Stephen Colbert’s exit from The Late Show has prompted tributes from fans, fellow hosts, and now, apparently, Death.
Leave it to a Swedish creative lab to mark Colbert’s farewell not with a highlight reel of monologue jokes or his sometimes elaborate musical numbers, but by zeroing in on the show’s most existential recurring bit.
Presenting itself as the Grim Reaper’s official communications arm, a new site titled “Office of the Reaper” announced Monday that news of The Late Show’s end “has reached Death” and that a public statement will be released Friday, May 22 at 10 a.m. ET—the morning after Colbert signs off from CBS.
The project is a fan tribute from Ayka’s Labyrinth, a Stockholm-based outfit not affiliated with Colbert, CBS, or, as far as we can confirm, any actual metaphysical authorities. But its premise is surprisingly sound: when The Late Show ends, Death will lose one of its most reliable bookings in mainstream television.
After all, who else on TV regularly asks guests, “What do you think happens when we die?” As part of “The Colbert Questionert,” the prompt has produced answers that range from comic deflection to genuine reflection, with guests like Jane Fonda, Jimmy Kimmel, and Barack Obama all offering takes on the afterlife. Fittingly, the segment itself was inspired by Keanu Reeves’ viral 2019 answer to that very question.
It is not exactly the kind of prompt most celebrity interviews are built to withstand. But Colbert has a knack for slipping something enormous into the middle of something silly, and the afterlife question has become one of the clearest examples of that balance. It lets guests be funny, awkward, spiritual, evasive, sentimental, or all of the above—sometimes in the span of a single answer.
“When the show comes to an end,” the site’s press alert reads, “Death could be losing a rare space in late-night television.”
That may be giving Death a better publicist than it deserves. But as Colbert’s final week begins, the tribute gets at something real about his run behind the desk. Plenty of late-night hosts ask stars about their projects, their childhoods, their embarrassing stories, and their bad auditions. Colbert has routinely asked them to contemplate mortality.
The Reaper’s full statement is scheduled for release Friday morning.
