TV Ratings: ‘Young Sheldon’ Series Finale Scores Four-Year High

Zoe Perry and Iain Armitage in the ‘Young Sheldcon’ series finale

Sonja Flemming/CBS

The final episodes of Young Sheldon drew a big crowd for CBS.

The comedy ended its seven-season run Thursday night with 9.32 million viewers for its series finale, according to final same-day ratings from Nielsen (which don’t include streaming). That’s the biggest same-day audience for the show in four years — since its third season finale on April 30, 2020.

Young Sheldon ended with a pair of episodes, and the first drew almost as many viewers (9.15 million) at 8 p.m. ET/PT as the 8:30 p.m. finale. The two episodes rank second and third in same-day viewers among all scripted series this season, behind only the post-Super Bowl premiere of Tracker. (Both episodes adjusted up from Nielsen’s preliminary figures, which had them at 8.82 million viewers for the 8 p.m. installment and 8.95 million for the finale.)

Sheldon also recorded its two best showings of the season among adults 18-49, scoring a 0.71 rating (937,000 viewers in the demographic) for its first episode and a 0.76 (about 1.01 million viewers) for the finale.

Young Sheldon came into Thursday averaging 7.03 million same-day viewers this season, making it the most-watched network comedy for the fifth straight season. Thursday’s episodes finished 30 percent and 32 percent above the same-day average.

CBS has an ongoing, 19-year run of having the most-watched comedy of the season on its airwaves. The streak began with the final season of Everybody Loves Raymond in 2004-05 and continued with Two and a Half Men and Young Sheldon’s predecessor, The Big Bang Theory. The latter three are all executive produced by Chuck Lorre.

The finale of So Help Me Todd (4.4 million viewers) on CBS was the top show among total viewers after Young Sheldon, while ABC’s 911 was the best of the rest in adults 18-49 with a 0.44 rating (580,000 viewers).

May 17, 1:25 p.m. Updated with final same-day ratings figures from Thursday.