Stephen Colbert closed out the late-night show he hosted for nearly 11 years with a buoyant, theatrical finale that mixed music, comedy and a healthy dose of spectacle. He invited the audience, crew and a parade of friends onstage to dance as he sang Hello, Goodbye alongside former Beatle Paul McCartney. Elvis Costello and band leaders Louis Cato and Jon Batiste joined the moment, and Colbert and McCartney ceremonially switched off the lights at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater — the very stage where the Beatles made their American debut in 1964 and where The Late Show franchise played to live audiences for decades.
The sendoff leaned into whimsy: visual effects made the show and the theater appear to be sucked into a giant green interdimensional wormhole — at times resembling the CBS logo — as guests offered warm tributes, jokes and shared memories. Earlier in the episode Colbert welcomed his late-night colleagues Jon Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel — the group known, in mock-heroic fashion, as “Strike Force Five.” “We came to say, we’re going to miss you,” Kimmel told the host. Meyers quipped, “Yeah, without you. Where will Americans turn to see a middle-aged white man make jokes about the news?”
CBS announced last July that it was canceling Colbert’s top-rated late-night program, saying the move was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” Colbert’s colleagues, fans and some observers argued the decision was also retaliation for his frequent criticism of former President Trump. The cancellation came as Paramount Global, parent of CBS, sought Federal Communications Commission approval for its reported $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media — a business context many saw as relevant to the network’s programming choices.
Given months to wrap up the series, Colbert largely kept up his irreverent monologues through the end, though his final opening did not focus on politics. Supportive voices included Bruce Springsteen, who told Colbert on the eve of the last show, “You’re the first guy in America who lost his job because the president can’t take a joke.” Guests on the final broadcast ranged from Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Tim Meadows and Ryan Reynolds to longtime friends and mentors.
Jon Stewart appeared and offered a steadying perspective as the pair faced the faux wormhole. “The only choice you have is how to walk through it,” Stewart said. “You can go in kicking and screaming. Or you can do what you’ve done for the past 30 years when faced with something dark: you stare it down and you can laugh.” Earlier in the week Stewart had quoted advice David Letterman once gave him: “Don’t confuse cancellation with failure.”
Letterman himself turned up for one of Colbert’s final shows and joined him on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater for a bit of gleeful destruction — tossing set chairs, a cake and watermelons onto a target painted with the CBS logo. “You can take a man’s show, but you can’t take a man’s voice,” Letterman told Colbert.
Colbert’s departure also marks the end of the Late Show era that began with Letterman in 1993 and continued through Colbert’s decade-plus run. The finale underscored shifting habits in how audiences consume late-night material — increasingly through online clips rather than tuning in live — and came amid industrywide change, including regulatory scrutiny affecting other networks.
On the industry side, CBS said the Late Show set will be donated to the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, a nod to Colbert’s roots performing with The Second City. CBS plans to fill the timeslot with Comics Unleashed, a syndicated comedy program leased to the network by media executive Byron Allen; CBS described the replacement as nonpolitical.
As for what’s next for Colbert, he has kept plans modest: attending his brother’s wedding and working on a passion project, co-writing a script for an upcoming Lord of the Rings movie with his son, Peter McGee. He also launched a TikTok account during the week of his finale.
The night closed on a celebratory, oddly sentimental note: friends and fans danced onstage, Colbert received a standing ovation and, after the music faded and the lights were dimmed, the host walked off with the theater’s lights going out behind him — a theatrical, fitting curtain on a singular late-night run.