5 Big Bang Theory Guest Characters Who Deserved Way Better Endings

When it comes to the main cast of "The Big Bang Theory" — the eternally popular and beloved sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady that ran for 12 seasons and as many years on CBS — everyone's favorite nerdy characters all got relatively happy endings by the time the show wrapped up in 2019. Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter, Penny Hofstadter, Howard Wolowitz, Raj Koothrappali, Amy Farrah Fowler, and Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz — played by Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Mayim Bialik, and Melissa Rauch, respectively — all grew a fair amount during the series and got their happy endings in the series finale. Sheldon and Amy share a Nobel Prize in physics for their shared work in super asymmetry, Howard and Bernadette raise their family, Leonard and Penny learn that they're expecting an unexpected baby, and Raj ... still hopes to find love. (Raj probably deserved a better ending, but we digress.)

Still, as is the case with most sitcoms, there's a sprawling supporting cast on "The Big Bang Theory," and there are also plenty of guest characters who, honestly, seemed designed to stick around for relatively short periods of time. (As you'll see, almost all of these characters served as romantic roadblocks to "endgame" couples like Sheldon and Amy or Leonard and Penny.) Even though these characters were designed as somewhat simple narrative obstacles, though, the show probably could have done a better job at writing them off ... and we have some ideas. Without further ado, here are five guest characters from "The Big Bang Theory" who got lackluster endings and deserved way better.

Riki Lindhome has shown up in everything from "Drunk History" to the first "Knives Out" movie — and she actually is the only "Big Bang Theory" character on this list to also pop up in the 2026 spin-off "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe" during its first season — and she's a reliably hilarious presence no matter what. This is definitely true of her "Big Bang Theory" role as Ramona Nowitzki, a postdoctoral researcher who did her graduate degree at the California Institute of Technology (where Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and Raj all work). Ramona appears sporadically throughout "The Big Bang Theory" as a smart scientist with plenty of experience under her belt, but she really only exists to orbit Sheldon, a guy she has a huge crush on for some reason. (Jim Parsons is, to be clear, a good-looking guy. Sheldon is a jerk, though.) There's even an episode in Season 2, the appropriately named "The Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem," where Ramona spends her day doing Sheldon's bidding happily as they work on a project, only for him to become infuriated when she asks that he name it the Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem instead of the Cooper Theorem. Eventually, Ramona planting an unexpected kiss on Sheldon is what leads him to propose to Amy.

Ramona just ... disappears, save for "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe," after that. So what's our proposal for a better ending for Ramona? What if we saw her after Amy and Sheldon got engaged, but she's with a guy almost exactly like Sheldon? What if that guy is also played by Parsons wearing a wig or something? There are options here, obviously!

Dr. Stephanie Barnett, to be fair, was designed to be written off of "The Big Bang Theory." Played gamely by Sara Rue, Stephanie is a surgical resident who's briefly a target of one of Howard's many failed attempts to seduce a woman before she ends up dating Leonard, sending Penny (his ex-girlfriend at this point into the story) into a tailspin. She also, incidentally, earns the approval of Sheldon, who uses her as a resource in her capacity as a physician to pester her about all of his health questions and ask her what ailments she thinks he might be suffering from. (Sheldon is ... a bit of a hypochondriac.)

Stephanie and Leonard's relationship ends pretty unceremoniously when Leonard's friends point out that she has more or less started moving into his apartment; after Leonard looks in his closet and realizes that it's full of Stephanie's clothes and belongings, he tries to ask her about it, but because Stephanie is pretty sexually aggressive, she fends him off. (Stephanie also, however, has complex feelings about Penny occasionally wandering into the boys' apartment in various states of undress.) Eventually, Leonard breaks up with Stephanie via text message, taking some ill-advised advice from Howard, and she vanishes completely. Like Penny's ex-boyfriend Zack (Brian Thomas Smith), Stephanie should have popped up in the series as a foil from time to time, and it would have been nice to see her, perhaps, as a surgeon who's called in to do a (simple) procedure on a member of the main cast. May we suggest Sheldon?

