• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, November 16, 2023

Take a bow, Iain Armitrage. We will never forget you as young Sheldon Cooper, the role you played for six, going on seven, seasons of “Young Sheldon.”

The end is near for “Young Sheldon,” CBS announced Tuesday. Its final season will start next year on February 15, with a one-hour series finale on May 16, CBS said.

It is doubtful the show’s final season will have its customary complement of episodes given the production time frame in the wake of the strike, and the air schedule which amounts to half a season.

Iian Armitrage was 9 years old when “Young Sheldon” premiered in September 2017. He is now 15.

Naturally, he looks older now than he used to (above photo is from last spring), but the character may have had a few seasons left before adulthood.

Nevertheless “Young Sheldon” is done making new, first-run episodes, but it is the kind of show that could live for years to come in off-network syndication, where it has already been airing.

The show is from producer Chuck Lorre, whose previous sitcoms for CBS have proven to be durable in syndication.

The most notable of these are “The Big Bang Theory” (from which “Young Sheldon” was created) and “Two And A Half Men.”

Two others, “Mom” and “Mike & Molly” (with Melissa McCarthy), have not been as conspicuous as those two. 

Another Lorre show, “Bob [Hearts] Abishola,” was reportedly due to makes its off-network debut in September, but whether or not this happened is difficult to nail down in a search of the TV trade press.

“Young Sheldon” told the story of the boy-genius Sheldon Cooper, the character played by the grown-up Jim Parsons in “The Big Bang Theory.”

“The Big Bang Theory” ran for 12 seasons on CBS. In the show, the adult Sheldon was a socially awkward physicist who lived with another physicist, Leonard Hofstadter, played by Johnny Galecki.

A prequel series to “Big Bang,” “Young Sheldon” took place in south Texas, where Parsons also grew up. 

The actor served as narrator of “Young Sheldon,” and was one of the show’s executive producers.

The gravitational center of the show was Armitrage, whose portrayal of a boy whose intellect was light years ahead of every other school pupil in his community was uncanny. 

More importantly, he was completely believable and acceptable as the young version of the Sheldon Cooper character in “Big Bang,” which for much of its run was the highest-rated comedy on TV. “Young Sheldon” was similarly successful.