Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Big Bag Theory's Season 11, Episode 9, "The Bitcoin Entanglement." Stop reading now if you haven't had the chance to catch up!
Penny and Leonard have been through some big ups and downs over the course of The Big Bang Theory's 10 and a half seasons. And, tonight's episode just revealed something major about their relationship. With all the breakups and makeups the couple has had, we just found out that, a whopping seven years ago, Penny already knew that she liked Leonard so much that she was probably going to marry him. I know! Let's get into how exactly this big revelation came out.
The episode skips back and forth between the present day and seven years ago, when Leonard, Raj and Howard were mining bitcoin for the sheer fun of creating a program to solve the complex equations required to find it. In the present day, Sheldon tells them that one bitcoin would now be worth around $5,000, so the guys go on the hunt for the computer that they used to mine the digital currency, reasoning that whatever they found would still be on that same machine.
After attempting to use Howard's computer to mine the bitcoin and quickly realizing that it's too slow due to all the "Asian science" (more commonly known as porn starring Asian ladies) that clogs his system, they move on to using Leonard's laptop. However, when Penny, still working at The Cheesecake Factory, tells him that she missed an audition because her computer is broken, he offers to let her have it since he was planning to get a new one anyway. In the present day, Penny has to tell them that she actually ended up giving that laptop to her ex, Zack, which, as you might imagine, pisses Leonard off to (almost) no end.
Well, Penny gives a call to good old Zack, and since (according to him) you don't give away a gift like that, he's still got that laptop hanging around in his apartment and tells them that they can come over and take it if they need it. When they get to Zack's and begin talking to him, though, he admits that he's a big fan of snooping, and he looked at the video Penny made and left on the laptop after she broke up with Leonard. That's where this gets really interesting, because even Penny doesn't remember doing such a thing.
Zack boots up the computer and shows the video to Penny and Leonard. In it, Penny is clearly drunk, explaining why she doesn't remember making the video, and as she begins to tell Leonard in the video that she wants him to understand why she broke up with him, Sheldon knocks on her door. She yells through the door at him that she's making the video and just wants Leonard to know that she left him because she liked him so much that she knew she'd end up marrying him, but she didn't feel ready for that step, so letting him go was the better option. And then, because Penny was drunk, she passed out on the keyboard and, assumedly, woke up without remembering the video, which is why she never sent it to Leonard.
Obviously, watching the video completely gets rid of Leonard's annoyance that Penny got rid of the laptop he gifted to her. He now has confirmation that she married him "for love and not pity like everyone thought." It was a dream come true moment that nerdy folks who are dating hot people everywhere could applaud.
Now that Leonard knows that he's really the love of Penny's life, I can't imagine he'll let any of the guys (or his mother for that matter) tease him about his relationship with Penny. In fact, I bet Leonard won't let anyone in his vicinity hear the end of this. You can keep up with The Big Bang Theory Thursdays on CBS.
