The Wild, True Story That Inspired Tonight's Big Bang Theory
Sheldon and Amy's honeymoon kicked off The Big Bang Theory's final season, but it was the second episode of the week—titled "The Wedding Gift Wormhole"—that brought real fun for the couple.
Leonard and Penny give "the perfect wedding gift" to Sheldon and Amy. It's a sweet gesture, but there's one problem: The newly marrieds have no clue what it is. The gift, a crystal wand, looks expensive but has no obvious purpose. Naturally, Amy wonders if it's a marital aid. (God, I'm going to miss this show next year.)
Of course, it'd be inappropriate to ask Leonard and Penny what the gift actually is...but Sheldon is the king of inappropriate questions. You'd think he could have solved this in minutes. Maybe married life has changed him after all? Instead, while Amy and Sheldon are in bed one night, they come to the conclusion that the gift is simply a clue about their actual gift, which they'll find by going on a scavenger hunt.
Turns out, the idea for this episode was actually born out of the same exact gift that executive producer Steve Holland received from the show's visual effects supervisor. "The gift we got is the same gift you see in the episode," Holland says. "It is a wand. The joke was when we got it, we didn't quite know what it was. We had it it the writers' room for years and we'd joke about it, so we decided to turn that into an episode where Sheldon and Amy get the wedding gift that they don't know what it is."
To this day, Holland doesn't even know if the wand is expensive or worth anything. "I just know it's not a marital aid," he jokes.
By the episode's end, we learn the wand actually belonged to Raj, who gave it as a wedding gift to Bernadette and Howard, who then gave it to Penny and Leonard, who then gave it to Shamy. The moral of this story? They all need better friends. If Raj does get married this season, he better register for some expensive stuff—and hope he doesn't get a random hand-me-down.
