What Happened To Howard Wolowitz After The Big Bang Theory Finale?
What exactly happened to Howard Wolowitz — played by Simon Helberg — after "The Big Bang Theory" came to a close? While there isn't a lot of concrete information, the character does pop up (in voiceover) in an episode of "Young Sheldon" to finally learn why his friend Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) hates engineering.
In Season 5 episode 7 of the prequel series titled "An Introduction to Engineering and a Glob of Hair Gel," said young Sheldon (Iain Armitage) has a run-in with his first-ever engineering teacher Professor Boucher, played by the late Lance Reddick. Not only is Professor Boucher generally unhelpful to Sheldon, but he locks the boy out of class for being late once Sheldon actually solves the problem, leading young Sheldon to utter the fateful words: "I hate engineering."
In voiceover, Helberg as Howard exclaims, "Wait! So after all this time, that's your problem with engineering?" Sheldon confirms this, and Howard continues: "So all the teasing, and all the abuse, had nothing to do with me!"
Naturally, Parsons' Sheldon can't let sleeping dogs lie: "I'll admit, at first I had a chip on my shoulder because of that class. But then it was mostly you." Howard then wonders if he'll ever learn, to which Sheldon replies, "I could give you that answer, but if you figure it out for yourself, it'll mean so much more."
In a statement obtained by outlets like Entertainment Weekly, co-creator Steve Molaro said of the cameo, "Getting to work with Simon again to help explain Sheldon's long hatred of engineering was a dream come true. Jim and Simon — even in voiceover on Zoom — didn't miss a beat in their banter as Sheldon Cooper and Howard Wolowitz."
What happened to Howard at the end of The Big Bang Theory?
While audiences now know that Howard Wolowitz eventually confronts Sheldon Cooper about his animosity towards anyone working in engineering, they still don't know everything about Howard's story post-"Big Bang Theory." So how did he end the series?
Howard experiences quite the journey throughout "The Big Bang Theory." He starts the show as a would-be womanizer who's actually just sort of a loser, but things turn around for him romantically when he meets Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch) in the series' third season. After a few rocky starts, the two strike up a real relationship and ultimately get married. After Bernadette and Howard become official, they end up spending significant time apart when Howard ends up going to space. Since he's an aerospace engineer who frequently works on technology used for NASA's continued space exploration, Howard gets invited to the International Space Station in Season 6, which he hates in practice. (Luckily, Bernadette makes lemonade out of lemons by writing a children's book about a frightened astronaut.)
Beyond his professional successes, Howard and Bernadette have two children together — Halley and Michael — and in the series finale "The Stockholm Syndrome," they attend Sheldon and Amy's (Mayim Bialik) Nobel Prize ceremony in Sweden. Though they argue with Sheldon, they still show up for him as he and Amy accept their award for their work in super asymmetry ... and he thanks Howard and Bernadette by name.
What about the actor who plays Howard Wolowitz - what's he doing today?
Since playing Howard Wolowitz on "The Big Bang Theory," Simon Helberg has remained busy ... and has pivoted to more daring roles after playing the same character for 12 seasons. After "The Big Bang Theory" wrapped up in 2019, Helberg took on a brand new challenge in Leos Carax's unsettling romantic musical drama "Annette," where he starred alongside Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard as a conductor who carries on an affair with Cotillard's famous opera singer Ann. Helberg went so far as to become a French citizen for the role — his wife Jocelyn Towne is a citizen through her mother — to satisfy the production's requirements regarding citizens of the European Union, and the one-shot scene where he furiously conducts an orchestra while delivering a monologue shows that he used his considerable musical talents to accurately portray a successful conductor.
In 2023, Helberg appeared in "Space Oddity" (a film directed by Kyra Sedgwick) as well as an episode of the critically beloved Peacock series "Poker Face" alongside Natasha Lyonne. One can only guess what Helberg will do next, but it definitely seems like the actor wants to keep challenging himself in a post-Howard Wolowitz world.