![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779589933_374_sddefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt was a big night\u2014and the last night\u2014for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The finale episode on Thursday night featured celebrities like Paul McCartney, Jon Batiste, Elvis Costello, Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Tig Notaro, Ryan Reynolds, Jon Stewart, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Andy Cohen and Elijah Wood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The show had a plot, where the set would eventually get sucked into a \u201cwormhole,\u201d a sort of representation of Colbert\u2019s loss. But it was so Colbert, if you know you know: McCartney was the surprise couch guest for the show and performed \u201cHello, Goodbye\u201d with Louis Cato, Costello and Batiste, and Colbert quoted Gandalf only to have Elijah Wood pop up to say \u201cHey!\u201d His Strike Force Five buddies\u2014Late Night host Seth Meyers, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, Live! host Jimmy Kimmel and The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon\u2013reassembled for the final send off, too.<\/p>\n
It was both a joyful and somber watch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis show has been a joy for us to do for you. In fact, we call this show \u2018The Joy Machine,\u2019\u201d Colbert said during his monologue. \u201cWe call it The Joy Machine because to do this many shows it has to be a machine. But the thing is, if you choose to do with joy, it doesn\u2019t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the final scene, McCartney, who played at the Ed Sullivan Theater with The Beatles in 1964, was given the final honor of turning off the lights, before the wormhole sucked in the The Late Show marquee and neon Colbert into a snow globe that played The Late Night theme song.<\/p>\n
The show, which ran for 11 years, was controversially canceled last July due to what Paramount, which owns CBS, cited as financial reasons and declining ad revenue for late-night TV, but there\u2019s wide speculation that it was politically motivated. Paramount paid a $16 million settlement to President Trump to resolve a lawsuit. Just days before his show was canceled, Colbert went on air and called the move a \u201cbig fat bribe.\u201d Critics say Colbert\u2019s continuous criticism of the Trump administration also played a part in the cancelation.<\/p>\n
Colbert\u2019s final monologue is already on YouTube:<\/p>\n
\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
How to watch it:<\/p>\n
You can catch other highlights on YouTube\u2014there are eight highlights videos on a playlist on the show\u2019s official channel<\/a>\u2014and across social media, but for the full episode, you\u2019ll need to head to CBS\u2019s website<\/a>, where you can watch it for free, or stream it on Paramount+<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a big night\u2014and the last night\u2014for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.\u00a0 The finale episode on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[98734,146,85,46,397,98735,411],"class_list":["post-457045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-categories-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-news-movies","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}