Paige Swanson

Paige Swanson
General Information
Name	Paige Swanson
Born	March 17, 1980 (age 45)
Gender	Female
Nicknames	Ginger (made up name by herself)
Nationality	American
Actor	McKenna Grace
Relationships
Relationships	Sheldon Cooper (frenemy) Missy Cooper (best friend) Bradley (almost one-night stand)
Family	Barry Swanson (father) Linda Swanson (mother) Erica Swanson (older sister)
Production
First episode	"A Rival Prodigy and Sir Isaac Neutron"
Last episode	"A Stolen Truck and Going on the Lam"
Number of episodes	9
Seasons	Young Sheldon: S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7

Paige Swanson is a recurring character on Young Sheldon. She's first introduced in Season 2 as a student in Dr. John Sturgis's class who is another 10 year old genius. She later appears at a lecture at a museum and dares Sheldon Cooper to sneak out and climb into a closed exhibit. She has a rival-friends relationship with Sheldon throughout the series.

Character Overview

Paige first appeared in "A Rival Prodigy and Sir Isaac Neutron" during another of Sheldon's classes with Dr. Sturgis. She is smarter than him, causing him to be jealous, especially when Dr. Sturgis praises her too much in front of Sheldon. Mary invites Paige and her family over for a play date, much to Sheldon's chagrin.

Paige reappears in "Carbon Dating and a Stuffed Raccoon" when she goes to attend a lecture on carbon dating at a museum, which Sheldon is also attending. A little into the lecture, they both become bored by it and wander into a closed area of the museum. In there, Paige tells Sheldon about her parents probably getting a divorce because them fighting all the time. They are then caught by a security guard who then calls in the children's fathers, followed by Paige's mother.

Paige reappears in "A Stunted Childhood and a Can of Fancy Mixed Nuts" when she and her mother are at the mall and they meet Sheldon, Mary and Missy at the shoe store. Missy and Paige go off to the Hello Kitty store at Medford's shopping mall where it is revealed that they had a good conversation together. Missy and Paige have a sleepover. During the stay, they play with Missy's dolls, tie Georgie's ankles to his bed so he'd trip and fall (which he eventually does the next morning) and Paige tells Missy an imagined scary story to which Sheldon is a pompous, little brute about due to his lack of imagination, which is less true.

Paige laments to Sheldon about the impact of her parents divorce in "Body Glitter and a Mall Safety Kit."

In "Body Glitter and a Mall Safety Kit", Paige's parents, Barry and Linda, have gotten a divorce and it has negatively affected her appearance (she no longer wears dresses, but now wears denim outfits, has changed her hairstyle and has dyed a pink streak in her hair) and her attitude (she has become snarky, mouthy and rebellious, has turned to shoplifting and has grown indifferent to her schoolwork, resulting in her grades falling), so she goes to spend the weekend with the Coopers. Her devastation over her parents' divorce results in Sheldon learning to listen and he soon offers to make the distraught Paige a hot beverage, which he does when he heads to the kitchen to make her a cup of tea.

Paige and Sheldon at bible camp.

In "Bible Camp and a Chariot of Love," Paige returns, having been forced to go to bible camp with Sheldon. After refusing to engage with Sheldon in competition after repeated attempts by Sheldon both to compete and to force her to do so, she punches Sheldon after he talks about her belief about her parents' divorce.

Paige meeting Sheldon at East Texas Tech in "A Second Prodigy and the Hottest Tips for Pouty Lips."

In "A Second Prodigy and the Hottest Tips for Pouty Lips," the President of East Texas Tech insists that Sheldon gives Paige a tour of the university, much to his chagrin. He agrees to do so, however, he secretly plans to sell it as an inferior school. Though she pretends to be looking forward to attending college with Sheldon in front of her mother, in reality she wants go to an out of state college a thousand miles away from her family like Harvard or Princeton. Meemaw and later Missy tries to convince Sheldon that he might have a crush on Paige. This turns out not to be true, because she decided to mess with him when she tried to kiss him and drew on a mustache on him.

Paige and Sheldon in Darren and Oscar's dorm room.

In "A Solo Peanut, a Social Butterfly and the Truth," Paige visits East Texas Tech as part of a lecture team from UT Austin. She is surprised to find Sheldon there and reveals she is a part of the lecture that he intends to hear. Having no friends and living as an outsider at her own college, she soon decides to hide in Sheldon's dorm, believing that he can understand her position. Sheldon was initially skeptical of really being friends with Paige bringing up how she previously punched him, but she shrugs it off. When she finds out he actually has friends, in the form of a group of older RPG nerds, she becomes frustrated and leaves. Later she returns and wants to drop out and transfer, but she wants Sheldon to keep her plan a secret. While seeking supplies for her from Missy, Sheldon reveals the reason for his actions, and tried to talk Missy into keeping the secret as well, but Missy told Mary. They decide to come to the dorm to help her. But Paige already fled, leaving a note for Sheldon. After some worrisome nights, they eventually learned she arrived home to try to deal with the issues with her mother.

