It's a day that many thought would never come. According to a press release sent to Refinery29 from Warner Bros. Television, The Big Bang Theory is coming to an end. Season 12, which debuts on Monday 24th September, will be its last.
The sitcom, which premiered in 2006, revolves around a group of STEM-loving friends and their aspiring actress pal. When the series bows on next year, the show will be the longest-running multi-camera series in television history, with 279 episodes. (NBC's Friends, by comparison, ran for 10 seasons and 236 episodes.)
In a statement, Warner Bros. Television, CBS and Chuck Lorre Productions said:
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"We are forever grateful to our fans for their support of The Big Bang Theory during the past twelve seasons. We, along with the cast, writers and crew, are extremely appreciative of the show’s success and aim to deliver a final season, and series finale, that will bring The Big Bang Theory to an epic creative close."
The Big Bang Theory has long been one of the most successful shows on network television, with members of its cast earning a whopping $1 million dollars per episode. The five original series regulars within The Big Bang Theory cast (Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg) made headlines last year for taking a small pay cut to raise the salaries of their co-stars Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch.
Though there were many rumours that season 12 would be the end of the long-running series, it is unclear why, specifically, The Big Bang Theory is ending. At PaleyFest in March of 2018, Cuoco — whose character Penny famously married the one played by Cuoco's real-life ex-boyfriend Galecki during a 2016 episode — stated that she would be open to another round of the comedy.
"I would not be opposed to another season," she told E! News at the television event. "It's crazy to think going into a season 12 that the show is still as good as it was season 1 and that's really hard to say. I'm just proud of this long-lasting kind of comedy we've given for so many years, and I think it'd be very stupid to turn down another season."
Now's as good a time as ever to finally learn all the words to that tricky theme song.
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