the “Big Bang Theory” spin-off “Young Sheldon” hit a few speed bumps during the larger crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike some other projects, however, the CBS comedy ended up missing an entire season finale because of this.
“Young Sheldon” season 3 aired from September 26, 2019, to April 30, 2020, ending with episode 21, “A Secret Letter and a Lowly Disc of Processed Meat.” Here, Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage) discovers that his mother Mary (Zoe Perry) has been hiding several early-bird courting letters from prestigious colleges (including CalTech, his eventual alma mater) from him, which contributes to a large-scale family crisis. This and other developments give every main character plenty to do, and the end result works as a fine enough finale, with Sheldon becoming an East Texas Tech undergraduate as a solution that satisfies everyone involved.
However, the original plan was to film another, 22nd episode, which would have been the season finale proper and depicted Sheldon’s graduation from high school. In a 2020 interview with TV Line, “Young Sheldon” co-creator and former “The Big Bang Theory” showrunner Steve Molaro described how shooting on this intended episode was cut short:
“We were in the middle of shooting [Episode 22]. We [were] two days in. We sometimes shoot on location at Van Nuys High School, and on the second day of production, they kicked us out. They were like, ‘You’ve got to go now.’ We were trying to get Iain’s stuff done just in case, and we were hoping we could maybe find a way to, you know, rebuild part of what we were doing on the stage the next day, and the superintendent was like, ‘Get them out now,’ and we understood. We left, and that ended up being our last day.”
