‘Young Sheldon' ending explained: What Sheldon Cooper's last line meant?

Young Sheldon signed off on Thursday night with its finale episode ending with Sheldon Cooper, played by Iain Armitage, starting his new chapter in Caltech after saying, "I am exactly where I need to be."

However, before taking off, viewers see Sheldon grieving in his own way over his father George Cooper’s death (played by Lance Barber) as he keeps fantasizing about re-doing his last moments with him.

“We still had to give him some room to grow to get to the end of Big Bang, 12 seasons later, where he gets to stand up at the Nobel Prize ceremony and give an emotional speech thanking his friends," showrunner Steve Holland told Entertainment Weekly.

He added, "So we felt like he couldn't quite get that far yet. It just felt real to the character that there's things he wanted to say that he didn't, and also a way for us to tie in the way George Sr.'s talked about on Big Bang Theory, that it was easier for Sheldon to focus on his dad's faults and flaws as a way to deal with the pain and regret of those moments for him."

We then see an older Sheldon, where Jim Parsons reprised his Big Bang Theory role, writing his memoir and realizing that all this time, he loved his dad.

“The older Sheldon can now look back and realize that that's what he had been doing. But the truth is that he loved his dad and missed him,” Steve explained further.

Speaking about Jim’s narration throughout the series, he continued, "The memoir felt like our conception of the show, which was that this was an adult Sheldon telling stories about his childhood. That was a natural fit.”