By Simone Hart

Paul McCartney closed Stephen Colbert’s final episode of The Late Show with a performance of the Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye,” ending Colbert’s 2015–2026 run inside the Ed Sullivan Theater with a direct nod to one of the building’s most famous music legacies.

What we know: Paul McCartney appeared as the final guest on Stephen Colbert’s last Late Show episode, which aired May 21, and joined the closing performance of “Hello, Goodbye.” People reported that Elvis Costello and Jon Batiste also took part in the finale’s musical ending.
What to watch: The finale arrives as CBS exits the Colbert era after saying the show was ending for financial reasons. The McCartney appearance is likely to remain the defining image from the broadcast because it tied Colbert’s exit to the theater’s Beatles history and gave the finale a music moment with broad cross-generational pull.

Paul McCartney Stephen Colbert finale closed The Late Show with a Beatles classic and a farewell built around television history. Reuters reported that McCartney was the surprise final guest on Stephen Colbert’s last episode and joined the show’s closing performance of “Hello, Goodbye” as Colbert ended his run after taking over the CBS franchise in 2015. People reported that Elvis Costello and Jon Batiste also joined the performance near the end of the episode.

The setting gave the performance extra weight. McCartney returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater, the same venue associated with the Beatles’ landmark 1964 U.S. television appearances. Entertainment Weekly reported that Colbert and McCartney explicitly revisited that history during the episode, including McCartney’s memories of the Beatles arriving to screaming fans at the theater.

The song choice sharpened the ending. “Hello, Goodbye” gave Colbert’s final moments a clean farewell cue while keeping the emphasis on performance rather than sentiment alone. People reported that the number expanded into a larger onstage moment, with the audience eventually joining the celebration before the program signed off.

The broadcast also landed at a difficult moment for late-night television. Reuters reported that CBS said the cancellation was driven by financial reasons as the business continues to deal with declining viewership and a tougher economics model for network late night. That backdrop gave Colbert’s finale a bigger media-business context than a routine end-of-run episode would have carried a decade ago.

McCartney’s presence changed the scale of the goodbye. A final episode with tributes and celebrity cameos would already have drawn attention, but a Beatles song in the Ed Sullivan Theater turned the final segment into a piece of pop-history staging that reached beyond regular Colbert viewers. Entertainment Weekly noted the loop-closing quality of McCartney returning to the venue where Beatlemania first exploded on American television.

People’s account of the episode underscored how full the farewell was, from guest appearances to a whimsical closing image involving Colbert and McCartney shrinking the theater into a snow globe. Even with those extra touches, the musical finish remained the clearest takeaway from the night, in part because it connected broadcast TV, Beatles nostalgia and Colbert’s own legacy in one sequence.

Colbert’s tenure had already reshaped The Late Show into a mix of political satire, celebrity interviews and major musical bookings. Reuters noted that backlash followed the cancellation, with critics and fans reading the ending through a broader conversation about media, politics and the shrinking space for established late-night institutions. The finale did not resolve those arguments, but it did give the show an exit built around one of the few kinds of moments late night still produces at scale: a live music sendoff with instant cultural recognition.

McCartney’s final appearance also reinforced his continuing role as more than a legacy guest. His presence brought historic context and symbolic value to the room before he sang a note. By the time “Hello, Goodbye” closed the episode, the broadcast had linked Colbert’s departure to a much older television memory and turned the show’s last minutes into a farewell with both nostalgia and reach.