[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers Young Sheldon‘s Series Finale Episodes.]
Young Sheldon‘s long-awaited Big Bang Theory crossover with Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik has finally arrived in the series finale, and with it, some answers to previously dropped Easter eggs and more.
While the penultimate episode focused on George Sr.’s (Lance Barber) funeral, the finale installment tracked Sheldon through two different periods of his life, in the days leading up to his (Iain Armitage) arrival at Cal-Tech, and a near-future set a few years after The Big Bang Theory in which he’s (Parsons) writing a memoir.
As adult Sheldon pieces together memories from that time in the past, his wife Amy (Bialik) pesters him to get ready for their son’s hockey match, which he’s hesitant to attend. But there’s a full-circle moment to it all as Sheldon reflects on his own father and the positive things about him that he’d previously not given enough attention to.
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It is through these memories that viewers begin to see a mirroring of sorts between Sheldon’s relationship with his father and in turn his relationship with his own son. They may not understand each other entirely, but they’re a support system. “The show kind of took on a life of its own and I think Chuck [Lorre] has always been someone who’s said, ‘You have to give these shows room to become what they’re going to become.’ So you can’t force them. And I think our conception of what [the Cooper] family was, and certainly George Sr. changed because the tone of the show changed, but it also changed because of what Lance brought to the character,” executive producer Steve Holland says.
“It just felt like if you made him the George that adult Sheldon talked about [in Big Bang Theory] that wouldn’t be fun because he seemed to not be a great person to live with,” Holland adds, hinting at the evolution of Sheldon’s story in relation to his father both past and present.
The show being about “Sheldon looking back on his family and seeing them through different eyes,” Holland says, “gave [it] an emotional throughline that wasn’t maybe what [it was about during the] writing of the pilot, but it’s what it became. And we sort of embraced that this was about him coming to terms with his family in a different way as an older man.”
Bill Inoshita / 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved
As for the future setting of Sheldon and Amy’s life together, Holland reveals, “We were very purposely not specific, but I think this is a little bit in the future because you think his kids are probably older. In my mind, [they’re around] ten to twelve. And obviously, they didn’t have kids at the end of Bang, so you’re probably ten-to-twelve-ish years in the future.” In other words, this isn’t exactly a present-day scenario with Big Bang having ended in 2019.
Still, there were some fun reveals as fans knew Amy and Sheldon had a son named after Leonard (Johnny Galecki), but in this episode, their second child is revealed to be a daughter, although nameless. “We opted not to elaborate. I think it felt like that moment would’ve been a lot of information to say, ‘And your daughter is…’ And also it felt like we didn’t want it to feel strained.”
Instead, Holland and the creative team chose to make a nod to Penny (Kaley Cuoco), noting that she was taking Amy and Sheldon’s daughter under her wing. “Maybe someday in the future, we’ll find out the name,” Holland teases.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the single-camera format for Parsons and Bialik who filmed Big Bang as a multi-cam sitcom, Holland reveals, “It was really interesting. They will say that they had a lot of nerves about stepping back into these characters and especially about stepping back to them in a different format. But from the outside watching them, it felt like they really sort of effortlessly slipped back into these characters.”
From the outside looking in, it would seem that Bialik, Parsons, and the rest of the gang stuck the landing. As for what star Armitage hopes viewers walk away feeling, he says, “I sure as heck don’t want ’em to feel bad. I think I would like this ending to be satisfying, especially for fans of The Big Bang Theory as well [as Young Sheldon fans]. And really feel like it has come full circle.”
How did you feel about the Young Sheldon series finale? Let us know in the comments section. And for more on the final episodes, see what Zoe Perry and Barber had to say about George Sr.’s funeral, here.