Young Sheldon Star Lance Barber Had Sneaky Cameo During George Cooper’s Funeral

The series finale of and a big focus of the episode was the funeral of George Sr. Everyone who watched The Big Bang Theory knew that the death of his father was a huge part of Sheldon’s story, and George died at the conclusion of the show’s penultimate episode. While the character of George Sr. didn’t make it to the Young Sheldon finale, the actor that played him did, as he had a hidden cameo throughout his on-screen persona’s funeral.

Lance Barber starred as George Cooper in all seven seasons of Young Sheldon, and he had no intention of missing the finale. After the episode aired, photos of Barber in costume as an old woman at George’s funeral arrived online. He got a front row seat to his own character’s goodbye. Take a look!

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Fans of The Big Bang Theory knew that George’s death was always a certainty on Young Sheldon, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a total gut-punch for everyone watching. Ahead of Thursday’s finale, executive producer Steve Holland talked with ComicBook about bidding farewell to George Sr.

“We knew, going into this last season especially, that we knew there were certain big events that happened when Sheldon was 14,” Holland told us.  We knew his dad was going to pass away. We knew that he was going to go to Caltech. So it was then really about figuring out when and how. And I think in our early discussions, we’d sort of thought that the death and the funeral would be the finale, with maybe a little tag of Sheldon going off to Cal Tech. I think that was always our last image. As we were breaking the episodes and talking about it, I think Chuck Lorre said, ‘The show has been such a sort of positive show and it’s a family show. Maybe we don’t want to leave the audience wallowing in grief. So maybe there’s a way to sort of do the funeral, and also move past it, and have a little bit more hope going into the finale.’ And I think that was a really smart call on his part.”

The story of Young Sheldon may be over, but the series is continuing in the fall with yet another spinoff. Georgie and Mandy will be anchoring their own series titled Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage, with Montana Jordan and Emily Osment reprising their roles from Young Sheldon.