In the Season 6 finale of Young Sheldon, it seemed like everything was falling apart for the Cooper family. A tornado hit Connie’s house, and she lost most of her gambling money. Sheldon and Mary are also in Germany as the rest of the family stayed behind in Texas. These storylines don’t even touch on the fact that George and Mary’s marriage has hit rock bottom, and Georgie and Mandy are heading for an unsteady marriage themselves.
As hard as Young Sheldon’s Season 6 finale tried to repair these patches with promises of new love, and apologies for past faults, Season 7 is unquestionably going to be the season that breaks the Cooper family dynamic once and for all. Being Young Sheldon’s final season, there are high expectations to hit the most tragic events of Sheldon’s teenage years that defined who he was as a man. Some fans still speculate out of innocent hope that Young Sheldon will steer away from The Big Bang Theory canon to give all the Coopers a happy ending. But the fact of the matter is, Sheldon’s life wouldn’t be complete without the incidents that made him finally grow up.
Young Sheldon Has to Feature George’s Affair and Death
Young Sheldon is building to George’s affair, but he and Mary will never divorce. While that seems odd, they had a good reason for staying together.
The giant elephant in the room is the subject of George’s affair and death. The controversial moments in Sheldon’s life have been ringing in viewers’ ears since Season 1, and people have been asking non-stop when they will occur. The series has enjoyed playing fans like a fiddle, fooling them with two cop-out heart attacks and a close bond with Brenda that nearly resulted in a one-night stand. But as it stands in Season 6, they still haven’t happened. Now, all there’s left to wonder is how Young Sheldon will pull them off in the finale without ending the series on too much of a bummer.
Everything known about the Cooper family in The Big Bang Theory is told from Sheldon’s perspective. Of course, he was going to have a certain bias towards Mary as a momma’s boy, as opposed to his father, with whom he shared a strained relationship. George was painted as the villain of the family, albeit for a brief moment where Sheldon remembered his father as an inspiring coach. Sheldon’s momentous memory of his father is when he walked in on George and another woman having an affair.
There’s always the small chance that Young Sheldon will retcon the affair to put George in a better light. Perhaps Sheldon misinterpreted the event as he doesn’t exactly have the skills to pick up on certain social cues. Both George and Mary have had emotional affairs on a smaller scale with Brenda and Pastor Rob, respectfully. But maybe the show won’t go further past that. An emotional affair is just as devastating as a physical one in a Christian family.
Fans of CBS’ Young Sheldon have been waiting for George’s affair with Brenda, and The Big Bang Theory spinoff shows the reason why it happens.
The cards are stacked against George and Mary ending their relationship on a good note. They’re currently committing to a long-distance relationship, and sometimes time apart makes people realize how much they don’t like to be in the relationship. Yet, their hometown was also just hit by a massive tornado, serving as a wake-up call for both of them to reconcile their love if anything tragic is to happen. Sadly, something terrible will happen. George is probably going to die by the end of the season, and it doesn’t get much more heartbreaking than that. The Coopers will have to learn to live without their father when the time comes.
George Cooper’s expected death will be a life lesson to keep loved ones close, but it might also drive the family apart. Sheldon is heading off to Caltech soon and Georgie is getting married. Missy will still be in the house with Mary as her supportive shoulder, but they’ll never have the dysfunctional dinners like they once had. Sitcoms don’t typically end on such a miserable note. Sometimes they’re bittersweet, like all the kids moving out on Modern Family and everyone on Schitt’s Creek going their separate ways to achieve their individual dreams. But affairs and death are permanent stakes in the family dynamic. It’ll be very hard for Young Sheldon to find the silver lining to this dark cloud.
How Georgie and Mandy Transition Into Their Spinoff
The Big Bang Theory franchise will continue as a spinoff series has been announced for Young Sheldon.
Like George and Mary, Georgie and Mandy are destined for disaster. The outcome of their marriage has already been predicted, courtesy of future Sheldon’s narrations and a glimpse into Georgie’s adult life. As of The Big Bang Theory, he becomes a successful tire salesperson, but can’t hold a stable relationship. Mandy will be the first of many ex-wives on Georgie’s string. Georgie and Mandy are engaged to be married, and will head straight to their own spinoff series once Young Sheldon is over.
The exact synopsis of the spinoff hasn’t been revealed, but it may be Georgie and Mandy raising Constance together while continuing Connie’s illegal gambling business. But in the same vein as Young Sheldon, it’ll be riddled with viewers wondering when the divorce will be finalized. To get ahead of itself, Young Sheldon could plant the seeds of a toxic relationship between the pair when they marry. The wildly inappropriate age difference already sets the stage for the relationship’s kiss of death.
Is Young Sheldon Too Far Into the Tragedy Genre?
CBS releases publicity photos for the upcoming Season 7 premiere of Young Sheldon, teasing the aftermath of the Season 6 finale.
The tragicomedy is a genre that’s become increasingly popular on television in recent years. Fleabag, a two-season series following the eponymous character’s life as she crashes and tumbles through hard moments with no filter, masterfully combines witty moments with the tragedy of Fleabag’s life. Bojack Horseman was about a depressed anthropomorphic horse with deadpan cynicism, yet still distracted the viewers from harsh reality with hilarity. But the difference between these shows and Young Sheldon is that the former hardly introduced itself as a tragicomedy.
Even with George having a heart attack in one of its earliest episodes, the series intermingled it with the comical nature of Georgie failing to commit grand theft auto in style. Audiences knew George would be fine because the show’s main concern was demonstrating the funny dynamic between the three children as they crash into mailboxes to get to the hospital. In later seasons, those offset comedic moments are few and far between. When Mandy was giving birth, Georgie was running away to avoid the responsibilities of fatherhood. In the waiting room, George and Mary were confronting each other about their feelings for other people. Everything about it was painful and didn’t give any indication that the Cooper family could come back from this.
Young Sheldon’s viewers know that the series is building to George’s tragic affair, but Georgie and Mandy’s situation might be even worse.
In Young Sheldon‘s defense, the show was always destined to end as a family tragedy.The Big Bang Theory wrote in stone that George would have an affair and die, and Georgie would end up becoming a womanizer who puts little respect on women’s names. The laid-back nature of the first few seasons of Young Sheldon were a soft-launch of the disasters that would come in the future. To give the show credit, Young Sheldon has nailed how hard it is for a Southern family living up to Christian expectations in a judgmental small town.
Adding on a child prodigy, teen pregnancy and marriage, girlhood rebellion and emotional affairs on top of that is a full-blown scandal for a close-minded culture. Excluding the outcome of George’s worst mistakes and Georgie’s current love life won’t bring the show back to its wholly comedic roots. That time has long passed. Young Sheldon just needs to continue to juggle the merriness and devastation with delicacy, honing in on the importance of family during terribly unexpected events.
