After nineteen years of dancing onstage to the cheers of her studio audience, comedian Ellen DeGeneres delivered her last monologue on The Ellen Show. The Emmy winner thanked her viewers and looked back at everything that has changed since the first episode aired in 2003. As she teared up, Ellen told her audience, “If this show has made you smile, it has lifted you up when you were in a period of some type of pain … then I have done my job.”
The show’s last episode was originally meant to air in March. Recorded in early April, it aired yesterday on NBC. Ellen’s final guests were musicians Billie Eilish and Pink, as well as Jennifer Aniston who was the show’s first guest. Ellen and Jennifer revisited the show’s 3,200 episodes with a video montage of some special moments from the last nineteen years.
As the episode ended, Ellen said one final goodbye. She thanked her executive producers for nurturing her and helping her, “shine brighter than I ever could do it myself”. Addressing her audience, Ellen said, “If I’ve done anything over the past 19 years, I hope I’ve inspired you to be yourself, your true, authentic self”. The comedian then walked over to a sofa positioned in front of a television screen with its back to the audience. As she sat on the sofa, the television screen showed the scene exactly as we saw it, creating a Droste effected of Ellen watching herself. This was a throwback to her first episode, when Ellen was introduced to the audience in the same setting.
Ellen made her television debut in 1986 on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Carson famously invited her over to sit and have a chat after her segment and told her she was welcome back anytime, a monumental endorsement for a budding comedian of that time.
Ellen got her own sitcom in 1994 on ABC, succinctly called Ellen. The show won Ellen three Emmy nominations and was a hit with audiences. Ellen came out as gay in 1997 and soon after her character on the show also did so. This garnered much criticism and led to Ellen being cancelled. The Ellen Show is regarded as her historic comeback, one that is etched her legacy into America’s pop culture.
While she is applauded for centering minority voices on her show and doing much in the way of financial charity, Ellen’s legacy is a mixed bag. In 2020, former employees of the show spoke up against her for fostering a toxic work environment that compromised her staff’s mental wellbeing.
