Young Sheldon suffered a dramatic turn of events a week before the season finale, when the spinoff of CBS' Big Bang Theory said goodbye to George Cooper Sr. (Lance Barber).
The Young Sheldon finale fills in a huge hole in the Big Bang Theory plot
Fans of Big Bang knew that Sheldon (played by Iain Armitage as a teenager and Jim Parsons as an adult) lost his father at the age of 14. But it was clever to see George's family members find out he'd suffered a fatal heart attack in that May 9 episode.
It turns out that it's actually not uncommon for TV characters to die right before the series finale. Read on for the details about the deaths of George Sr. and other TV characters who nearly made it to the final moments of their shows. (Spoilers abound!)
George died of a heart attack in "New Home and a Traditional Texas Torture," the episode before Young Sheldon's two-part series finale on May 16. "The history that Big Bang had established is that George dies when Sheldon is 14. And now he's 14," Barber explained to us. "I have nothing but gratitude [to this show]. I had the luxury of knowing from the beginning that I had to be emotionally prepared."
