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Michael Yarish/CBS

Michael Yarish/CBS(LOS ANGELES) — Last night’s series finale of CBS’ The Big Bang Theory drew 18 million viewers — the show’s highest numbers since 2015, Variety reports.

The two-part episode — which saw Jim Parson’s Dr. Sheldon Cooper and his onscreen wife, Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, played by Miyim Bialik, share the Nobel Prize for physics — won Thursday night’s highest-rated show.

The show’s spin-off, Young Sheldon, which aired after The Big Bang Theory finale, drew a strong 13 million viewers, and those fans who stuck around were rewarded with a touching coda.

On Young Sheldon, we saw a lonesome young Sheldon, tearfully regretting his lack of friends — only to have the camera cut to the bedrooms of children who were revealed to be the younger versions of his future Big Bang BFF’s Penny, Howard, Raj, Bernadette and Leonard, and his future wife, Amy.

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