‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Finale Recap

Stephen Colbert said goodbye to The Late Show after more than 10 years and more than 1,800 episodes.

The comedian kicked off his final show Thursday with an earnest piece to camera before Paul McCartney joined as his final guest after the likes of Bryan Cranston, Ryan Reynolds, Paul Rudd, Tim Meadows and Tig Notaro offered to help.

McCartney was his sole guest on the final-ever Late Show, but the CBS series packed its finale with more guests including Colbert’s late-night peers John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Andy Cohen as well as Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Elvis Costello.

“This show… I want you to know this show has been a joy for us to do for you,” Colbert started. “In fact, we call this show The Joy Machine. We call it The Joy Machine because to do this many shows it has to be a machine, but the thing is, if you choose to do with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears, and I cannot adequately explain to you what the people who work here have done for each other, and how much we mean to each other.”

He referenced his old show on Comedy Central. “On night one of The Colbert Report, back in the day, I said, ‘Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you’. And I realized pretty soon in this job that our job over here was different. We were here to feel the news with you, and I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt [the news] and I just want to let all y’all know, in here and out there, how important you’ve been to what we have done. The energy that you’ve given us, we sincerely need that to have done the best possible show we could have for you for the last 11 years.”

Before joking about OnlyFans, Colbert noted the history of the Ed Sullivan Theater. “We’ve been honored to have been just a small part of it, Nichols and May played on the stage. The Beatles made their American debut here, and, backstage, Elvis used the bathroom and didn’t die,” he added.

Colbert has been on an elongated goodbye tour since CBS made the decision to axe his show and the entire late-night franchise 10 months ago.

Canceled three weeks before David Ellison officially took control of Paramount, the network stressed that it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and “is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” But since the cancellation came days after Colbert called Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement of Donald Trump’s lawsuit a “big fat bribe,” it’s been hard for many to believe the two things were unrelated.

The Late Show began in August 1993 with David Letterman as host, when he moved over from NBC after he didn’t get The Tonight Show gig. Letterman retired from the show in May 2015, and Colbert, who had previously starred on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, took over in September 2015.

Star Cameos

During Colbert’s monologue tonight, there were a number of celebrity cameos including Cranston, Rudd and Meadows.

Cranston started things off by asking if he wanted a “surprise celebrity cameo popping up out of nowhere.” “No, Bryan, those always feel kind of forced,” Colbert replied.

“Maybe I could be your last guest,” the Breaking Bad star added. “That would be great, Bryan. The thing is, we already have a pretty special one lined up,” Colbert replied.

Next up was Rudd, who started interrupting the host.

“I’m just curious when our interview starts? I have an extremely long poem I want to recite, and I don’t want to run out of time,” Rudd said. The I Love You Man star added that he’d brought a gift, which turned out to be five bananas rather than a gold watch.

Finally, it was Colbert’s old Second City pal Meadows. “I was just explaining to Paul Rudd that for your last guest, you wanted someone you go back with, so we could talk about the good old days when you and I were doing Second City together,” the Mean Girls star said. “It’s not you either, Tim,” Colbert replied.

Notaro also showed up after the commercial break but she didn’t think she’d be a guest.

“I just like to be at historic events. I was at the Obama inauguration, the moon landing and whatever this is,” she joked.

“I mean, it’s nice of you to be here to support me for my last show,” Colbert replied.

“This is your last show?” she asked. “How did you not know that?” “I have a very full life, Stephen.”

“Here’s the deal,” added Colbert. “It’s our last show because we were canceled, and I don’t really want to talk about it right now. We’ll get into it during my interview as the last guest.”

That last guest was not Reynolds, either.

“Ryan, it’s great to see you, but I hate to tell you, buddy, you’re not my last guest,” Colbert said.

“Ouchy,” the Deadpool star said. “Okay. Well, you know, in that case, I’m just happy to be here, and pay my respects to the one of the world’s greatest entertainers on his last night at the Ed Sullivan Theater.”

