All Stephen Colbert wanted was some normalcy to close out 10-plus years of his “Late Show.” But adoring celebrities and a pesky wormhole got in the way.
As he opened the CBS series’ final episode Thursday night, the host said he’d decided against a farewell extravaganza in favor of “a regular episode where I come out here and talk about the national conversation.”
But he was barely into his first joke when “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston interrupted from the Ed Sullivan Theatre seats to offer a surprise celebrity cameo. “No, Bryan, those always seem kinda forced,” Colbert said to the Emmy winner, who stormed out in a fake huff.
And that was the first aberration in an extended, well-thought-out goodbye presented as a slice of ordinary that gradually, elaborately goes off the rails. Cloaked in secrecy during the days of lead-up, the finale unveiled all the writing, rewriting, planning and CGI decorating that were clearly weeks in the making.
It’s been 10 months since Colbert revealed CBS was canceling broadcast TV’s highest-rated late-night talk show. The timing raised suspicions of a political move meant to curry favor with the Trump administration. Two days earlier Colbert, a relentless critic of the president, had condemned the network’s $16 million payout to Trump in a lawsuit settlement as a “big fat bribe,” at a time when CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, needed federal approval of its $8 billion deal to merge with Skydance Media. The network denied any connection and called the cancellation “purely a financial decision.”
Like the 2014 goodbye of “The Colbert Report,” in which the former Second City Chicago actor slayed the Grim Reaper and achieved immortality, Thursday’s finale played with mortality. Mysterious rumbles and flashes of light were revealed to be what astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson called “an interdimensional wormhole,” a swirling, green, matter-sucking maw created by the conflicting realities of a talk show being popular but also canceled.
That premise dominated the show’s second half. Until then, it was a fairly straightforward “Late Show,” launched with Colbert’s heartfelt message of gratitude to his staff and viewers, followed by a montage of the great TV hosts — from Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny and Steve Allen to Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett up through Samantha Bee and Robin Thede, their out-of-context snippets of dialogue pasted together into an all-star Colbert roast.
More interruptions — by Paul Rudd, Tim Meadows, Tig Notaro and Ryan Reynolds — spoiled Colbert’s attempts to be humdrum. When it was time to bring out the night’s surprise guest, Colbert goofed on his yearning for an audience with Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV by teasing a visitor he called “not just perfect, he is in fact infallible …”
But it was just a gag. Writer Steve Waltien (another Second City alum) announced His Holiness was unhappy with his snacks and staying in his dressing room. “You call that a Chicago dog? Pope don’t play like that,” a phony pontiff bellowed. “Leo out!”
Instead the guest was Paul McCartney — no stranger to this stage. But midway through his affable reminiscing about the Beatles’ performances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the wormhole coaxed Colbert offstage and into bits with Tyson, mentor Jon Stewart and fellow late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver.
Eventually it slurped up Colbert and deposited him into a dark void, where he joined Elvis Costello, his show’s former bandleader Jon Batiste and current bandleader Louis Cato for a gentle rendition of Costello’s “Jump Up (Honky Tonk Demo).”
And then it was back to the stage for the real sendoff: the foursome exuberantly backing up McCartney on “Hello, Goodbye” as Colbert’s family and staff rushed in to dance along. The final, surreal but poignant note had McCartney throwing a switch to shut down the lights of the theater complex and shrink it into a tiny snowglobe sniffed by Colbert’s dog Benny.
And so ended another chapter for a man whose comic sensibility was largely shaped in Chicago.
After his childhood in South Carolina, Colbert went to college at Northwestern University in Evanston and became active at Second City, first as a merch seller in the late ‘80s and then on the stages in the early ‘90s. He speaks fondly of his Chicago years and, on Monday’s “Late Show,” aired never-before-seen video of his return to town during the 2024s Democratic National Convention, when he bantered with a bartender at the Old Town Ale House and made an unannounced drop-in at his old apartment near Lincoln and Armitage avenues.
What’s next for Colbert? Short term, he’s attending his brother’s wedding this weekend and soon needs to get his stuff (already packed) out of the office. On Tuesday’s show he joked that he’ll spend next week “in a hammock ass-deep in a piña colada.”
But not for long. He has committed to co-writing a movie drawn from his beloved “Lord of the Rings” and has said he’s taking meetings with executives about other future projects. And he continues to serve on Second City’s board of directors and as chair of its Artistic Advisory Board.
Starting Friday, CBS will fill Colbert’s 10:35 p.m. time slot with “Comics Unleashed,” a low-budget comedian panel show that host Byron Allen is paying the network to air.