There's one good reason why Mary Cooper doesn't show up in the series finale for "The Big Bang Theory" — the actress who plays her, Laurie Metcalf, had just taken on a stage role on Broadway. Metcalf was in the middle of portraying Hillary Clinton in "Hillary and Clinton" when "The Stockholm Syndrome" was shot on April 30, 2019. The play had opened on April 18 and wouldn't close until June of that year, which may have forced the show's writers to leave Mary out of the picture, no matter how close the relationship between mother and son is.
Even though she missed out on taking part in "The Stockholm Syndrome," Metcalf's legacy within the "Big Bang Theory" universe has carried on in quite an unusual way; that's her daughter, Zoe Perry, playing Mary in "Young Sheldon." Perry told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017 that she does try to emulate her mother's version of Mary while playing her in the sitcom. "When I'm reading any script and working on it and what I'm doing sounds like her, I think it's probably worth keeping," she admitted. That's one good way to keep an actor's legacy alive.
