From Fan Favorite to Annoyance: What Happened to Sheldon's Character in Young Sheldon?

Young Sheldon is a spin-off of The Big Bang Theory, a popular sitcom about a group of nerdy physicists, their friendship and everyday lives. It features one of them, Sheldon Cooper, a socially awkward yet beloved by the fans genius, in his childhood along with his family at their home in Texas.

Despite the fact that the prequel is dedicated to and named after Sheldon, he isn't constantly in the spotlight. Young Sheldon wants to tell the stories of every character and member of the Cooper family, which makes it not a typical sitcom.

The characters are multi-faceted and complex, and the plot is full of personal drama that makes us better understand the Sheldon we see in TBBT.

Unlike in the original series, Young Sheldon is no longer everybody’s favorite. Many fans find themselves at a loss about their attitude to the boy. On the one hand, Sheldon is very much himself, over the top smart, arrogant and with no social skills. Only in the case of Young Sheldon he is deemed very annoying. However, many people say he becomes like that in the later seasons of the series while at the beginning of it he was still likable.

There may be different reasons for that.

Firstly, young Sheldon finds himself out of place, since he belongs to the world of science and scientists. The boy is surrounded by normal people who have lives full of hardship and flaws and whom we can’t help sympathizing with.

Secondly, young Sheldon is on his way to becoming the Sheldon we meet in the first season of The Big Bang Theory, very arrogant and unpleasant, disliked by everybody around him, some fans point out. And as the prequel progresses, there’s no reason to expect him to be nice.

“i see so many people in this R/ complaining about not liking him and the way his character is going, but that's literally the point. if we get any kind of character development from sheldon during young sheldon, then we would be getting a different sheldon when TBBT starts,” wrote Redditor lesbian4louis.

Indeed, the writers are doing a great job complying with the original character traits and growing Sheldon into the one we get acquainted with in the first episodes of The Big Bang Theory. In other words, Sheldon is on the way to becoming the fans’ favorite character of the franchise.