SPOILER ALERT: The following interview discusses events from the “Young Sheldon” episode “A New Home and a Traditional Texas Torture,” streaming on Paramount+ as of May 10.
We knew it was going to happen — since it was foretold on “The Big Bang Theory” — but that didn’t make it any easier to say goodbye to one of “Young Sheldon’s” original cast members. In the final moments in the second of two episodes airing back-to-back on May 9, the Cooper family received word that curmudgeon patriarch George Cooper (Lance Barber) had died of a heart attack.
The fate of George dying at this point in Sheldon Cooper’s journey does goes back to the “The Big Bang Theory,” on which we learned that adult Sheldon (played by Jim Parsons, who narrates “Young Sheldon” and is set to appear in next week’s finale episode alongside Mayim Bialik) lost his father at the age of 14. That’s the current age of prodigy Sheldon (Iain Armitage) in the prequel series, and while producers had said this major death would be addressed in the show’s final season, they had not said exactly when it would happen.
Now that this heartbreaking loss has happened, “Young Sheldon” will next say goodbye itself in back-to-back episodes airing on May 16, as well as facing the tasks of saying goodbye to the rest of the cast (though its spin-off “Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage”is set to air this fall on CBS) — and send Sheldon off to his future at Caltech. “The way we brought this show to an end here, it’s emotional,” says executive producer Steve Holland. “I was emotional doing it. It’s emotional for the characters. It’s emotional watching it back.”
Here, Holland also shares how the writers figured out how (and when) to portray George’s death, how Barber took the news about his character dying and what other information from “The Big Bang Theory” needed to be honored.
You guys have done this before, when you wrapped up “The Big Bang Theory.”But how challenging was it to land all the points you wanted before the end of the series?
It’s always challenging, and I think endings are always really difficult. There’s a lot of expectation on the endings, and at some point, you have to put aside what you think the audience wants to see and just focus on the ending you think is good, and then hope that they’re also going to appreciate it. Going into this season was a little extra challenging because we had a strike-shortened season, so instead of 22, we had to get everything we wanted to hit and get it in 14 episodes. But I don’t think there’s anything we wanted to get to that we didn’t get to at the end of the day.
Since you’ve been asked about it for the last seven years, planning George’s death, did you guys know this is how you wanted to play it? Or was it something you kept going back and forth on?
We always knew we were going to address it this season. We always knew we were going to get to the funeral this season. And we always knew that George’s death would happen off screen, that we didn’t want to witness it. It was just a question of when. There was a version of this, as we talked about it earlier on, where it would have been: The finale would have been the death and the funeral. I think it was Chuck [Lorre, executive producer] who said, “This is mostly a positive, uplifting show. Let’s not leave the audience deep in their grief. Let’s watch the family start to piece itself back together, and let’s end with a little hope.” So then that re-shifted when we were going to do it.
And then also, just because we know some people are expecting it, I know there’s a lot of talk of whether it’s going to happen or not going to happen, but people who know “Big Bang” are expecting it. We wanted to do it in a way that was hopefully a little surprising. So that’s why it happens at the end of [Episode 12] — we thought maybe we can catch people off guard. Even though they know it’s going to come, maybe they won’t see it coming then.
