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It was a big night—and the last night—for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
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.
The show had a plot, where the set would eventually get sucked into a “wormhole,” a sort of representation of Colbert’s loss. But it was so Colbert, if you know you know: McCartney was the surprise couch guest for the show and performed “Hello, Goodbye” with Louis Cato, Costello and Batiste, and Colbert quoted Gandalf only to have Elijah Wood pop up to say “Hey!” His Strike Force Five buddies—Late Night host Seth Meyers, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, Live! host Jimmy Kimmel and The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon–reassembled for the final send off, too.
It was both a joyful and somber watch.
“This show has been a joy for us to do for you. In fact, we call this show ‘The Joy Machine,’” Colbert said during his monologue. “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 with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.”
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.
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’s 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 “big fat bribe.” Critics say Colbert’s continuous criticism of the Trump administration also played a part in the cancelation.
Colbert’s final monologue is already on YouTube:
How to watch it:
You can catch other highlights on YouTube—there are eight highlights videos on a playlist on the show’s official channel—and across social media, but for the full episode, you’ll need to head to CBS’s website, where you can watch it for free, or stream it on Paramount+.