Warning! Spoilers ahead for the Young Sheldon series finale.
The Young Sheldon finale features adult Sheldon and Amy in a flashforward making it more curious where the rest of The Big Bang Theory cast is. Like its parent series, CBS stages a one-hour send-off that ties almost all big narrative loose ends. The first half of the special, Young Sheldon season 7, episode 13, “Funeral,” tackles the aftermath of George’s unexpected death, with the focus of the narrative on how Sheldon and the rest of the family cope with his passing. After that, Young Sheldon season 7, episode 14, “Memoir,” moves the story forward to a satisfying conclusion.
While Young Sheldon has long outgrown its premise as Sheldon’s origins story, its ending re-establishes its connection to its parent series in its closing year. This makes sense, considering that the reason it is ending is because of The Big Bang Theory canon. To emphasize its ties to the nerd-centric sitcom, Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik make an appearance as Sheldon and Amy. Their cameos open the door for the rest of the Pasadena gang to also be involved, but none of them appears, making their whereabouts more interesting.
The Young Sheldon series finale’s flashforward not only answers questions about the prequel but also offers a much-needed update about The Big Bang Theory gang. Since the sequence is set more than a decade since they won the Nobel Prize in Physics, much has changed for the couple. For starters, they have moved out of Apartment 4B and now has at least two kids. This likely makes it trickier to hang out with their friends as frequently as they want to. The great news is that, despite that, they remain friends with the Pasadena gang.
Sheldon name-drops Penny babysitting their unnamed daughter, which means that she and Leonard come around quite often. Previously, Howard made a Young Sheldon voice cameo being involved in the memoir-writing endeavor, insinuating that he and Bernadette are still close with the Cooper-Fowlers. Raj is the only person unaccounted for in Young Sheldon, but it’s safe to say that he is still a good friend. Ideally, the Pasadena gang would have appeared in the finale, but the thought that they are all still friends in the future is still a great reveal.
Young Sheldon‘s final scene is of Sheldon arriving at Caltech for his post-grad studies. Eventually, he would stay in Pasadena and settle there well into his adulthood. However, none of the Pasadena gang are yet to be in the academic institution in 1994, so the prequel couldn’t show the boy genius’ first meeting with Leonard, Howard, and Raj. According to The Big Bang Theory, the group didn’t get together until 4 years before the events of the nerd-centric sitcom. This means that Sheldon will have around 9 more years to go before he and Leonard become roommates.