There are a few successful veteran series that have the final seasons pending broadcast. Young Sheldon, Station 19, The Good Doctor and Blue Bloods, still with good audiences in the United States, will close. Industry insiders assume the reason: the cost of the team’s payroll, due to their longevity, prevents them from being profitable productions despite their success. But, according to those responsible for Young Sheldon, the closure of the prequel to The Big Bang Theory is due to creative reasons.
“We felt that it was the right time to close the series well while it was still at the top,” explained co-creator and executive producer Steve Holland, in a conversation with the American press at the Warner Bros. studios. The crux of the matter was at the age of the main character, Sheldon Cooper, who was getting older and this forced the writers to change the essence of the series if they wanted to continue forward.
“There are certain things that we know happen in Sheldon’s life at 14 years old,” he confessed. To be exact, at that age he enrolled in Cal Tech University due to his gifted intelligence, which meant that the character had to move to California and leave the family home that since 2017 has been the center of the sitcom. It was also when George, the father, died. And, after imagining how they saw the future of the series, they thought it was time to close.
This means that, in short, Molaro and Chuck Lorre, the other co-creator of Young Sheldon, never visualized their work so much as a vehicle for showcasing the main character but as an ensemble series where all the Coopers had their importance. Otherwise, the story could continue. Why not move the action to Cal Tech, considering the comedic potential of seeing Sheldon surrounded by college kids much older than him?
It is worth remembering that, in addition to having healthy audiences in US primetime as the most watched comedy on the CBS channel, it is now also a phenomenon in streaming: since Warner Bros. gave the first seasons to Netflix on a non-exclusive basis, Young Sheldon is among the most watched series in the US, moderately repeating the success of Suits.
Molaro also wanted to remember, now that the definitive end is approaching, that both he and Lorre owe the project to Iain Armitage, who was 8 years old when he sent them his audition as Sheldon Cooper, until then known for his performance as Jim Parsons in The big bang theory They believed that it was unfeasible to produce a comedy with such a young actor who knew how to cover Parsons until they saw him.
“If this hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have moved forward,” he said of the project. They regard Armitage, now 15, as a miracle who allowed the rest of the Cooper family to flourish around him.
While other actors must wait until they are adults to start taking their first steps in acting, or make a name for themselves in Hollywood, Armitage did it at the age of 8. And, before releasing Young Sheldon, that same 2017 she premiered Big Little Lies alongside Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley, who played her mother in the HBO fiction.
Regarding the universe of The Big Bang Theory, it has not yet died out: a spin-off focusing on Georgie, Sheldon’s older brother, and Mandy, the characters played by Montana Jordan and Emily Osment, is pending to receive the green light. It would focus on his romantic relationship, her parenthood, and her age difference, with him being barely of age and her being in her thirties.
