Stephen Colbert didn't just sign off Thursday night — he went out swinging, with nearly 7 million people watching.
The final episode of "The Late Show" drew an estimated 6.74 million viewers, making it the most-watched weeknight episode in the show's history, according to preliminary Nielsen data obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. That's more than double the season's average of 2.69 million viewers per episode.
The star-studded finale featured celebrity cameos from Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, and Tim Meadows, with Paul McCartney closing out the show — giving Colbert a sendoff fit for late-night royalty.
CBS canceled the show last July, just days after Colbert blasted parent company Paramount's $16 million settlement with Trump as a "big fat bribe," a move widely seen as retribution. Colbert spent his final months defying the network's attempts to rein him in, at one point flouting lawyers' orders to blast FCC pressure on CBS.
Trump, who spent years feuding with Colbert on social media, tried to get in the last word. In a bitter 2 a.m. Truth Social post after the finale, the president called Colbert "a dead person" with "no talent, no ratings, no life."
