The CBS mainstay came to an end on Thursday night after a decade with the beloved host

On Thursday, Stephen Colbert, dressed up in a sharp blue suit and tie, stepped before The Late Show audience to deliver his final show.

He started the show speaking directly to the audience, both those who were in the audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater and those watching at home. He said he and the crew called the show “The Joy Machine,” because a show of that size must be a machine — but every night, they chose to make it with joy. “On night one of the Colbert Report,” he said, referring to his long-running Comedy Central talk show, “I said, ‘Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.’ And I realized pretty soon that our job over here was different. We were here to feel the news with you, and I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”

After a clip that stitched together moments of historic talk shows that together bid farewell to the host, Colbert launched into his monologue, but was interrupted by several A-list guests — Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, and Tim Meadows — who each stormed out when Colbert admitted they weren’t going to be his final guests.

Throughout the monologue itself, Colbert played it straight, like a normal episode of the Late Show — doing a First Draft bit where he joked about starting an OnlyFans account, while taking shots at Dr. Brian Christine, a penile implant specialist who’s in charge of the Hantavirus (“[He] hosted a YouTube series on erectile dysfunction called Erection Connection, also the name of a very popular category on Craigslist”); a scandal over the Catholic Church’s “sexy priest” calendar (“I’m getting word that this is the worst scandal to ever hit the Catholic Church”); and how he’s grateful that he won’t have to cover “the inevitable rise of our machine overlords.”

The show marks a sad end to an institution. Last year, in a decision that reverberated across the entertainment world, CBS announced plans to end its late-night talk show, which Colbert had hosted over the past decade. While the network cited financial issues, there was much speculation about political pressure as CBS’ parent company, Paramount, was seeking to complete a merger with Skydance Media that needed government approval at the time.

Colbert, of course, spent years roasting Trump on The Late Show and, just days before news of his cancellation, called out CBS’s parent company Paramount for its $16 million settlement with Trump, a deal that Colbert dubbed “a big, fat bribe.” The next day, Skydance CEO David Ellison met with the FCC to discuss the company’s proposed merger with Paramount. Following the cancellation, the FCC approved the merger.

Last week, Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver released the first episode of their podcast, Strike Force Five since 2023, which came out two days after the late-night hosts reunited on The Late Show. When asked by Fallon if the end of his show had sunk in yet, Colbert replied, “What I’ve said is the rising tide of emotion has reached my chin, and now, the only thing to do is take a deep breath and swim like hell to May 21.”

Colbert began hosting The Late Show in 2015, taking the baton from David Letterman, after hosting the news satire show The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. As of May 21, Colbert had hosted the show for 11 seasons on CBS, filming at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.