Young Sheldon Just Reminded Us How Close the Finale Actually Is
A reveal in Young Sheldon's episode 7 of season 6 points to the inevitable finale of the popular spinoff.
As hard as it was for fans of The Big Bang Theory to say goodbye to beloved characters, they still had a prequel featuring young Sheldon to take their minds off negative emotions. Unfortunately, all shows end one day, and Young Sheldon is no exception.
Although CBS has renewed the show for a seventh season, Sheldon is growing up and getting closer to his adult version. The episode "A Tougher Nut and a Note on File" gives a hint of the finale to come.
The episode introduces viewers to one of the adult Sheldon's biggest hobbies, collecting comic books, which often brought Sheldon and his friends to Stuart's comic book shop on The Big Bang Theory. An obsessive collector, young Sheldon comes up with a comic book database to improve the process of finding specific comic books. Later, in the process of creating the database, Sheldon realises that the same system can be used to find scientific grants and pitches the idea to his boss.
Since viewers know from The Big Bang Theory that Sheldon ends up at Caltech instead of the Ivy League, this database of all existing science grants could be the one through which the child prodigy eventually finds his Caltech scholarship.
This means that Sheldon's new database is the beginning of his gradual departure to Pasadena, which will probably be the end of the series. It is not yet clear how many episodes CBS will be able to squeeze in between Season 6 and Sheldon's departure.
One of the peculiarities of any prequel is that it has a pre-established ending that was shown in the parent series. So Young Sheldon still has some pretty big plot twists to deal with before the finale.
Viewers know from The Big Bang Theory that Sheldon's father, George Sr, died of a heart attack when Sheldon was 14. A year earlier, Sheldon caught his dad cheating on Mary with another woman in a huge scandal. These heartbreaking scenes have yet to be shown in Young Sheldon before he leaves for Pasadena.
Could the show continue after Sheldon's departure? Yes, but it would definitely ruin the current dynamic. Young Sheldon has evolved from a show about a boy genius to a family show about all the members of the Cooper family and the development of their arcs. So it seems wrong to shift the focus back to Sheldon.