She attends a university party and encounters Sheldon again. It's revealed she has dropped out of college and has started drinking beer, despite being underage. She talks to him and Missy, and later rebels. She wanted to hook up with an older guy but was scared away when he found out her real age. She eventually makes her way to a fountain and is comforted by Missy, and is eventually taken to Sheldon's dorm room to rest. (A Frat Party, a Sleepover and the Mother of All Blisters)

At night, she is called by Missy who wants her to hang out. She accepts. They meet at a diner and eat, later leaving without paying. They sleep in a truck and decide on traveling to Florida to start new. They bond over many things. On a road past Baton Rouge in Louisiana, they get pulled over by a sheriff deputy. Missy blurts out she is 13 and Paige is her cousin. She ends up being forced to sit in the back of the police vehicle and gives out knowledge of radar. Her mother picks her up. (A Stolen Truck and Going on the Lam)

Appearances

Appearances	The Big Bang Theory Episodes
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	Tot
Season 1																									0
Season 2																									0
Season 3																									0
Season 4																									0
Season 5																									0
Season 6																									0
Season 7																									0
Season 8																									0
Season 9																									0
Season 10																									0
Season 11																									0
Season 12																									0
Appearances	Young Sheldon Episodes
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	Tot
Season 1																									0
Season 2																									3
Season 3																									1
Season 4																									2
Season 5																									1
Season 6																									2
Season 7																									0
Appearances	Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage Episodes
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	Tot
Season 1																									0
Appeared					M = Mentioned								Did not appear						Not aired/Not available
V = Voiced		C = Cameo					F = Flashback						I = Indirectly mentioned								P = Pictured

Trivia

• Paige is trilingual, meaning she is fluent in three languages.
• Like Sheldon, she shared a room with her sister.
• Paige is not fond of Professor Proton, and according to her, he dumbs everything down, much to Sheldon's fury.
• Like Sheldon, she is occasionally misunderstood and socially inept, and attended college while being underage. However, she is shown to possess more social skills than Sheldon.
• In "Body Glitter and a Mall Safety Kit," Paige shoplifted a tube of body glitter from Hot Topic by sticking it into Sheldon's backpack.
• It was revealed in "Bible Camp and a Chariot of Love" that she had started smoking and wearing lipstick to look older, due her parents going through a divorce.
• In "A Stunted Childhood and a Can of Fancy Mixed Nuts", after seeing Sheldon's homework, Paige revealed that she already learned it a year ago, which led to the conclusion that she went to high school a year earlier before Sheldon, which would have been at age 8.
• She and Sheldon have been rivals, while Paige and Missy have been good friends in that they have the same "girly" interests and get along without any tension. They also enjoy watching Sheldon get upset and doing rebellious things.
  • However, Paige implies that she might see Sheldon as a friend, despite their tension.
• While Paige is smarter than Sheldon in Young Sheldon's continuity, she cannot be said to be smarter than child Sheldon of The Big Bang Theory canon. The former series retcons the intellectual feats of the unparalleled prodigy presented in the parent series. Sheldon does not know Feynman's trick for differentiating under the integral sign, at ten years old (YS:S2E2); yet, at the mere age of five, he wrote on non-Abelian groups in algebraic topology (TBBT:S6E3). According to the spinoff series, his only truly brilliant achievement is his work on flight mechanics, at nine years old (YS:S1E6). This fact is apparent from his lack of physics publications (YS:S6E19). That is not commensurate with someone who filled boxes with scientific notebooks at different stages of childhood (TBBT:S6E3). A notable alteration that further reduces his genius lies in his role at Heidelberg University's Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is a student, studying abroad (YS:S6E19-22), which is in stark contrast to Sheldon's explicit statement otherwise. At fifteen years old, he was a visiting professor at this Heidelberg Institute (TBBT:S1E11).
• Sheldon rivalry is similar with Paige is just like Dennis Kim.
• She shares the same punishment as Missy and worse she become rebellious a lot worse than Missy.
  • Although it should be noted she started acting it due to her parents divorce and the fact she never had a 'normal childhood'.
• She is similar to Will Hunting who was a total genius and wasted her potential in the movie good will hunting 1997 movie starring Matt Damon. Why she and Missy become more rebellious.
• Paige's character was made after The Big Bang Theory, which explains why she was never mentioned in the show despite being a very important part of Sheldon's rivalness history.