For more than a decade, Stephen Colbert turned late-night television into something stranger, sharper, warmer, angrier, sillier, and at times far more emotionally honest than anybody expected when he inherited The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2015.
On Thursday night, that run officially came to an end.
And somehow, fittingly, the finale involved Paul McCartney, a fake pope cancellation, an interdimensional wormhole, Jon Stewart pep talks, Beatles songs, a snow globe version of the Ed Sullivan Theater, and one final reminder that Colbert always understood late-night wasn’t just about jokes. It was about companionship.
CBS may have canceled the show nine months ago, but Colbert refused to turn the finale into a funeral.
Instead, he called it a “normal” episode.
“The best way to celebrate is to do a normal show and talk about the national conversation,” Colbert told viewers during the opening monologue.
Of course, “normal” in Colbert’s terms meant surprise appearances from Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Ryan Reynolds, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the entire Strike Force Five crew, and McCartney himself.
The finale was notably lighter on direct politics than many expected, especially given how aggressively Colbert had skewered Donald Trump throughout the latter half of his tenure. Trump’s name was never even mentioned directly during the final broadcast.
At the end, Colbert joined Elvis Costello and former bandleader Jon Batiste for a performance before McCartney took the stage with the host and the Late Show band to perform The Beatles’ Hello, Goodbye.
But as the Hey Jude hitmaker turned off the lights in the theatre, the wormhole sucked up the building, leaving a tiny replica in a snowglobe on the sidewalk as the show’s theme song played. Colbert’s dog, Benny, sniffed around the trinket and the host could be heard saying off camera: “Come on, Benny”.
That restraint didn’t stop Trump from weighing in afterward.
Just before 2 a.m., the president posted a blistering Truth Social message celebrating Colbert’s departure, calling the host “a total jerk” and claiming “you could take any person off of the street and they would be better.” The remarks echoed years of Trump attacks aimed at Colbert, whose nightly monologues became some of the sharpest political comedy on television during the Trump era.
But honestly, the finale itself made those attacks feel small.
Because what Colbert built was bigger than partisan insult comedy. Yes, he was political. Fiercely so. But the real secret of The Late Show under Colbert was that it was never just about politics. It was about processing collective anxiety in real time. The Trump years. COVID. division. grief. absurdity. exhaustion. Fear disguised as jokes.
At one point during the finale, Colbert reflected on the show’s mission, dating back to The Colbert Report. “We were here to feel the news with you,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”
That line may end up being the defining thesis of his late-night career.
Unlike many hosts who approached politics from a safe, ironic distance, Colbert often let viewers see the emotional toll beneath the punchlines. Sometimes angry. Sometimes wounded. Sometimes openly heartbroken. And in an era where cynicism became America’s default setting, Colbert stubbornly kept trying to argue for empathy, decency, and hope without pretending things were fine.
That balance is hard. Harder than people give late-night hosts credit for.
Especially when the economics of the format itself are collapsing.
CBS maintained the cancellation was purely financial, tied to the increasingly brutal economics of linear television. But speculation never fully disappeared, especially after Paramount’s controversial $16 million settlement involving Trump and 60 Minutes.
Colbert himself acknowledged why audiences were suspicious. “There is a reason why people believe that,” he recently told The Hollywood Reporter.
Still, by the time Thursday’s finale arrived, Colbert seemed less interested in litigating his ending than celebrating the people who made the ride possible.
He called the show “the joy machine.”
And maybe that’s ultimately what viewers will miss most.
Not just the monologues. Not just the political satire. Not just the celebrity interviews or musical bits or “Meanwhile” segments. But the feeling that every night somebody smart, deeply weird, wildly overprepared, and genuinely compassionate was sitting behind that desk trying to make sense of the chaos alongside you.
Late-night television will continue. It always does.
But it’s hard not to feel like Thursday marked the end of a very specific era of television, one where intelligence, theatricality, Catholic guilt, Tolkien references, existential dread, and absolute nonsense somehow coexisted in the same hour.
And honestly? There probably isn’t another host quite like Stephen Colbert coming down the pipeline anytime soon.
The Geek is a working screenwriter, director and screenwriting instructor.
REELated:
The Boys finale teaser promises total carnage
