Young Sheldon’s Reaction To George’s Death Explained By Iain Armitage

Sheldon Cooper, the nerdy protagonist at the center of “Young Sheldon” and “The Big Bang Theory,” has a tendency to react to things a bit differently than the people around him, and it’s never more evident than in the season 7 episode “A New Home and a Traditional Texas Torture.” At the end of the episode, young Sheldon (Iain Armitage) and his family are told that Sheldon’s father George (Lance Barber) has died of a heart attack, and while his mother, sister, and grandmother all begin to cry, Sheldon just looks sort of shocked and sits down, his face blank. To someone on the outside, it might appear like he doesn’t care, but because Sheldon is some unspecified flavor of neurodivergent, his reaction is actually about as intense of an emotional one as possible. 

Sheldon would continue to have a different reaction to George’s death than the rest of the family, appearing even more detached than usual in the heartbreaking penultimate and finale episodes, but there was a good reason behind it all. In an interview with TV Line, Armitage broke it all down and explained that Sheldon was absolutely grieving — he was just doing it in his own way. 

While Sheldon’s family members were outwardly devastated by the news and began crying, Sheldon was so overwhelmed that he simply shut down as Armitage explained: 

“The thing about Sheldon is it’s less of an external stone-face, I think you know for other characters maybe that stone facade is crumbling from the outside in, for Sheldon it’s from the inside out. One of the first takes we did I sat down in the chair the way they wanted me to and I kind of started to let my face fall and almost not quite cry but you know kind of start to get emotional and [the director] said don’t even do that, it’s a thousand times more heartbreaking if we see that Sheldon can’t even begin to imagine processing or understanding that to the point where his mind won’t try; it’s almost as if he’s heard them talking about the weather and I really liked that interpretation. “

In the scene, we can see Sheldon’s eyes subtly move around as his brain tries to comprehend what he’s just heard, and it’s absolutely soul-crushing because we’re watching a young man realize that he’ll never see his father again. George and Sheldon had a complicated relationship that could have gotten better with time, but they tragically never got that chance and it helped shape the often jaded adult Sheldon eventually became on “The Big Bang Theory” (where he was played by Jim Parsons, who narrated “Young Sheldon” and had a cameo in the finale). Everyone grieves differently, and for Sheldon, it seems like his brain jumped straight to denial. Maybe one day, long after the events of even “The Big Bang Theory,” he’ll finally find acceptance.