Stephen Colbert has issued his final farewell to The Late Show — but not without taking aim at CBS.
The network announced the cancellation of the long-running Late Show franchise last July, just days after Colbert criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for reaching a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over accusations that its newsmagazine series 60 Minutes deceptively edited a 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
The last moments of Colbert’s final broadcast included a performance of The Beatles’ hit song “Hello, Goodbye” led by special guest Paul McCartney. Colbert, who was singing along at a microphone, was joined onstage by his family and what appeared to be staffers on the long-running CBS show.
As the song continued in the background, Colbert and McCartney were then seen standing backstage beside an electrical box and lever labeled “Late Show.” After Colbert gave McCartney the nod, the Beatles singer pulled the lever — effectively pulling the plug on the power to historic Ed Sullivan Theater that housed the late night show, in a seeming jab at CBS canceling the series.
In an animated effect, the entire building was then zapped by a green light — an extension of an earlier sketch that saw Colbert speaking to Jon Stewart, followed by fellow late night hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Myers and John Oliver — and turned into a small snow globe left on a New York City street.
The ending followed a conversation between Colbert and Stewart about the future of late night using the metaphor of an animated giant green hole that appeared on the show.
“Don’t you see this hole isn’t hole, it’s a metaphor,” Stewart told Colbert. “The point is the hole’s here. You can’t ignore it. The only choice you have now is how you choose to walk through it. 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.”
Colbert was then joined by Fallon, Kimmel, Myers, and Oliver to continue the conversation.
More to follow
