The Young Sheldon spinoff show means we’ll get to see some new characters, as well as returning fan favourites, although one returning character is a less welcome surprise.
It seems that nosy neighbour Brenda will be one Young Sheldon character who will be making a reappearance in the spinoff. Annie Potts, who plays Meemaw, shared a post including her with the caption: “My besties @rachelbayjones and @melissapeterman from @youngsheldoncbs in the WB rose garden on lunch break from Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage!”
Brenda became extra annoying as a character when we learned that George could have potentially cheated on Mary with their neighbour in Young Sheldon. We first learned of George’s potential infidelity through one episode of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon explains the reasoning behind knocking on doors three times. He reveals that it all comes from the trauma of walking in on his father having sex with another woman.
George and his neighbour Brenda are seen slowly getting closer throughout multiple episodes and she eventually asks George out. He agrees to go to her house for dinner but before he can he has a heart attack, which interrupts their affair from developing any further. Still, fans have never been fully convinced that nothing happened between the pair behind the scenes.
As for whether George actually cheated, it’s then revealed in another Big Bang episode that he didn’t actually cheat on Mary with Brenda in Young Sheldon, but that the two of them were actually just roleplaying. The woman Sheldon thought he saw his father having an affair with was actually just his mother, although Sheldon never got told this. But there’s still a lingering question about whether anything at all ever happened between Brenda and George.
In an interview with TVLine showrunner Steve Molaro finally revealed all: “We’ve talked about this a lot, like, how do we acknowledge larger Big Bang canon but not have to be tied to every joke? George cheating felt like a larger Big Bang canon because it’s tied to his three knocks, which is a big deal, and as we got deeper into the show, it also just didn’t feel like this was the kind of show where we wanted to deal with too much infidelity.
“We hinted at it a little bit with the Brenda Sparks character, so we talked about a way to close that loophole. Maybe this was a thing where Sheldon isn’t lying, but he’s not in possession of all the facts. He did not know it was Mary. He still thinks he walked in on his father cheating. I think that’s a moment where Sheldon thought he saw something. He thought he saw his dad with another woman, and he didn’t, and there’s a sadness to that, that he’s carried that all these years.”
