Missy Questioning Young Sheldon’s Sexuality Was a Callback to Big Bang’s Penny Puzzling Over Sheldon’s ‘Deal’
Midway through the milestone outing, 12-year-old Sheldon (played by Iain Armitage) goes to his twin sister Missy (Raegan Revord) and asks if he can borrow one of her “Sassy magazines.” Unaware that he’s piecing together a care package for their troubled friend Paige, Missy gleans that this is Sheldon’s way of telling her that he’s gay.
“I knew it!” she exclaims. “Look, I’m cool with this, but do not tell Dad.”
“Tell Dad what?” Sheldon responds, completely oblivious to what Missy has just inferred.
It’s a moment that harkens back to The Big Bang Theory. In Season 2, Episode 6, “The Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem,” a female grad student’s attraction to Sheldon confused everyone — including Sheldon himself. It was at that point that Penny surveyed Leonard et al about their eccentric friend.
“What’s Sheldon’s deal?” she asked. “Is it girls? Guys? Sock puppets?” But Leonard, Howard and Raj had been operating under the assumption that Sheldon had no “deal.” He had never expressed romantic interest in another human being, and wouldn’t until Mayim Bialik’s Amy Farrah Fowler was introduced at the end of Season 3.
“I think Missy has spent a little time trying to understand who her brother is and what his sexuality might be,” executive producer Steve Molaro told our sister site Deadline. “Which, as we know, through The Big Bang Theory, continues to be quite a question mark for a long time.”
In a post mortem with TVLine, Molaro discussed the spinoff’s ability to push the envelope a bit now that the young ensemble is getting older. “We started off with Georgie, Missy and Sheldon ranging from eight to 14-years-old in real life [when we did the pilot],” he said. “Now we find ourselves able to tell more interesting, more mature stories with these actors and these characters. That’s a big part of what we’re excited about and how we landed on how the hundredth ends with Georgie.”
