Young Sheldon’s seventh and final season premieres on Feb. 15, putting the show closer than ever to its natural endpoint, which is Sheldon (Iain Armitage) moving to California for grad school so he can go on to become the adult scientist played by Jim Parsons on The Big Bang Theory. The spinoff has 14 episodes left to tie up its loose ends, including a significant one that fans have been wondering about since before Young Sheldon premiered back in 2017. Will it manage to do so?
3 questions fans need answered in the final season of Young Sheldon
Will George Sr. die?
The Big Bang Theory established that Sheldon’s father, George Sr. (Lance Barber), died when Sheldon was 14, which is the age he is on Young Sheldon now. While Young Sheldon has diverted on numerous occasions from what Sheldon said about his childhood—for instance, adult Sheldon described his father as a temperamental, philandering alcoholic, but that’s not the George we know on Young Sheldon—it seems George’s death is, sadly, all but certain.
Speaking with reporters at the TCA set visit, Barber suggested he was at peace with whatever was going to happen to his character. “I had fingers crossed from the beginning, knowing the history of the character, that I would make it to the end whenever that came,” he said. “I always felt I had the luxury of being emotionally prepared for this from day one.”
Lance Barber as George Sr.
Bill Inoshita / 2023 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
George suffered a heart attack in Season 5, which could be foreshadowing of what’s to come, but Barber knew at the time that that wasn’t his character’s conclusion. “I never got any inclination that the end was coming any time soon,” he said. “And nor did I fear it. And I knew that when and if it did come, it would be done in a beautiful way, and I anticipate that’s what’s going to happen.”
And it is going to happen. “I don’t want to say what you will or won’t see, but things will get addressed,” executive producer Steve Holland told TVLine about George Sr.’s fate in a separate interview. “We are not beholden to every joke that was ever made on The Big Bang Theory, but we do feel beholden to the larger canon and the larger events that shape Sheldon’s life. We want to honor those.”
How will Young Sheldon set up Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff?
The franchise’s producers are developing a Young Sheldon spinoff about Sheldon’s older brother George Jr. (Montana Jordan) and his fiancé Mandy (Emily Osment)’s life as young parents with a large age gap between them (technically, this will be a spinoff of a spinoff). The final season will have to lay the groundwork for that potential show.
Emily Osment as Mandy.
Bill Inoshita / 2023 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
As of right now, the producers aren’t ready to talk about it. “Right now, honestly, we’re just focusing on ending the show and ending it as strong as we can possibly end it, and that’s really what our whole focus has been moving forward here,” Holland told reporters during this week’s TCA set visit.
But even if the specifics about Georgie and Mandy’s spinoff are being kept under wraps, we have a general sense of what needs to happen to get us there. For example, we know from The Big Bang Theory that grown-up Georgie finds big success in the tire sales business, and that his future father-in-law on Young Sheldon owns a tire shop. So he’ll have to start working for his father-in-law at some point.
Of course, the biggest thing that needs to happen is Georgie and Mandy’s wedding, which we’ll see at some point in the final season. All Osment would say about the wedding is that Mandy wears corduroy pants. She’s a rebel through and through.
(There’s another Big Bang Theory spinoff in the works for the Max streaming service, but that’s separate from this one. There’s little information available about it as it’s still in early stages of development.)
Will we see any familiar faces from The Big Bang Theory?
There have been several flash-forward connections to The Big Bang Theory throughout Young Sheldon’s run, as well as one memorable flash-sideways moment in the Season 2 finale that showed Sheldon’s friends as children years before they all meet. And of course, Jim Parsons narrates Young Sheldon as grown-up Sheldon. But there have been fewer crossovers in recent seasons compared to earlier ones. Fans may be wondering if they’ll see another one before Young Sheldon ends, whether in the form of a flash-forward or otherwise.
Iain Armitage as Sheldon Cooper.
Robert Voets/CBS
The actors and producers didn’t answer any questions about that during this week’s TCA set visit, but they did say that over the course of the show, Iain Armitage has developed an uncanny likeness to Jim Parsons. He’s almost as tall as Parsons now, and has perfected some of the mannerisms that Parsons came up with for Sheldon. Armitage said he remembers Parsons teaching him how to be Sheldon early in the show’s run, and while he was too young to watch The Big Bang Theory back then, he has since seen the whole show and incorporated pieces of Parsons’ performance into his own. “I think it’s kind of a fun blend of me and what I’ve learned from Jim Parsons and from Sheldon himself,” Armitage said.
Raegan Revord as Missy.
Bill Inoshita / 2023 Warner Bros. Entertainment
It’s a little bit like he’s becoming Jim Parsons, Raegan Revord, who plays Sheldon’s twin sister Missy, shared. “The other day, we were filming a scene, and we were just talking outside of it, and [Armitage] said something. I was like, ‘Jim, is that you?’ It was like it so much resembled him, and I was like, wow, this is crazy how well the casting got it.”
So while we don’t know if the original Sheldon will show up, young Sheldon is becoming him so thoroughly that fans will feel like they’re watching him.
