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“Young Sheldon” fans tuned in to say goodbye to the CBS comedy series live on Thursday, with the final episode garnering 8.95 million viewers — the show’s best audience in four years.
The finale marks the latest win for the highly successful “Big Bang Theory” spin-off. The show premiered on CBS as the No. 1 new comedy of the 2017-2018 television season, and became broadcast television’s top comedy in the 2019-2020 season. It’s held on to the title for the past five TV seasons.
CBS won the night overall with an average of 5.81 million viewers, the network’s largest non-sports Thursday night since April 30, 2020. The lineup featured the series finales of “Young Sheldon,” canceled drama “So Help Me Todd” and a new episode of “Elsbeth.”
“Young Sheldon” aired its final two episodes at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET, boasting 8.82 million and 8.95 million viewers, respectively, according to live-plus-same-day fast national data.
In its seventh and final season, the comedy series averaged nearly 13 million viewers in L+35 multiplatform viewing, a 17% increase from Season 6.
The finale featured the aftermath of the Cooper family patriarch’s sudden death in the penultimate episode, as well as Sheldon’s arrival as a teen student at Caltech. It also featured the onscreen debut of original Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), alongside his “Big Bang” wife Amy (Mayim Bialik.)
According to Nielsen, “Young Sheldon” has accrued 174.307 billion minutes viewed since its debut across 137 episodes (through 5/5/24) — the most for any comedy that debuted in the 2017-18 season or beyond. The series benefited from a burst of visibility after its first six seasons were made available to stream on Netflix ahead of the Season 7 premiere.
The “So Help Me Todd” series finale averaged 4.40 millions viewers at 9 p.m. while “Elsbeth” averaged 4.15 million viewers.
