My contribution to Roger's celebration symposium focuses on the treatment of late stellar evolutionary phases in stellar population models, reviewing the state of art and discussing some very recent developments, ranging from local stellar clusters up to distant galaxies at high redshift. I shall focus in particular on the Thermally Pulsating Asymptotic Giant Branch, about which a vivid discussion has been ongoing since a few years. I shall present renewed evidence in favour of a sizable contribution from this phase for matching the observed spectral energy distribution of distant massive galaxies. I shall also discuss the possible reasons why such a conclusion has been controversial in the recent literature. Stellar population models are the magic tool to shape the physics of galaxies out of their observed light, and enter virtually all papers presented at this symposium. In a collective effort to properly treat all relevant aspects of the modelling, we split the discussion into six contributions given by experts in the field, as our present to Roger and his outstanding career.