Colbert returns to Monroe TV a day after late show farewell

Stephen Colbert was back on late-night television less than a day after taping his final Late Show episode, this time on the public-access program Only in Monroe in Monroe, Michigan. The surprise return aired at 11:35 p.m. Friday and brought Colbert back to the same local set he had visited in July 2015, before he took over CBS’s flagship late-night hour.

Colbert used the Monroe appearance to lean into the moment, telling viewers it had been “an excruciating 23 hours” since he had been on TV. The episode featured Jack White, Jeff Daniels and Steve Buscemi, with Eminem joining by video. For Colbert, the stop was more than a nostalgic callback. It connected the end of an 11-year run on The Late Show with the low-rent public-access origin story he had invoked in his final monologue, when he reminded viewers that his first Monroe appearance came before his move into the network spotlight and drew an audience of just 12 people.

The timing sharpened the contrast with Thursday night’s finale at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. That broadcast included Paul McCartney as an unannounced guest, a version of The Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye” with Colbert on backup vocals, and a closing flourish in which McCartney turned off the lights at the theater. Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver also joined the farewell, a show of support that underlined Colbert’s place in a shrinking but still consequential late-night circle.

CBS had announced on July 17, 2025, that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would end in May 2026, calling the move a purely financial decision and saying it was not tied to performance or content. The network said it would retire the Late Show franchise after Colbert’s run, which began in September 2015 and capped a 33-year CBS tradition that started with David Letterman in 1993. CBS now plans to fill the time slot with Comics Unleashed hosted by Byron Allen.

Colbert’s Monroe return captured the strange position late-night television now occupies: no longer the cultural monopolist it once was, yet still capable of commanding attention when the right host, the right memory and the right audience converge. His quick detour back to Monroe suggested that the end of The Late Show is not only a farewell to one program, but a marker of how legacy entertainment is being remade around nostalgia, portability and durable fan loyalty.