Ellen DeGeneres does the final episode of her daytime talk show after 19 years on the air

When Ellen DeGeneres began her very last show Thursday, she promised her audience of 19 years that this wasn’t the end of their relationship.

“It’s more of a little break,” she said. “You can see other talk shows now, and I may see another audience every once in a while.”

Filmed on April 28, DeGeneres’ big sendoff featured the return of her first-ever guest, Jennifer Aniston, an interview with Billie Eilish (who made her daytime TV debut on Ellen in 2018) and a performance by P!NK, on hand to perform one of DeGeneres’ favorite songs. And the hour concluded the same way the series began in September 2003, with DeGeneres planted on a couch in front of a TV — only this time, instead of realizing she was on TV and set to do a show, she grabbed the remote and shut the TV off, bringing her daytime journey to a close.

On her final monologue she said: “Twenty years ago when we were trying to sell the show, no one thought that this would work. Not because it was a different kind of show, but because I was different,” DeGeneres recalled. “When we started the show, I couldn’t say ‘gay.’ I was not allowed to say ‘gay.’ I say it at home a lot — you know, ‘What are we having for our gay breakfast?’ or ‘Pass the gay salt,’ or ‘Has anyone seen the gay remote?’ — but we couldn’t say ‘gay.’ I couldn’t say ‘we’ because that would imply that I was with someone. Sure couldn’t say ‘wife,’ and that’s because it wasn’t legal for gay people to get married. Now I say ‘wife’ all the time,” she said, before the camera panned to reveal Portia de Rossi.
What followed was a final dance through the studio audience, accompanied by longtime DJ tWitch.