Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage Creator Confirms Bad News for Young Sheldon Fans
Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, the Young Sheldon sequel series, has proven to be a big hit for CBS. While the show is quickly finding its own way with mostly different characters taking center stage, holiday specials are leaving the door open for special appearances from other fan favorites from Young Sheldon.
Recently, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage aired a Thanksgiving special, and the episode saw several major players from Young Sheldon guest star. Montana Jordan’s Georgie was joined for the holiday by family members Mary (Zoey Perry), Meemaw (Annie Potts), and Missy (Raegan Revord). Younger brother Sheldon (Iain Armitage) was not present for the occasion, apparently spending his Thanksgiving holiday in California. Some fans may have been hoping that Armitage’s return as Sheldon would come soon enough with Christmas around the corner, but as co-creator Steve Holland told TVLine, that won’t be happening this season.
“You know, we figured one big holiday was enough,” Holland shared, confirming that there won’t be a Christmas special. “The trick of it, when you do these big holiday episodes, is that it’s exciting because you can bring in everybody, but it just felt like [to bring in everybody] two weeks after Thanksgiving was going to be too soon.”
You know, we figured one big holiday was enough.
It could be seen as a fair point that featuring two big holiday episodes so closely together might be a bit too much fan service for one season. Unfortunately, nixing the potential Christmas episode takes away an opportunity to bring in Sheldon for a return in a way that makes sense to the story. The show’s creators previously hinted that a holiday special would be a perfect way to bring Sheldon back, so the wait for the desired cameo will be longer than expected — if it even happens at all.
Some fans might be wondering why Sheldon wasn’t included for Thanksgiving if there wasn’t going to be a Christmas episode they were saving that for. Holland also confirmed to TVLine that there were talks about having Armitage return as Sheldon in the Thanksgiving episode, but the concern was that his presence would detract from the story of the special. Holland did not offer any further hints about when Sheldon might appear.
Sheldon’s Return Would’ve “Hurt” the Thanksgiving Special
“There are certain occasions where you could bring him back, but as we were breaking the [episode], it just felt like it was actually going to hurt this story,” Holland explained. “Often, when a matriarch or a patriarch passes away, the family can splinter, and that’s what is happening here. And as fun as it would have been to see him, it felt like there is no world where that family doesn’t get together, and Mary doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, if Sheldon is coming back from California. So, it seemed to make ‘Sheldon sense’ that he didn’t come back, and it made sense for the story we were trying to tell.”
A reunion between the Cooper brothers seems like it would be inevitable, given how Armitage has openly expressed his desire to revisit the role of Sheldon for the spinoff. And while Thanksgiving and Christmas are off the table for the anticipated return, that doesn’t mean Sheldon will definitely not appear at another point during the season for an entirely different reason. It just remains unclear if that will truly come to be in Season 1, or if the Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage team ends up holding off on the cameo until Season 2.
Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage debuts new episodes on CBS on Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET.