Colbert looked pleased. “I was talking about your keyboardist, Corey Bernhard,” Reynolds deadpanned.

No Pope, But Someone From A Band “More Popular Than Jesus”

Before introducing his final guest, Colbert referenced the rumor (or wish) that Pope Leo XIV would be his final interview.

“My guest tonight is not just perfect, he is in fact infallible, please welcome all the way from Vatican…” he started.

The final guest was, as revealed by Deadline earlier today, in fact Paul McCartney.

“I was just in the area, I was doing some errands,” McCartney joked before giving Colbert a framed photo of The Beatles playing the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1964. “You’re better than The Beatles,” Colbert joked about the inscription.

Colbert asked the musician what he remembers of that day. He noted that he can still hear the girls screaming on the balcony and that Sullivan was a “really cool guy.” “We’d never been to America. We come here, and we people said this is like the biggest show,” he said. “It was fantastic.”

McCartney then got a political dig in.

“America’s where all the music we loved came from, all the rock and roll, the blues, and the whole thing, even going back to Fred Astaire, it was all from America. So, that’s what we thought, America was just the land of the free, the greatest democracy… Still is.”

The rest of the McCartney interview seemed like most of Colbert’s usual interviews, with the musician plugging his new record The Boys of Dungeon Lane, telling stories of growing up in Liverpool, telling Apple’s Tim Cook off for his iPhone updates and talking about Paul Mescal playing him in Sam Mendes’ upcoming series of Beatles movies.

Colbert asked McCartney if he had any rituals from when he’s done with a show.

“Yeah, we normally sort of get on a bus and do what we call a runner, and I have a cheese and pickle sandwich,” he said.

A Black Hole Full Of Late-Night Hosts

In a pre-recorded piece tonight, Colbert found a black (or green) hole.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson told him it was an interdimensional worm hole.

“It’s a huge problem, you see, the fabric of the universe is underpinned by an immutable set of physical laws. Two contradictory realities cannot co-exist without rupturing the space-time continuum,” the scientist said. “Well, for instance, if a show is No. 1 on late-night and it also gets canceled.”

“They canceled Gutfeld,” said Colbert.

“So your cancellation has created a width in the comedy variety talk continuum and if it grows all of late-night television could be destroyed.”

Then it was Jon Stewart’s turn, who said that he was there on behalf of Paramount. “They wanted me to read this statement. I’ve gotta do what they say because you know I’m not the one who got canceled for stealing printer cartridges,” The Daily Show host joked.

“Paramount strongly believes in covering both sides of any black hole that is swallowing everything we know and love, and a coverage must also include the positive aspects of the insatiable emptiness,” he read before Watch What Happens Live’s Cohen was swept into the hole.

Then Colbert’s Strike Force Five friends Meyers, Oliver, Kimmel and “Handsome” Jimmy Fallon showed.

“We came to say we’re gonna miss you. Late-night is not gonna be the same without you,” said Kimmel. “Without you, where will Americans turn to see a middle-aged white man make jokes about the news,” added Meyers.

“Actually, one of these holes opened at my show last year, but it went away after about three days,” Kimmel joked.

“At some point, this may come for all of our shows, but Stephen, what’s important to remember is tonight it is gonna eat you,” added Oliver.

A Final Musical Performance

Colbert closed out the show with some music.

Costello turned up to play “Jump Up,” a track from 1977 with Colbert singing alongside his former bandleader Jon Batiste on piano and his current bandleader Louis Cato joining Costello on guitar.

Then it was the show’s final ever musical performance. McCartney played The Beatles’ 1967 single “Hello, Goodbye” (“You say, ‘Goodbye’/and I say, ‘Hello, hello, hello’ ”) before the audience and Colbert’s friends and family joined him on stage.

It was McCartney, in the end, that pulled the plug on The Late Show, forever.