The Goodbye Stephen Colbert Wanted to Say

The end of a long-running late-night talk show tends to play out in one of two ways: as a mournful funeral, or a joyous wake.In the case of hosts such as David Letterman or Johnny Carson, who picked the date and manner of their retirement, the sendoffs were upbeat. Stephen Colbert, Letterman’s successor as the host of CBS’s The Late Show for the last 11 years, is leaving his job under more forced, awkward circumstances. The network announced in July that it had canceled Colbert’s often politically sharp program for what it claimed were financial reasons; critics, and the host himself, questioned whether the move was in fact motivated by the CBS corporate owner Paramount’s desire to avoid further conflict with the Trump administration. Colbert has spent the intervening months doing the same show that put him atop the late-night ratings heap, and Thursday night's series finale was in many ways an ordinary installment. And despite the circumstances, the host kept things bright, roping in a cavalcade of celebrities to send things out happily.[Read: The most surprising part of Stephen Colbert’s late-night run]The marquee name for Colbert’s final interview (and musical performance) was Paul McCartney, though Colbert did jokingly nod to the rumors that Pope Leo XIV would be joining him, referring to McCartney as “infallible.” But the idea that the Pope would appear spoke to the overall image of Colbert’s Late Show as a thoughtful, more philosophical hour of comedy than its competitors—an ethos that will be hard to replace, now that CBS is putting him out to pasture. Colbert spent his final week on the air adhering to that tone: He waxed nostalgic with his friend and former The Daily Show collaborator Jon Stewart; invited Bruce Springsteen on to perform his anti-ICE protest anthem, “Streets of Minneapolis;” and put himself in the hot seat to complete his own “Colbert Questionert,” designed to eke out more intimate answers than usual from his celebrity guests.Thursday’s prog