Thursday night’s episode of The Daily Show had fewer laugh-out-loud moments as usual, as it Trevor Noah’s final episode as host. Noah himself took several minutes to offer a heartfelt thank you to his viewers and supporters, and to share the many reasons why he is thankful to Black women for teaching him everything he knows. Meanwhile, The Daily Show’s talented lineup of regular correspondents each took some time to bid Noah a fond farewell in their very own ways.
First up was Michael Kosta, who chose not to talk about the stock market, “because as much as I love numbers, there’s a different N word I love even more: Nostalgia.” Kosta shared a chart of the six years he and Noah have spent working together, which had its ups and downs, but began at a high point “because you hired me,” Kosta explained. “Which meant I could stop sleeping in my sh*tty old Honda Civic.”
Desi Lydic, meanwhile, conducted Noah’s exit interview, which included such questions as “What will you miss most about me?” Dulcé Sloan delivered the lottery numbers, but said there was “only one lotto winner tonight, and that is my friend — my light-skinned friend — my homie, Trevor Ezekiel Noah.” (No, his middle name is not Ezekiel.) Though she was later confused to learn that he was leaving the show without having another job: “So you just leaving a job to do nothing?!,” Sloan wanted to know, before declaring: “Wow, you really are half-white.”
Ronny Chieng shared what was trending, and admitted that it was his “feelings! I can’t believe you’re leaving! It’s like a part of my heart is being ripped out of my body, and not in the cool, Indiana Jones way.”
Roy Wood Jr. came on to do the traffic, but instead decided that Noah might want to think about just moving over to Good Morning America. “The light-skinned dude over there’s in a lot of trouble,” Wood relayed. “They might have an opening for you.” But Wood also begged Noah to come clean about who he really is: a shyster from Birmingham named Slippery J. who Wood used to run credit cards with back in the mid-1990s. Noah refused to confess.
The biggest surprise came when Jordan Klepper, who Noah was pretty sure had perished during his latest assignment, joined Noah on stage. Despite his job requiring him to be sent out “every other week to the heart of America to almost get murdered by QAnon psychopaths,” according to Klepper, he was there to prove that he was indeed still alive and to present a special “Farewell Trevor Edition” of “Fingers the Pulse,” in which the city of New York said their final goodbyes.
You can watch all the goodbyes in the clip above.