The “Young Sheldon” team delayed the inevitable once, by holding the characters of Sheldon and his twin sister, Missy (Raegan Revord), at the same age for two seasons. But that trick could not be repeated indefinitely.

“The premise of the show is that an exceptional young kid is thrust into a world where everyone is older than him,” Holland said. “But as soon as Ian aged and Sheldon aged, he didn’t look that out of place anymore, even in college.”

So when Holland and Molaro sat down with Lorre to plot out Season 7 after the writers’ strike was settled, they decided their prequel had reached its natural conclusion. The tight post-strike production timeline meant they had to inform the cast about the decision on a group Zoom call, which surprised some of them. (In a Variety interview, Annie Potts, who plays Sheldon’s “Meemaw,” described her initial reaction as “shocked” and “ambushed.”) But whatever mixed feelings the cast may have had about the series coming to an end, it doesn’t show in their performances in the final two episodes, which strike the usual “Young Sheldon” balance of gentle good humor and soft sentimental pangs.

In the penultimate episode, “Funeral” (which aired Thursday night right before the finale), the Cooper family struggles with saying goodbye to George, with Sheldon revisiting his last moments with his father and thinking of all of things he could have said to him but didn’t.

The episode ends on a poignant note, as Sheldon’s devoutly religious mother, Mary (Zoe Perry), rages at God at the memorial service before Meemaw steps in to lighten the mood. (She jokes that no one is sadder about George dying than the Lone Star beer company.) Sheldon, still lost in his own head, imagines the heartfelt eulogy he is too numb to give.

The finale, “Memoir,” tells a more typical “Young Sheldon” story, about Mary trying to get Sheldon baptized before he leaves for college. In framing scenes, the older Sheldon and Amy argue about his parenting of their own children, underlining one of the show’s main themes: that Sheldon’s parents, while dealing with all the usual messes of everyday life, did the best they could to take care of him. The episode closes with a shot of the 14-year-old Sheldon at Caltech, connecting everything back to “The Big Bang Theory”; the adult Sheldon is working as a Caltech physicist when that series begins.