Warning! Spoilers ahead for Young Sheldon season 7, episode 6.
Young Sheldon‘s original villain makes its unexpected comeback a couple of years after the Coopers were able to get rid of them. After a two-week break due to March Madness, CBS’ premier comedy is back with a brand new episode that inches Sheldon and his family’s story closer to its end. Considering its success, Young Sheldon‘s end will result in a massive hole in the network’s programming slate, especially since it has kept The Big Bang Theory universe alive and relevant. While Georgie and Mandy will keep the franchise growing, Sheldon’s story will end when Young Sheldon wraps up.
Like its parent series, Young Sheldon doesn’t have any official bad guy. The family’s dynamic, much like every clan, is already complicated that conflicts naturally arise without introducing any external players. That being said, through stories and patterns, it’s easy to see which characters and entities typically wreak havoc in the Coopers’ lives. George and Mary used to fight a lot, with their arguments in various levels of seriousness. Meanwhile, Sheldon’s quirks and oddities tend to create disagreements. However, there’s one player in Young Sheldon who has repeatedly created family issues — the church, and now, it is back.
As previously established, Pastor Jeff’s church was Young Sheldon‘s overall villain. For years, the congregation was part of the family’s life in Medford because of Mary’s insistence that her family shared her religious beliefs, which wasn’t uncommon around that time in Texas. That being said, it wasn’t until the Coopers were kicked out of the congregation in the Young Sheldon season 5 finale that it became clear just how big of an impact Pastor Jeff had on their family, which reached even those who didn’t actively attend church like their matriarch did.
Being part of a church gave Mary a community in earlier seasons of Young Sheldon. However, she regularly chose it and its teachings over almost everything else, creating issues at home. Despite her dedication to the church, however, she and her family were ruthlessly shunned away from it after word got out that Georgie and Mandy got unexpectedly pregnant. Initially, it took a toll on the family, but severing ties from the congregation made Mary more agreeable — something that both George and Meemaw noticed. She was able to fix her marriage and prioritize her family.
A lot has already happened since Mary was pushed out of her church. Unfortunately, with her ties to the church re-established, her negative tendencies are also back. Surprisingly, it was George who helped Mary get back to the congregation, but he didn’t realize that it would pull his wife back to her old ways. In the name of her religion, Mary brings back her self-righteous and judgmental characteristics in Young Sheldon season 7, episode 6, “Baptists, Catholics and an Attempted Drowning.” It starts when she pressures Mandy and Georgie into tying the knot, and it just escalates from there.
It’s worth noting that after getting kicked out by Pastor Jeff, Mary didn’t seem to have any issues about Georgie and Mandy being together. Instead, they decided to get engaged on their own in the Young Sheldon season 6 finale. So it’s quite peculiar that she’s suddenly peeved about the couple not being married. Worse, she even goes behind their backs to baptize Baby Cece with the help of Pastor Jeff. Granted that Mandy’s mom did the same, but it’s unlikely that Mary would have been that brazen if she was still excluded from her congregation.
Mary’s return to church officially kickstarts her villain arc that continues all the way to The Big Bang Theory. Since the prequel series is ending, there’s a limited amount of time to see the Cooper matriarch get way too invested in her religion again. That being said, while she won’t be in the George and Mandy spinoff series despite essentially being a continuation of Young Sheldon, this shift will have to happen off-screen. Based on her many appearances in The Big Bang Theory, Mary’s dedication to her church will only get worse moving forward.
George’s impending death may also exacerbate the situation. As seen before, Mary tends to interpret tragedy as God’s way of punishment. She may read it as extra motivation to be more committed to Pastor Jeff and the congregation’s beliefs, which, unfortunately, aren’t always morally correct. Whatever the case may be, seeing this shift in Mary is already creating new issues in her family, making it easy to be nostalgic of the time in Young Sheldon where she doesn’t let her church dictate major decisions in her life.