Stephen Colbert Reunites Strike Force Five Ahead of Late-Night Exit
Stephen Colbert is bringing strike force five back to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night, turning a 2023 writers-strike workaround into a one-night reunion before he signs off late next week. The move ties a temporary podcast project to an ending that now has its own industry weight.
Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver launched Strike Force Five in August 2023 to benefit their out-of-work staffs while their shows were dark. The podcast ran after viewers had been without late-night television for nearly four months, which gave the five hosts an unusual amount of room to talk through the business of their own format in public.
August 2023 and the writers strike
The five hosts came together while the writers strike had shut down their shows, and the podcast became a direct answer to that pause in production. Instead of leaving crews without work and the hosts silent, the project created a revenue stream for staff who were out of work and kept the late-night ecosystem visible at a moment when the entire line was off the air.
That setup shaped the tone. The hosts rambled, swore, swapped war stories, and teased one another, with Fallon a recurring target. They mocked his failure to finish Moby-Dick, pizza in bed, a Snake River-lazy-river idea, and a Newlywed Game-style segment with the hosts’ wives. When that bit unraveled, Fallon said, “I need segment producers so bad. And writers,” a line that landed because it exposed how dependent these shows are on staff structure.
Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers, Oliver
Kimmel worked as the deadpan ringleader, Colbert as an enthusiastic late-night historian, Meyers as the quick-witted observer, and Oliver as the lone premium-cable host. The podcast also moved beyond in-jokes: the hosts talked about set redesigns, celebrity interviews, disastrous pitches, network notes, and the pressure of creating topical comedy night after night.
Colbert also played an AI-generated ad that mimicked the voices of his cohosts, while Jon Stewart and David Letterman appeared in conversations that widened the archive beyond the five regulars. Oliver said the podcast let him say what they actually thought rather than what was merely “legally defensible,” which is the sharpest description of why the series felt different from a normal publicity circuit.
October 2023 ending
The podcast ended in October 2023 after the writers returned to work, which gave the project a clean finish instead of stretching it into a permanent side hustle. That short run is part of why it matters now: Strike Force Five captured a narrow break in television labor history, then stopped when the industry reopened.
For Colbert, the reunion on Monday night lands at a practical turning point rather than a nostalgia play. With his sign-off coming late next week, the one-night-only return gives the five hosts a last chance to frame the project as more than a temporary diversion — and, for the staffs it supported, as one of the few late-night responses that translated airtime into cash.
