. government to stop them from using its music without permission, Colbert’s band started playing music from the soundtrack.
“Oh no, I hope this doesn’t cost CBS any money,” he joked.
Tig Notaro and Ryan Reynolds also made brief appearances from the audience before Colbert did a bit with one of his producers in which they joked about waiting for Pope Leo XIV to come out of his dressing room. Without the Pope being available for Colbert’s final interview, Paul McCartney surprised everyone by joining the talk show host on stage, which was especially meaningful given The Beatles made their American debut on that same stage on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.
As funny as the episode was, it was just as heartfelt. McCartney gifted Colbert with a photograph of The Beatles from that night, then sat down for the show’s final interview. He reminisced about what it was like to be in The Ed Sullivan Theater all those years ago, and Colbert also asked him about his impression of America back then.
“America’s where all the music we loved came from, all the rock and roll, the blues and the whole thing,” McCartney said. “We thought America was the land of the free, the greatest democracy. That was what it was, and still is hopefully.”
“Sure, yeah,” Colbert quipped.
Colbert also brought up the lyrics to McCartney’s “Days We Left Behind,” — “nothing stays the same, no one needs to cry” — and said he’s been thinking about change lately. McCartney confessed he’s not good with change, himself, eliciting laughs when he complained about needing to constantly update his iPhone.
In the middle of his interview with McCartney, the screen behind Colbert intentionally malfunctioned showing static. When he went backstage to check out what was going on, viewers watched a pre-taped segment in which Colbert discovered a giant green, rotating hole that was sucking objects into it, which Neil deGrasse Tyson explained was “a textbook case of an Einstein Rosen bridge, also known as an interdimensional wormhole.” He explained that if a show is number one on late night and it also gets canceled, the two realities can’t exist at once, swallowing all of the matter and anti-matter around it.
It was the perfect skit to beautifully close out “The Late Show,” a brilliant metaphor only Colbert and his talented staff could pull off. After Colbert pushed deGrasse Tyson into the wormhole, joking that it swallowed him “before he could explain why we were wrong about something,” poking fun at CBS, Jon Stewart appeared. Giving Colbert a pep talk and encouraging him to walk through the wormhole amid a series of jokes, Stewart said to his longtime friend and former colleague, “You can go in kicking and screaming or you can do what you’ve done for the past 30 years when you face something dark. You can stare it down and you can laugh.”
It wouldn’t be a late night show finale if the other members of Strike Force Five didn’t show up in solidarity and support of their fellow late night brother in arms. Kimmel, Meyers, Oliver and Fallon also showed up backstage.
“One of these holes opened up at my show last year, but it went away after three days,” Kimmel joked, referencing ABC’s three-day suspension of his show after he made a joke about Charlie Kirk.
Elijah Wood popped in for a quick cameo, highlighting Colbert’s love for “The Lord of the Rings” series, before an apocalyptic scene took place back inside the theater. Everyone was swallowed up by the hole, including Colbert who ended up in a dark, desolate space only surrounded by Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste and Louis Cato. The four of them performed Costello’s “Jump Up,” leaning into the emotion of the ballad.
Panning back to the actual stage, Colbert sang his show off into history alongside McCartney, performing The Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye.” As they performed, “The Late Show” staffers and audience joined in onstage. If there were tears, they weren’t visible to viewers at home; all we saw was pure joy, love and dancing.
While Colbert’s goodbye to late night was filled with jokes at the expense of the network and the current administration in his own tasteful manner, it was also a masterpiece of humor, heart, and an homage to the history of The Ed Sullivan Theater and its cultural significance.
Now that it’s all said and done, what’s most clear about Colbert’s legacy on “The Late Show” is his fearlessness in the face of a crumbling democracy, an administration that rooted for him to fail, and an industry that’s been accused of cowing down to legal and corporate pressure to silence voices just like his. With Colbert now off the air, it’s up to us to carry his torch.
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