Penny Goes to War in ‘Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’ — Bosses Explain ‘Big Bang’ Reunion

Episode 8 drops Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Denise (Lauren Lapkus), Kripke (John Ross Bowie), and Bert (Brian Posehn) into yet another alternate universe, only this time everyone is a centaur. After taking a moment to marvel at the centaur Justice League, Stuart realizes they have to return to the war-torn universe to retrieve the device containing the controller they need to fix the machine and, hopefully, the universe. Warning: Spoilers ahead for Season 1 Episode 8 of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. 

They “scooch” their way back, landing near the devastated remains of the comic book store. Unfortunately, Stuart left the machine back at camp to keep it safe, forcing the group right back into the fighting. Gary is now a military commander leading Charlie Company and preparing his soldiers for what looks like a suicide mission. Things go very Platoon when Gary is brutally gunned down, while Kripke shoots an enemy soldier in the back to save the others, an act that unexpectedly leaves him struggling with his conscience.

Gary is replaced by Captain Richard Williams (guest star Dean Norris), a familiar face with a familiar name. Norris previously played Colonel Richard Williams on The Big Bang Theory, the military officer who recruited the guys to miniaturize a guidance system. This version isn’t much more helpful as he preps to send the troops back into a bloodbath. The quartet attempts to escape, device or not, but manages to get arrested and wind up facing a military trial.

That brings another Big Bang Theory reunion: Joshua Malina, who played Caltech President Siebert, returns as their spectacularly awful military defense attorney. And presiding over the prosecution is Kaley Cuoco‘s Penny, now Major Penny, who charges the gang with cowardice, desertion, espionage, murder, and mutiny. Their attempts to sway the three-person jury go nowhere, and they’re sentenced to death by firing squad.

Colin Remas Brown/HBO Max

TV Insider talked to Stuart Fails to Save the Universe bosses Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady, and Zak Penn about this episode, which allowed them to bring back a few Big Bang Theory favorites and give them a chance to “come back to play.”

“We would want to bring everybody who wants to come play with us, if we get another chance to do this. By all means,” said Lorre. “It really was fun when we thought about characters. When we needed an inept lawyer, we thought, ‘Well, we had an inept university president. What if he was the inept lawyer in this episode?’”

He continued, “And what’s super fun about that on another level is Josh was in A Few Good Men on Broadway, so there was a weird layered thing going on there. We used a whole bunch of people who had small recurring roles on Big Bang, we used people who had main roles on Big Bang, and we hope to have the opportunity to keep doing that.”

(Which they will, because when we spoke to them, they didn’t have a Season 2 go-ahead yet, but now they do. So, something to look forward to in the next season.)

Meanwhile, Penny has one last surprise. She brings them the machine and orders them to use it to send a battle plan to their “friends” on the other side. Instead, everyone jumps universes, including Penny.

They land back in the centaur universe with Penny in tow, then make two more jumps to retrieve the machines from the lab-coat versions of themselves introduced in Episode 7. From there, they return to the battle universe and make another run for it.

Then comes the real twist: Kyle (Ryan Cartwright) and Trevor (Josh Brener) apparently have a much bigger purpose than anyone realized. Their assignment is simply to keep Stuart and the others exactly where they are — because the gang has somehow become trapped inside a comic book, appropriately titled Stuart Fails to Save the Universe: Trapped!

So, after eight episodes of bouncing through alternate realities, the bigger question becomes: Who are Kyle and Trevor really working for, and was trapping the quartet the plan all along?

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Thursdays, 9/8c, HBO Max