Young Sheldon EP Confirms George Never Cheated on Mary… But Sheldon Still Thinks He Did
Young Sheldon boss Steve Holland is setting the record straight about one of the prequel series’ most notable retcons — namely, that it was meant to reshape, not erase, what had previously been established on The Big Bang Theory.
The incident in question was first alluded to in Season 10, when Sheldon revealed to Penny why he always knocks three times before he enters a room:
I was 13 years old, and on spring break from college. My mother was in bible study, I walked in the house expecting to find it empty, and I heard a sound coming from my parents’ bedroom. When I opened the door, I saw my father having relations with another woman…. We locked eyes, I ran to my room, and we never, ever spoke of it.
Season 10, Episode 5: “The Hot Tub Contamination”
But that isn’t how it went down on Young Sheldon. In Season 7, Episode 4, “Ants on a Log and a Cheating Winker,” Sheldon knocked on his parents’ bedroom door only once, then opened the door to find George not with another women, but with Mary, mid-role play.
Before Sheldon entered, Mary could be overheard asking George, “Are you sure your wife won’t come home?” And when Sheldon stumbled upon his parents’ love-making, George could be overheard moaning, “Oh, Helga!” But at the time the episode aired, it was unclear whether Sheldon knew it was Mary, or if he thought he’d just witnessed his father having sex with another woman — something the Big Bang spinoff had been teasing as a possibility since its Season 4 finale.
It also didn’t appear as though Sheldon locked eyes with George, as we were told on Big Bang. And he didn’t run to his bedroom; he made a beeline for the front door.
“I never talked to my parents about what I saw that day,” our narrator said at the time. “But from then on, I added extra knocks so people could get their pants on.” Nothing in Sheldon’s narration, which we now know represented Jim Parsons’ alter-ego hard at work on his memoir, implied that Sheldon, in a post-Big Bang universe, knows that it was Mary that day. And in a new interview with TVLine, Holland confirms as much.
“He did not know it was Mary. He still thinks he walked in [on his father cheating],” the EP verifies. “I think that’s a moment where Sheldon thought he saw something. He thought he saw his dad with another woman, and he didn’t, and there’s a sadness to that, that he’s carried that all these years.
“Again, we’re trying to acknowledge — and we’ve talked about this a lot, like, how do we acknowledge larger Big Bang canon but not have to be tied to every joke? [George cheating] felt like larger Big Bang canon because it’s tied to his three knocks, which is a big deal, and as we got deeper into the show, it also just didn’t feel like this was the kind of show where we wanted to deal with too much infidelity,” Holland explains. “We hinted at it a little bit [with the Brenda Sparks character], so we talked about a way to close that loophole. Maybe this was a thing [where] Sheldon isn’t lying, but he’s not in possession of all the facts.”
In a separate interview, which you can watch above, series star Lance Barber tells TVLine that he was pleased with Holland & Co.’s decision to take George and Mary’s relationship in a different, happier direction in the year leading up to his character’s demise.
“I’m glad that they did what they did in regards to making it not so on the nose of infidelity,” he says. “It’s a thing that probably was relatable to people, to have a crime of the heart, to cheat in an emotional way… and that was much more rich to play than the traditional trope of folks cheating on each other.”
Adds Zoe Perry: “I remember that scene where things kind of come to a head, but then there’s this calm in the storm where we both just kind of say, ‘What are we gonna do?’ And that felt very true to life, too. We’re at this impasse and it’s not even so heated anymore.”
By the time Sheldon walked in on his folks, it was “a lot of water under the bridge,” Barber says.
So, there you have it. George never cheated, but Sheldon doesn’t know. Feel better, Young Sheldon fans? Or does this confirmation just make you feel awful for George and Mary’s son? Let us know in Comments.
I’m still wondering if we’ll ever find out what happened to Paige.
TVLine may just have an answer for you… stay tuned.
The show ended early. It needed one more year.
So , “if they locked eyes” and it wasn’t as you say George who he (Sheldon) locked eyes with, then it must have been Mary,
If that is the case then 3 things had to happen for Sheldons long term rememberence of the incident to remain what it was
1) Sheldon didn’t recognize his mother because she had on a blonde wig
– perhaps , but if they locked eyes, i think most people would after replaying the scene in their heads
2) Mary never tried to explain the situation and make an attempt to correct any misunderstanding that Sheldon had
– perhaps this would be true to her character and her not really realizing the imprint this had on Sheldon
3) She never mentioned to Geroge that she had locked eyes with Sheldon when he saw them so maybe George could explain.
I am so going to miss everything about Young Sheldon it reminded me of my growing up years in a very Southern Baptist Church. I will miss everyone in the family! This show was very well casted!
Sheldon thinks it was another woman.
“I did! I did! I did see a puddy-tat.”
There is one glaring discontinuity between Big Bang and Young Sheldon that wasn’t obviously retcon’ed. In BBT “The Guitarist Amplification,” adult Sheldon describes the marriage between George and Mary as being highly contentious with loud and seemingly frequent verbal fighting, bad enough to send young Sheldon to his room to blare a Feynman lecture over the fight. Young Sheldon depicted some fights between his parents, but never frequent and never as bitter and contentious as adult Sheldon described.
When you’re a child, many things get exaggerated in your mind.
I was glad they handled it this way. memories from your childhood or just memories in general get twisted and re-written in our heads as we age so it makes perfect sense to me. Besides, the 3 knock thing didn’t happen right away on Big Bang anyway so they came up with that as the series went on. It’s cool if they tinker with it’s origin.
You need to tell Sheldon
I truly think they should Sheldon,shouldn’t he know that his dad didn’t never cheat on his mother.
“Didn’t never cheat”? That would mean he DID cheat.
Since it is in the future. We can picture his mother giving advice to Ami to spice up the marriage with roll play. Triggering a realization that his father had role play.
Bazinga…
I had that since as soon as they were talking at the bar when he walked in to go have a beer and the neighbor she was there because it was ladies night but they kind of threw it out there in the air you know that he could chill and have a beer over at her place which was kind of like a oh come on so to speak wishing you know but then again they were both going through troubles in their marriage so you tend to feel left out when things start going bad but some people you know they kind of like catch it before it gets any worse and try to make something of it is what a good marriage pretty much is you know talk about what’s going on even though it’s really hard to but yeah I enjoyed young Sheldon and his brother and his sister Georgie and Missy I mean marry the grandma my mom they were all awesome they did a really great job on that TV series young Sheldon .
And to me I feel that they send out really good marriages that that touch home base and reality and real in real life with people I enjoy the show and at the end I did cheer up when George passed away .
It’s like I felt almost every emotion that Sheldon was going through I mean he was like in total shock when he heard that I mean the whole family was they were just they were going to his passing you know in different ways you know the way they saw fit but yeah Sheldon look like it like really hit him hard I think it hit all of them though it was a great show I can I can see myself looking at that over and over and over again 👍😇😁😁😁🤭🤭🤭