Stephen Colbert took his final bow on The Late Show Thursday night, May 21, with Paul McCartney as the closing guest — the surviving Beatle singing “Hello, Goodbye” at center stage before physically flipping the breakers to turn off the lights at the Ed Sullivan Theater. Walk-ons came from Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Tim Meadows, and Ryan Reynolds. David Byrne performed earlier in the week. Bruce Springsteen showed up on the second-to-last episode and, per NPR, directly blamed Donald Trump and the Ellisons for the cancellation in his on-air remarks. David Letterman swung by to vent about it. Jon Stewart used his appearance on May 19 to relay the old advice Letterman once gave him after his MTV show was killed in 1995.
It was, by any honest accounting, a triumphant send-off — and it has triggered the predictable counter-take that Colbert had this coming. The case goes: he became too political, too self-righteous, too much of a Democratic Party house comic, and CBS finally pulled a plug the audience had already half-pulled for them.
Here’s what we actually know. CBS announced the cancellation in July 2025, calling it “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and adding it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” The New York Post’s Charles Gasparino later reported, citing a source, that the show was losing $40 to $50 million a year. Late night as a category is collapsing — younger viewers don’t watch broadcast at midnight, advertisers have followed them elsewhere — and The Late Show was reportedly still the top-rated program in its slot while bleeding money. All of that is plausible.
But the timing was — let’s say — interesting. CBS pulled the plug three days after Colbert called Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Donald Trump over the 60 Minutes lawsuit a “big, fat bribe” on-air. Paramount was, at the time, trying to close a merger with Skydance that needed FCC approval. Senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren publicly called for transparency about whether the cancellation was politically motivated. Schiff later sent an FCC letter demanding answers about whether the agency had coordinated with the White House. Colbert himself, asked about the theories in a GQprofile, said, “Well, good for them. I mean, that’s not my job” — before pointedly adding that CBS or its parent had decided to “cut a check for $16 million to the president of the United States over a lawsuit that their own lawyers said is completely without merit.” CBS has consistently denied any political motivation.
So did Colbert bring this on himself? Probably some of it, depending on how you define “this.” You don’t repeatedly take swings at the corporate parent during its highest-stakes regulatory transaction in a decade and not expect a response — particularly when you are also costing the company, by industry reporting, the price of a small private jet annually. Even taking CBS’s stated reason at face value, a host who is both a $40-million-a-year accounting liability and a $40-million-a-year political headache is doing the math for them.
Was it worth it? Watch the finale. Watch the Pope Leo XIV running gag, the wormhole metaphor, McCartney himself handed the literal off switch on a 33-year-old American institution. Watch Stewart relay Letterman’s advice — “Don’t confuse cancellation with failure” — followed by Letterman’s actual punchline from 1995: “But in this case it is also a failure.” Watch CBS announce it is replacing The Late Show with the syndicated Comics Unleashed and donating the set to the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. Stephen Colbert is walking out of the Ed Sullivan Theater with his audience, his colleagues, and his reputation as a serious moral voice intact.
The version of Colbert who plays nice still has a show. He’s just not Stephen Colbert anymore.
The cancellation isn’t the failure. The failure would have been folding.
