The long-running CBS late night franchise came to an end with what the host called a 'normal' broadcast, but the surreal, Easter egg-filled program was stuffed with bold-faced names, with one key exception.
, he presided over the final episode of the CBS late night show, with Paul McCartney serving as his final guest after, Colbert joked, histeam had planned to do a “huge special” for the final episode, but then they realized that “every episode is special.
” “The best way to celebrate is to do a normal show and talk about the national conversation,” Colbert said. Carrie Preston on Her 'Elsbeth' "Miracle," Getting More Kaya After That Season 3 Finale and Patti LuPone Making Her CryWith that, the host launched into a news-focused monologue, frequently interrupted by star cameos from the audience, including from Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd and Tim Meadows.
Unexpectedly, though the monologue was remarkably light on politics for a show that’s become known for its cutting comedy about President Donald Trump and other political figures. The closest Colbert came to mentioning the president was when he and McCartney were talking and McCartney recalled how the makeup artists at the Ed Sullivan Show put so much makeup on that they looked “bright orange,” the Beatles star said.
The Late Show ‘s signature “news you missed” segment, “Meanwhile,” of stars in the audience thinking they’d be Colbert’s final guest, including Ryan Reynolds. Colbert then began to introduce his “infallible” final guest, the pope, who he’s long said he was still desperate to have on the show.
However, Colbert was told by one of his crewmembers, the pope was refusing to come out of his dressing room because they got him the wrong snacks. With that, the show cut to the outside of a dressing room door as an arm draped in papal vestments threw hot dogs out into the hallway, insisting he wouldn’t take the stage.
The two settled in for an interview but after a couple of segments of conversation, Colbert stepped away to address the “technical difficulties” plaguing the show up until that point as the sound and visual display around him kept glitching. As he walked backstage, he saw a giant “interdimensional wormhole,” as he was informed by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who showed up in yet another cameo, saying that the fact that his show was No. 1 in late night but also got canceled “created a rift in the comedy-variety talk continuum and if it grows all of late night comedy could be destroyed.
” With that, Tyson was swallowed up in the wormhole but Colbert was soon joined by his fellow late night hosts — Jon Stewart and the Strike Force Five team of John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon — for some sage advice.
“The hole’s here but you can’t ignore it,” Stewart said, arguing that the real question is “how to go through it,” suggesting that Colbert persevere in the face of doom. Oliver added, “Eventually the hole’s going to come for all of us. ” And though it looks like the end, it’s not. As the Strike Force Five team reminded him, he didn’t stop doing his show after the 2016 election or during the COVID-19 pandemic.
So the hosts temporarily banished the wormhole. But alas when Colbert returned to the stage, so did the wormhole, this time at the top of the Ed Sullivan theater, sucking up the studio, his audience, band leader Louis Cato and Colbert himself. And that wasn’t the end of the wormhole. After Colbert joined Elvis Costello and Jon Batiste for a performance, McCartney took the stage with Colbert and theband to perform the Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye.
” Then, McCartney turned off the lights at the Ed Sullivan theater and the wormhole sucked up the whole building, leaving just a small replica of it in a snow globe, playing thetheme song, on the New York City sidewalk. Colbert’s dog, Benny, was sniffing around it as Colbert could be heard off camera saying “Come on, Benny.
”Despite CBS’ claim that the cancellation was a “purely financial decision” amid a challenging linear TV environment, with parent company Paramount adding that the move was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters,” there’s been widespread speculation about possible other reasons for the end of‘s end, Colbert criticized CBS parent company Paramount’s controversial $16 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by Trump over a“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” the president wrote the day after the cancellation was announced.
“His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. ”In that speech, Colbert said that while he had initially set out to make a late night show about love, he later realized “we were doing a late night comedy show about loss. That’s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense you might be losing it.
Ten years later, in September 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately. God bless America. Stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor. ”“There is a reason why people believe that — the network had clearly already done it once by cutting that $16 million check ,” Colbert told.
“Me being canceled reinforced a narrative that CBS already had a nimbus of knee-bending that they had created around themselves, because even their lawyers said there was no reason to cut the check, and then they did and gave no rationale for why they changed their minds, and then suddenly they got their broadcast license. ”Colbert’s next endeavor is taking the avid J.R.
R. Tolkien fan to Middle-earth as he co-writes an upcoming installment of theto the best of his ability before he considered other future moves. Still he told fellow late night host Seth Meyers in January that he and his longtime collaborators, many of whom work with him atThe Late Show wraps, though, Colbert and his family, all of whom were at the Ed Sullivan Theater for his final episode, will head down to D.C. for his brother’s wedding.
He celebrated his son’s college graduation this past Monday as well. Carrie Preston on Her ‘Elsbeth’ “Miracle,” Getting More Kaya After That Season 3 Finale and Patti LuPone Making Her CrySam Levinson Warns ‘Euphoria’ Fans to Watch Final Episodes “the Moment They Drop” to Avoid Spoilers and Declares Season 3 “Hands Down Our Best”Trey Parker Admits “It’s Scarier” to Do ‘South Park’ in the Trump Era: “That Group Has a Military”The Hollywood Reporter is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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