‘Young Sheldon’ Has Just Two Episodes Left To Solve Its Biggest Mystery

As Young Sheldon nears the end of its seven-season run, there’s a number of questions neither it nor The Big Bang Theory have answered, and one of the biggest is what happened to Paige Swanson (McKenna Grace).

Young Sheldon is a spinoff of The Big Bang Theory, which follows the childhood of Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage) in East Texas. As a child prodigy, Sheldon struggles with finding acceptance and understanding from his peers and family. However, throughout his high school and college career, he manages to make one friend and one frenemy. In high school, Sheldon had one best friend, Tam (Ryan Phuong), a Vietnamese-American who was also ostracized and helped foster Sheldon’s love of superheroes and comic books. The Big Bang Theory later revealed that Tam and Sheldon had a falling out after high school because Tam refused to move to California with Sheldon.

Although The Big Bang Theory reiterates that Tam was Sheldon’s only high school friend, some viewers would argue that he did have one additional friend: Paige. She arguably understands Sheldon even more than Tam, given she is also a child genius. While Young Sheldon confirms that she and Sheldon went down very different paths, there are still lingering questions over her ultimate fate.

What happened to Paige in Young Sheldon?

In Young Sheldon, Paige and Sheldon have a complicated relationship. They first meet in high school, where they are the two sole child geniuses. It is debatable who is more intelligent than whom, but Sheldon frequently feels threatened by Paige, which develops into a rivalry. However, they are often unable to escape each other, especially when Paige and Missy (Raegan Revord) develop a close friendship. Once Sheldon begins attending East Texas Tech, he becomes fearful that Paige will also become a student there as the school seeks to recruit her.

Unfortunately, Paige’s story takes a sad turn. Throughout the series, she struggles with her parents’ divorce, which causes her to act out. She grows rebellious and angry, letting her grades fall and losing sight of her future. Paige also often encourages Sheldon to rebel, pushing him to temporarily give up his strict rule-following habits. Although she ends up attending the University of Austin, she feels lonely and like an outcast. She especially grows disillusioned when she learns Sheldon has actually fared better than her in college and has formed some casual friendships.

Soon, she drops out of college altogether, taking up partying and underage drinking. The very last viewers see of her is in season 6, when she and Missy get into trouble with the police after stealing a truck and trying to drive to Florida. While viewers were likely interested to learn where Paige ended up after the incident, she has not appeared in the series since. However, there is still a chance she will show up in the two-episode series finale. If she doesn’t, though, viewers may never learn what happened to her.

Unlike Tam, Paige never appears or is so much as mentioned in The Big Bang Theory. This is because she is an original character created for Young Sheldon after The Big Bang Theory concluded. It has already been frustrating enough for viewers that the adult Sheldon seemingly just forgot about the troubled childhood genius. Despite their rivalry, the pair showed sparks of camaraderie as Paige pushed Sheldon outside his comfort zone, and Sheldon learned to listen and show empathy after learning of Paige’s struggles. It would’ve been very interesting to see the adult Sheldon reflect on their relationship and how he very well could’ve ended up like Paige if he had also succumbed to the immense pressure of being a child genius. On the other hand, it might’ve been satisfying to learn that Paige overcame her past and went on to become as prestigious an intellectual as Sheldon.

Without any answers from The Big Bang Theory, viewers are holding onto hope that the Young Sheldon season finale will finally provide some insight into whatever happened to Paige.