A cynic might posit that NBC isn’t breaking the bank on an all-new studio because the stakes for The Tonight Show simply aren’t as high as they used to be, given the fragmentation of the late-night market. Jay Leno’s Tonight Show averaged 3.7 million viewers an episode in 2013, down from an average of just over 6 million at its ratings peak, in 1997, and Fallon’s Late Night averaged 1.8 million viewers last year. (Carson’s high point was 15 million.) Fallon’s Tonight, minus a lead-in from good ol’ Jay, will compete against Jimmy Kimmel Live!, on ABC, Late Show with David Letterman, on CBS, and, to some extent, Conan, on TBS (which airs at 11 P.M. E.S.T.), and the Daily Show-Colbert Report block, on Comedy Central (which also begins at 11 P.M. E.S.T.).

Fallon acknowledges that only in his dreams will his Nielsen numbers ever approach those of his Twitter feed, which has more than 11 million followers—“I don’t think that exists anymore for TV, except maybe for football,” he said—but argues that, while such massive TV market share is a thing of the past, the very idea of market share is also fast becoming an anachronism. “We live in a world where you can watch two channels,” he said. “It’s not the 70s anymore, where you say, ‘Oh, Saturday nights? We only watch Mary Tyler Moore.’ ” It’s an era in which being a Jimmy Fallon fan does not preclude being a Stephen Colbert fan. (As it happens, Fallon and Colbert are friendly, and the latter has appeared on the former’s show a couple of times.)

Yet there is still something mythic, even in 2014, about The Tonight Show, in that it holds a place in American history that no other late-night show does. (And it still makes good money for NBC, somewhere in the range of $25 to $40 million a year.) Questlove admitted that he has to resist thinking too much about the weight of cultural stewardship—as he put it, “those feelings of ‘Holy Doc Severinsen, Batman!’ ”—so as not to become overwhelmed by the fact that he now holds the exalted position of Tonight Show bandleader. Fallon, just old enough to remember falling asleep to Carson, as millions of Americans did from the 60s into the early 90s, wants to fill that benignly hypnagogic role for a new generation. “If you can fall asleep to me,” he said, without a hint of sarcasm, “I’d be absolutely honored.”

Though he is the youngest of the late-night hosts, and, given his viral-video prowess and Roots affiliation, putatively the hippest, Fallon is actually the most conventional of the post-Leno group—less acid than Kimmel, less arch than O’Brien, less grumpy than Letterman, and less political than Colbert and Jon Stewart. As such, he may yet prove to have the most transcendent, pan-generational appeal. “He is that presence you want in your bedroom,” Michaels said. “I hate to say it, but there is a sweetness to him. And I only hate to say that because it looks lame in print.”

It’s not lost on Fallon that Tonight, if all goes well, will be his last job, the one that will see him through the next 20 to 30 years. There is none of the tension that surrounded the Jay-to-Conan transition, and the show’s relocation east signals NBC’s strong commitment to not messing with the program any further. Michaels, for his part, is adamant on the matter. “There is no job for Jimmy after this,” he said. “You can’t go back to being Uncle Bob in the movie. This is a different thing, something that only a few people in the world ever get to do.”

Fallon, who has settled comfortably into his adult New York life, with an apartment in downtown Manhattan and a weekend home in the Long Island village of Sagaponack, is more than content to let The Tonight Show be his final professional act. “I’m surrounded by good people,” he said. “We have a baby now. We’re in New York. Lorne is in the building. And I get to ride into the sunset with these people? This is it.”

The only vision he has beyond Tonight, Fallon said, is a recurring one that has been visiting him for years, a vaguely formed reverie of very advanced age: “I see myself and I’m really old, being wheeled somewhere in a wheelchair. In my head, it’s the Hudson River. I don’t know if that’s when I die or if it’s when I reflect on life. I’m not sure what happens once they wheel me out. But I know it’s a crisp day, and I’m looking at the river, and it’s fall.”

He took a moment to summon the vision, to scan it for details, before continuing. “Maybe,” he said, brightening, “someone serves me up pumpkin pancakes.”