Why The Big Bang Theory Finale Shocked Johnny Galecki

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In the series finale of Chuck Lorre's hit CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory," titled "The Stockholm Syndrome," all of the main characters — Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler (Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik), Leonard and Penny Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco), Howard Wolowitz and Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz (Simon Helberg and Melissa Rauch), and Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) — get their happy endings, although some of their endings are a little happier than others. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter after the finale aired in 2019, Galecki admitted that his and Penny's ending, where they find out they're expecting a baby, really surprised him ... and indicated that he didn't even think their relationship would last. As he said:

"The pregnancy shocked me. I didn't get it at first. [Executive producer Steve] Molaro and I talked about them maybe not [being pregnant]. We talked about relationships, and there was one in particular to his life that he felt was similar to Leonard and Penny's. And we did touch on the pregnancy topic a few times recently. But it was a larger question of, 'What do Leonard and Penny have in common? What do they talk about?' And that became easier; they found a common lexicon in the last few seasons. But maybe midway through the run we thought, 'Is that [relationship] realistic? Is that realistic?'"

Despite admitting that he wanted Leonard and Penny to stay together until the end — which they did — Galecki said discussions did happen about splitting the two permanently. "That broke my heart that it might end with them not together, but it was a discussion years and years ago ... The main takeaway is that these friendships will continue; the writers didn't want someone to move away," he said. "We wanted to leave the audience with the idea that these friendships and the love that they have continues."

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There's an aspect of Penny's pregnancy that Johnny Galecki didn't bring up, which feels pretty important: throughout "The Big Bang Theory," Penny repeatedly says that she doesn't want children. I'll admit that I was surprised — and not in a good way — by the reveal that Penny is pregnant, which apparently wasn't planned (she makes a joke indicating that they didn't use birth control recently), largely because Penny experiences the most growth out of all of the main characters on "The Big Bang Theory." Introduced as a ditzy, bubbly aspiring actress, Penny becomes much more grounded and shows off just how intelligent she is as the series continues; in the final season, she's a successful pharmaceutical sales representative with a happy marriage who, based on everything she says, is childless by choice. It's definitely frustrating that, all of a sudden, Penny is given a baby to close out the show, but as far as Kaley Cuoco was concerned in that same THR interview, she was fine with it. (Or she was hiding her real feelings about it at the time.)

"I was super happy," Cuoco said in 2019. "I didn't expect it at all because they've been playing against it for so long. I thought they did it so well and loved how it was a surprise and she was wrapping her brain around it," she said. "I think they're going to be awesome parents. They waited so many years, and they're so fun and easygoing. Or Penny is really kind of easygoing! I think they'd be adorable parents. I can only imagine."

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A few years after that interview — in Jessica Radloff's 2022 book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series" — both Kaley Cuoco and Johnny Galecki said that, if Penny and Leonard had broken up, they would have understood ... and further confirmed that the option was always there. In fact, Radloff reports that Leonard and Penny's arguments in the later season were primarily there to set up a potential breakup: "As it turns out, the producers were actually very close to having them break up for good, which was why Penny and Leonard were often seen at odds later in the series."

"These two people have been together a very long time, and even when you know someone so well, it's amazing how communication can totally fail," Cuoco mused in the book. "I loved that they asked those questions of one another and talked about these issues so openly because to me it showed that they still wanted to be together even though they weren't understanding each other at all," she said. "That's just real life [...] You know someone so well, but you keep missing, and you sometimes just don't quite know why."

Galecki said that he spoke to Steve Molaro a lot about Molaro's real-life relationship with a woman "out of [Molaro's] league, which helped inform Leonard and Penny's relationship. "So he and I, in private, would talk a lot about how the relationship between Leonard and Penny should end," Galecki admitted. "They didn't have enough in common. I felt that was very real, but I think in the end, he, Bill, and Chuck decided that would just be so heartbreaking for the audience, and in hindsight, I agree. At the time, I was very excited about the idea, maybe because it's a little avant-garde for a sitcom and would shock people. But the way that they did it was so much better, with Penny's surprise pregnancy ... it was just so beautiful. But I did want to end it on a darker note initially."

"The Big Bang Theory" is streaming on Max now.