How Old Is Young Sheldon Cooper In Episode 1 Compared To The Series Finale?

Time works funny on TV. With serialized dramas like "Lost," in which entire seasons take place over the course of just a few weeks, it was a struggle for the writers to figure out how to keep their main child actor around, knowing that he could hit his growth spurt at any moment. For weekly sitcoms, it's easier because they generally take place in real time, with characters experiencing the change in seasons along with the viewers at home. That allows the kids to age naturally on screen, even if it still feels way too fast for comfort. (Carl and Debbie in "Shameless," for instance, went from innocent kids to teenage sleazeballs in the blink of an eye.) 

Although the early seasons of "Young Sheldon" went at the easy pace of a typical sitcom, with its kid characters aging one year with each season, it switched things up in the later seasons. Suddenly the writers started stretching out the timeline, so that Sheldon stays 13 and 14 for longer than he typically would've. The result is that Sheldon starts the series as a 9-year-old (roughly the same age as the actor, Iain Armitage) and ends with Sheldon at 14 (even though Armitage was now 16). 

The reason they did this is because "Young Sheldon," which is beholden to "Big Bang Theory" lore, had a clear expiration date established from day one. The producers and writers always knew that George Sr. (Lance Barber) had to die when Sheldon was 14, and they knew that Sheldon would also be moving off to Caltech when he was 14. The writers knew the series couldn't go on with Sheldon separated from his family and George Sr. living six feet under, so it delayed these canon events as long as possible. Honestly, it's hard to argue with the results, as the actors for Sheldon and Missy (Raegan Revord) both still passed for 14 in season 7. At the very least, it's not something that requires much suspension of disbelief. 

Of course, "Young Sheldon" was just following the tradition of plenty of other sitcoms that messed around with time, often to absurd degrees. "That '70s Show" somehow managed to stretch out the last four years of the '70s into eight seasons, to the point where the gang was celebrating Christmas way too often to make any sense. A generation earlier, the hit series "M*A*S*H" went and stretched out the three-year Korean War into 11 seasons, asking viewers to accept that this war was so stressful that it caused some of its main characters to age three times as fast as a regular person. 

Then there are the animated sitcoms, which don't need to age the characters up at all. Bart Simpson has been trying to get out of fourth grade for 36 years at this point (though he recently turned 11 in the show's 36th season premiere), just as Stewie Griffin (who is technically my age, having been born in '98) is doomed to be a baby forever. Animated sitcoms tend to embrace the floating timeline style, which leads to awkward moments where the characters' backstories keep updating to fit the times. That's how Homer Simpson, who started off as a baby boomer, is now a millennial whose teen flashbacks feature him acting like a total '90s kid.

Although not a sitcom, "Stranger Things" is probably the best modern example of a TV show struggling hard to combat the ravages of time. Those child actors have aged almost nine years going into the fifth season, even though the characters themselves (many of whom hadn't hit puberty yet in season 1) are supposed to have only aged about four years. The show seems to be addressing this slightly with its fifth and final season, which is expected to be set 18 months after season 4, but the awkwardness is still impossible to ignore. "Stranger Things" is still a fun show, but with its long production times clashing so hard with its canon timeline, it makes it a lot easier to appreciate "Young Sheldon" for its consistent yearly schedule. The "Big Bang Theory" spinoff may have played a little loose with the timeline in its final years, but in that respect it could've been a lot worse.