After Stephanie Barnett, Leonard's longest serious relationship that isn't with Penny is with Priya Koothrappali, played across a few seasons of "The Big Bang Theory" by Aarti Mann. If that last name looks familiar, good reading comprehension — Priya is Raj's sister. A corporate lawyer who was also born and raised in New Delhi, Priya is often exasperated by the gang's adventures but puts up with them anyway, and while she's visiting Raj from India before the series actually begins, she and Leonard unexpectedly hook up, but he refuses an offer to go back to India with her. Then, Priya "reappears" (but is introduced to the audience) in Season 4 of "The Big Bang Theory" in the episode "The Irish Pub Formulation" and sleeps with Leonard again, rekindling their longtime relationship.

Priya and Leonard date pretty steadily through Season 4 but Priya goes back to India in Season 5, forcing the two to embark on a long-distance relationship and putting a strain on their bond. While Leonard ends up having a flirtation and small dalliance with a character named Alice (Courtney Ford), Priya ends up admitting that she hooked up with an ex-boyfriend in India, and the two split off-screen, leaving the door open for Penny and Leonard to reconcile (which they do). We never see Priya again after that, and in Season 10, Raj's father offhandedly mentions that five out of his six children are married; because Raj is single, that means she's married. It would have been pretty great to see Priya settled as the show came to a close — after all, she's the sibling of a main character!

Now we return to Sheldon's work at CalTech — and, more specifically, his work with Alex Jensen (Margo Harshman), a doctoral student who ends up with the unpleasant task of working as Sheldon's assistant starting in Season 6. If you're at all familiar with "The Big Bang Theory," you know that Sheldon's brisk manner and inappropriate comments don't go over particularly well with women, and the way he treats Alex is ... really not great. Not only does he nitpick her constantly (at one point, he tells her that her corduroy pants are "too noisy" for him to get any work done), but things really come to a head in the Season 6 episode "The Egg Salad Equivalency." After Sheldon drops a ridiculously inappropriate comparison ("My father used to say that a woman is like an egg salad sandwich on a warm Texas day: full of eggs and only appealing for a short time"), Alex smartly files a sexual harassment complaint with Caltech. Strangely, Alex is still working for Sheldon a few episodes later in "The Tangible Affection Proof" and tries to help him find a suitable gift for Amy, but then she vanishes.

It's fine that a relatively random doctoral student isn't a huge part of "The Big Bang Theory," but it would have been nice to see Alex flourish in Sheldon's absence. Maybe we could have seen her presenting at a major conference or succeeding at Caltech in a later episode. Alas, Alex disappeared instead, and the character's legacy is basically built around Sheldon comparing her to egg salad in the hot Texas sun.

We've already discussed that Raj ends up single at the end of "The Big Bang Theory" while all of his friends get marriage and children, but he comes very close to a happy ending with Anu, a woman who's supposed to enter into an arranged marriage with Raj who's played by Rati Gupta. A hotel concierge who, like Raj, was born in India, Anu has her doubts about an arranged marriage, but to literally everyone's surprise, Raj and Anu actually really hit it off, and by the time "The Big Bang Theory" starts wrapping up, it seems like Raj will actually go through with it — the two briefly break up when Raj misunderstands a situation with Anu's ex, but the two start dating anew and finally get to know each other in earnest. Raj even considers moving to London to support Anu as she takes a management position there, but Howard runs to the airport and stops him, and we never see Anu again.

This about-face — right as Raj is about to find love — is weird in and of itself, but Anu's abrupt disappearance feels like the writers just had no idea what to do with her and needed to ditch her as quickly as possible. We'll just say it: Raj and Anu should have ended up together! They were a good couple, and it would have been nice to see him settle down. Alas, they weren't meant to be.

"The Big Bang Theory" is streaming on HBO Max now.