This is a bitter pill to swallow so soon after the renewed relevance and urgency that surged through late night in the second half of 2025. But that had little to do with anything new that Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel were doing or saying episode to episode—it was a response to the harassment of President Donald Trump, media conglomerates happy to be his mouthpiece, and the independent communications-regulating body that he definitely, in no way, absolutely does not hold sway over (and how dare you even suggest that?). All that right-wing noise was generated over pretty typical Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live material: Colbert putting the actions of his corporate overlords in comedically straightforward terms; Kimmel pointing out the hypocrisies of MAGA. 

The news was in the disproportionate consequences handed down from supposed watchdogs of the American airwaves, who were acting as if they, like a growing portion of the American public, hadn’t tuned into either show in years. When the president and first lady tried pulling the same shit last month, attempting to tie the shooting at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner to jokes Kimmel made before the incident, the news cycle was much shorter, the outcry more subdued. Maybe enough people were paying attention now to know the wisecracks were nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe enough levelheaded people said, “C’mon: It’s only a talk-show monologue.”

Late-night TV will soldier on after The Late Show’s demise: CBS may have accepted a pay-for-play arrangement in lieu of hiring a Colbert successor, but it’s not like NBC’s going to put Saturday Night Live out to pasture anytime soon. The sense that was harder to fight during last night’s episode was that there hasn’t been anything new that’s managed to stick in this portion of the broadcast day since Last Week Tonight started in 2014—and even that show is largely a variation on the sort of current affairs commentary host John Oliver did on The Daily Show. There was some experimental, seat-of-your-pants freshness in John Mulaney’s Everybody’s In LA and Everybody’s Live, even if that freshness came in conspicuously retro packaging and bore distinct whiffs of Lettermanesque puckishness, Johnny Carson-like cocktail-party chatter, and Dick Cavett-style meetings of the minds. Sadly, one of the quieter industry stories to break during Colbert’s extended curtain call was that Netflix doesn’t expect Mulaney to make another season of Everybody’s Live “right now.”

I wish he would, the same way Conan O’Brien’s two (going on three) Oscar ceremonies make me think he should get out from behind the podcast mic and back in front of a studio audience. I don’t want this type of thing to go away. The Late Show finale made the past’s claim over late night evident, but that doesn’t mean the timeslot or the format best suited for it need to be retired. There’s history there worth preserving, and traditions worth honoring, and Colbert’s final episode put a premium on both. These are nostalgic impulses, but not necessarily reactionary ones. Not so long as, like Colbert did by inviting the Late Show staff to the stage to jam with him, McCartney, Elvis Costello, and returning bandleader Jon Batiste, you’re committed to spreading the joy of the ritual, rather than hoarding it among the already initiated. 

There’s life in the old ways yet. It echoes through the halls of an empty Ed Sullivan theater, in the words of a classic song given an updated purpose. For late night to join the rest of us in the present and beyond, somebody has to say “hello” when others would say “goodbye.”

Erik Adams is The A.V. Club’s senior TV editor.