Long after the final episode aired in May 2024, fans are still asking why Young Sheldon was canceled.
It’s an obvious question, since the Big Bang Theory prequel was an immediate hit for CBS when it began in 2017, and was “the most watched comedy on broadcast TV and third most watched non-sports program overall” for multiple seasons. It was built to be a hit, drafting off 12 seasons of its smash predecessor, taking its signature character, Jim Parsons’s Sheldon Cooper, and rolling back to his oft-referenced childhood.
With Iain Armitage slipping right into Parsons’s shoes and a beloved roster of supporting players, Young Sheldon seemed to have at least a few more seasons left in it. Traditionally, networks don’t actually want to cancel massively popular shows while viewers are still showing up every week, after all.
So why did Young Sheldon end? Co-creators Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro, along with fellow executive producer Steve Holland, have offered several reasons they felt, creatively, it was time to hang up lil Sheldon’s spurs, and they’re very good reasons. More importantly, however, Young Sheldon was a victim of the same economic realities that brought CBS’s Blue Blood and ABC’s The Good Doctor to their ends despite strong ratings.
The Story Ran Out Of Wiggle Room In ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Lore
Executive Producer Steve Holland highlighted that the show’s storyline naturally led to its conclusion. “There are certain things we know happen in Sheldon’s life at 14,” Holland explained at a press day, according to Deadline. This pivotal moment in Sheldon’s life – his move to Caltech – marked a clear endpoint for the series. Holland noted, “This is the right time for this story to come to an end.”
The producers wanted to stick to the timeline set by The Big Bang Theory, ensuring that Young Sheldon ended without overstaying its welcome or trammeling on narrative ground already covered by The Big Bang Theory. At the conclusion of Young Sheldon, he’s back from Germany, leaving virtually no wiggle room before hitting the endpoint of its prequel timeline.
Rewriting The Big Bang Theory‘s surprisingly elaborate lore would be a problem for longtime fans, and the original show established the Caltech-at-age-14 origin that leads into Sheldon meeting friends like Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), and Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar).
The Star Was Getting (Visibly) Too Old
The producers faced challenges with the show’s casting as Iain Armitage, who played young Sheldon, naturally aged. Finding Armitage in the first place was a casting coup, as the show called for a precocious young actor capable of channeling Jim Parsons, whose Sheldon became a TV institution over seven seasons.
As reported by Deadline, executive Producer Chuck Lorre remarked to journalists on the serendipitous casting of Armitage, saying:
It’s important to say that we wouldn’t be sitting here, had not eight years ago, Iain’s mom sent us a video of him doing a scene that Steven and I wrote that we never intended to shoot. This guy killed it. And if that had not happened, we wouldn’t have gone forward. It’s the miracle of casting Young Sheldon. It was one we understood was likely not going to happen but it did. And this family blossomed around him.
When the show began in 2017, Sheldon was canonically nine years old, as was his younger twin sister, Missy, played by Raegan Revord. Born in 2008, both actors were just the right age at the time, but with the narrative obstacle of Sheldon heading off to Caltech at age 14, the show basically slowed down time.
Though Armitage and Revord were both 15 to 16 years old while filming Season 7, their characters were still 14. And in Armitage’s case especially, viewers noticed the difference and were starting to struggle with it.
Networks Are Shifting To Reality Programming And Cheaper Shows
The last time Young Sheldon was renewed, in 2021, CBS ordered three seasons of the series. If the network wanted more seasons after the seventh, that would mean negotiating entirely new contracts with the show’s major talent both in front of and behind the camera.
But that’s not what brought the show to its end. Like all prequels, it was a narrative cul-de-sac, and, as established, the showrunners opted to end Young Sheldon before undercutting The Big Bang Theory‘s history. But it would be foolish to ignore that the end of Young Sheldon also fit with a broader trend in network TV, which provides an economic rationale more powerful than the creative arguments for closing the book on Sheldon for the time being.
The network’s priority shifted to focus on a spread between cheaper-to-produce reality shows and more expensive hourlong dramas. This particular show was a co-production between CBS and Warner Bros. TV, meaning CBS had to pay Warner Bros. a licensing fee to actually air episodes. Major networks are increasingly deciding that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze when vertically-integrated and reality programming are options.
Another popular CBS series, Blue Bloods, also concluded at the end of its seventh season, as did ABC’s The Good Doctor and Station 19. Young Sheldon was a much bigger ratings juggernaut than any of those shows, but the logic of its cancellation is pretty much the same: no matter how high the ratings, the shows simply become more expensive to license and produce than networks are comfortable with.
And it’s not as though ending Young Sheldon means the door to more Big Bang Theory has slammed closed. In fact, it never really closed at all. The Young Sheldon spinoff Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, starring Montana Jordan and Emily Osment, kicked off its first season in October 2024, just months after Mr. Cooper’s youthful adventures came to a close in May 2024.
And there’s another Big Bang Theory spinoff on the way: an as-yet untitled sitcom featuring TBBT veterans Brian Posehn, Lauren Lapkus, Kevin Sussman, and John Ross Bowie as Bert Kibbler, Denise, Stewart Bloom, and Barry Kripke, respectively. Unlike the original multi-camera series (but like Young Sheldon), Lorre is planning this as a single-camera show. While the show doesn’t have a premiere date, Warner Bros. TV opted to make it a series on Max, Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service, rather than sell to CBS.
And doesn’t it make more sense for Lorre and CBS to focus on cheaper shows within this universe? After all, they can keep costs under control for at least a few seasons, provided the shows aren’t too successful too quickly.
