Throughout Thursday’s final episode of CBS’s “The Last Show with Stephen Colbert,” a green light appeared behind and around Colbert’s desk accompanied by a static sound, foreshadowing a comedic, sci-fi twist to the show’s swan song, perfectly tuned to Colbert’s interest in science fiction and fantasy.
Eventually Colbert goes backstage to discover a green, swirling interdimensional wormhole, as its described by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“Two contradictory realities cannot exist without rupturing the space-time continuum,” Tyson said. “Like if a show is No. 1 in late night and it gets canceled.”
Then Jon Stewart turned up to read a supposed Paramount statement about “covering both sides of every black hole,” followed by fellow late-night hosts John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
After a “Lord of the Rings” reference and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Elijah Wood cameo, Colbert and everyone else in the theater got sucked into the wormhole when it reappeared in the theater ceiling, depositing Colbert in the dark where he and Louis Cato, Elvis Costello and Jon Batiste jammed on Costello’s “Jump Up.”
It was certainly different from the finale of any other late-night show in American TV history.
Colbert opened his last show with a direct address to the audience in the Ed Sullivan Theater and at home before segueing into clips from what appeared to be every national late-night host who preceded Colbert, from Johnny Carson to Joan Rivers to all the current hosts, a welcome nod to TV history.
Throughout the extended, almost 90-minute episode, celebrity guests popped up in the audience — Bryan Cranston, Paul Ruud, Tim Meadows, Tig Notaro, Ryan Reynolds — many of them comically contending they were there to be Colbert’s final guest.
Colbert feigned that his last guest was going to be Pope Leo XIV but a faux Pope complained about the quality of the hot dog he was given, leading to the arrival of Colbert’s actual last guest, Paul McCartney.
McCartney gifted Colbert a photo of The Beatles’ 1964 performance from Colbert’s stage when it was home to “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Colbert asked McCartney about that experience and the Brit’s first impressions of America.
“The land of the free, the greatest Democracy, that is what it was and still is – hopefully,” McCartney said.
The wormhole tangent began midway through Colbert’s interview with McCartney but after the “Jump Up” jam, the show came back from a commercial break to the still-standing “Late Show” set where McCartney and, eventually, the entire show’s crew and family members, came on stage to sing along to The Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye.”
In the final moments backstage, Colbert gave McCartney the honor of turning off the building’s power, leading the building to be sucked into the wormhole before landing on the ground with a replica of the Ed Sullivan Theater’s exterior captured inside a snow globe, an homage to the ending of NBC’s “St. Elsewhere” that revealed that entire medical drama had been in the imagination of an autistic child.
Colbert’s penultimate episode also proved memorable, from a performance by Bruce Springsteen (who told Colbert, “You are the first guy in America who lost his show because we got a president who cant take a joke”) to a raft of celebrities who came by to turn the tables and ask Colbert questions (Weird Al Yankovic, Jeff Daniels, Aubrey Plaza, Robert DeNiro, former “CBS Evening News” anchor John Dickerson, Martha Stewart, Mark Hamill). In addition, Colbert’s wife, Evie McGee Colbert, made an appearance, asking her husband about his favorite smell. (This entire segment was edited somewhat inelegantly and on Thursday Colbert said an extended version has been posted to youtube.com/colbertlateshow.)
CBS shocked the entertainment industry last summer when it announced the cancellation of “The Late Show,” which began airing in 1993 with David Letterman as host. Colbert took over in 2015 following Letterman’s retirement. CBS said Colbert’s cancellation was “purely a financial decision,” that the network was losing $40 million annually on “The Late Show,” but, apparently, CBS never made an effort to curtail costs and keep “The Late Show” going. (In April Colbert told the New York Times, “Less than two years before they called to say, ‘It’s over,’ they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed.”)
The “Late Show” cancellation, even as it remained the most-watched late-night show, was announced in the midst of an effort to gain government approval from Skydance to buy CBS’s parent company and it came two days after Colbert described CBS’s decision to settle a winnable case brought by President Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris as “a big fat bribe.”
It is true that ratings for late-night shows are down across the board. Many viewers now opt to watch clips the next day on YouTube rather than tune into the linear TV broadcast.
But there’s been another change in late-night. Where once these shows were generally apolitical, mocking politicians as one of a number of regular targets, in the Trump era, “The Late Show” and ABC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel!” became significantly more engaged in politics. (“The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” brought in the most money of the three programs in the 2024-25 TV season, possibly because advertisers prefer to avoid politics and Fallon hews closer to a broader array of topics more consistent with late night tradition.)
At the same time, you can’t blame Colbert for responding to an environment where Trump and his actions made politics the center of attention. Colbert even alluded to this in his final episode, saying, “Our job was to feel the news with you. I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”
When Colbert’s “Late Show” launched in 2015, its ratings quickly fell behind those of “The Tonight Show.” “Late Show” ratings only rebounded in 2017 after Trump became President and Colbert, who always dabbled in political mockery going back to “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” leaned further into political humor. At that point “The Late Show” overtook Fallon in viewers and never looked back.
CBS is already looking ahead.
After canceling “The Late Show” and seemingly giving up on late night by renting out the 11:35 p.m. time period to the apolitical show “Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed,” CBS Entertainment Group president George Cheeks suggested CBS hasn’t thrown in the towel on late night after all – it’s just given up on “The Late Show.”
“I think the reality is that the reach is still there, but the reach is there primarily on YouTube, which is under-monetized,” Cheeks said in April. “So if we’re going to go back in that space, we have to go back in that space with a different financial model.”
Kept/canceled
Hulu renewed “The Testaments” for a second season.
Netflix’s “Emily in Paris” will end with its upcoming sixth season.
Channel surfing
HBO’s “House of the Dragon” will be available to stream on HBO Max in American Sign Language beginning May 29 for season one, June 15 for season two and June 21 with the debut of season three.
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You can reach TV writer Rob Owen at rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow @RobOwenTV on Threads, X/Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky and Facebook. Ask TV questions by email or phone. Please include your first name and location.