Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Goes Dark With Paul McCartney, Hollywood’s Biggest Names, and an Era-Ending Goodbye to CBS

For more than three decades, the 11:35 p.m. hour on CBS belonged to one of America’s great late-night institutions. ‘The Late Show’ franchise launched in 1993 under David Letterman and, after Colbert took the reins in 2015, ran for a total of 1,800 episodes before Thursday’s curtain call. Through monologues, desk pieces, and eleven seasons of sharp political comedy, Stephen Colbert turned the Ed Sullivan Theater into a nightly ritual for millions of viewers.

CBS announced the show’s end in July 2025, framing it as “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and insisting it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” That explanation landed with a thud among fans and critics alike. The cancellation came just three days after Colbert openly criticized Paramount for settling Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a disputed ’60 Minutes’ interview, calling the payout a “big, fat bribe.”

Trump celebrated on Truth Social, while prominent senators including Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff publicly demanded answers about the timing. Colbert himself, in a cover story interview, declined to say whether political pressure drove the decision but acknowledged it was “a reasonable thing to think.”

The final week leaned into the moment with a parade of guests that felt less like a television send-off and more like a gathering of royalty. Jon Stewart, Steven Spielberg, David Byrne, and Bruce Springsteen all appeared during the last stretch of episodes, with CBS deliberately withholding some names to preserve a sense of surprise for audiences.

The finale itself turned into something far grander. Paul McCartney appeared during the taping, marking yet another return to the Ed Sullivan Theater where The Beatles made their legendary American television debut in 1964. McCartney had also performed on the roof above the same venue for Letterman’s show in 2009, making his presence feel like a deliberate echo across late-night history.

The final show was packed with surprise cameos from comedian Tig Notaro and actors Ryan Reynolds, Paul Rudd, Bryan Cranston, and Don Cheadle. Jon Batiste, the former bandleader of ‘The Late Show,’ also performed, and the episode ran approximately seventeen minutes longer than its usual hour.

Colbert, for his part, addressed the audience with the kind of warmth that defined his tenure. “We 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 it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears,” he told the crowd.

What fills that storied time slot next is a sharp departure in every sense. Beginning May 22, CBS is airing ‘Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen’ at 11:35 p.m., followed by another Allen-produced series, the comedy game show ‘Funny You Should Ask,’ at 12:35 a.m. The arrangement is built on an unusual financial model.

Allen pays CBS for the hours and covers full production costs, with his company receiving most of the commercial inventory in return, a setup the Los Angeles Times described as costing the network essentially nothing. ‘Comics Unleashed’ originally produced around 233 episodes between 2006 and 2016 before resuming new production for the 2025-2026 season on CBS.

Whether the institution of appointment late-night television can survive the loss of one of its last true anchors is a question the industry will be wrestling with for some time. Both Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon aired reruns on the night of the finale in a gesture of solidarity, a practice that mirrors the tribute Kimmel paid to Letterman in 2015. The Ed Sullivan Theater will now go quiet on weeknights, and an entire era of late-night television closes with it. If you watched Colbert through any stretch of those eleven years, what memory from ‘The Late Show’ are you holding onto tonight?