Entertainment

Stephen Colbert hosted the final episode of "The Late Show" on Thursday night, welcoming Paul McCartney as his final guest and a number of celebrities to see him off.

By Kevin Slane

May 22, 2026 | 11:41 AM

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Stephen Colbert bid farewell to “The Late Show” for the final time Thursday night, closing down the Ed Sullivan Theater with a series finale that included plenty of sentiment, a touch of the surreal, and plenty of celebrity cameos.

Despite the obvious emotion of losing his late-night show after 11 years thanks to a highly scrutinized decision by CBS’s parent company Paramount, Colbert insisted that the show would largely run as it normally would. 

“At first when we knew this was going to be our last night, we were planning on doing a huge special this evening,” Colbert said. “But the thing is, we like to think that every episode of ‘The Late Show’ is kind of special.”

And though Colbert was interrupted by “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston mere moments after finishing that sentence, the episode did in fact adhere to the same proven formula that has made it the top-rated late-night show on television for years. 

The fixtures of the show — Colbert’s opening monologue, his post-commercial break rundown of the day’s headlines, a celebrity interview, and a musical guest — were all there. But everything about those tried-and-true segments was heightened, beginning with a parade of famous faces all vying to be Colbert’s final guest.

Cranston, Paul Rudd, Tig Notaro, Tim Meadows, and Ryan Reynolds all pleaded their cases, then acted indignant when they were rebuffed.

But the real final guest was a name whose career was irrevocably changed at the Ed Sullivan Theater: Paul McCartney.

McCartney, whose new album “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” will be released May 29, presented Colbert with a signed photo of The Beatles’ first live televised appearance in America on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which took place in the same studio Colbert now occupies.

“To Stephen, you’re better than the Beatles,” Colbert joked, reading McCartney’s signed note.

After interviewing McCartney, things took a turn for the weird. Colbert went backstage to check out some “technical difficulties,” which it turns out were being caused by a wormhole. Also backstage? A bevy of late-night hosts, plus astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

 As Tyson explained, the rift was caused by Colbert’s show ending.

“Two contradictory realities cannot coexist without rupturing the space-time continuum,” Tyson said. For instance, if the show is No. 1 on late-night and it also gets canceled.”

After the wormhole sucked up everyone in the studio (and took viewers to a commercial break), Colbert made a musical return. Sitting in a void with Elvis Costello, former “Late Show” bandleader Jon Batiste and current bandleader Louis Cato played a stripped-down version of Costello’s 1977 song “Jump Up.”

Following that, the musicians returned to the studio, where McCartney and the others played the fitting Beatles track “Hello, Goodbye.”

And that was that. Or it would have been, if Colbert didn’t have one final surreal nod to television history up his sleeve. As he and McCartney bid farewell to the Ed Sullivan Theater, the entire building shrunk into a snow globe, echoing the series finale of “St. Elsewhere.”

With a final inquisitive sniff of the snowglobe from Colbert’s dog, Benny, and a calm but firm command from Colbert (“Come on, Benny. Let’s go.), “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was over.