Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 8 picks up exactly where we left Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke, trapped in a comic-book universe where everyone is a centaur. Getting back to the machine with the controller is still the goal, but their attempt to reach it sends them into a universe we have only briefly seen before.
And eventually, things get complicated, Very complicated.
Stuart and the team leave the centaur universe
The group is still inside the comic-book world from the end of Episode 7, and they are now half-human, half-horse centaurs. Everyone around them is a centaur too, including the Justice League. There is Centaur Superman, Centaur Batman, and the rest of the team. Even Aquaman gets the treatment, although naturally, he’s a seahorse.
Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke need to get back to the machine with the controller. Stuart decides to press a button on their machine that they haven’t used before, sending them into another universe.
We’ve seen glimpses of this world as the group has passed through different universes in past episodes, but episode 8 finally leaves them there. It’s a war zone, and the four discover that their lives here are very different.
They are Marines. Gary is their lieutenant, while Kyle and Trevor are dead in the comic-book shop.
Their plan is still to find another version of themselves carrying the machine with the controller, so Gary takes them back to their base. Unfortunately, their counterparts aren’t there. Before they can figure out what to do next, the entire battalion is sent into battle.
Gary dies, and the team abandons the battle
Stuart leaves their machine back at camp so it won’t be damaged during the fighting. Initially, that seems like a pretty sensible decision. It becomes considerably less helpful once the group realizes they might actually die before they ever get back to it.
Gary doesn’t make it. His death plays out in exaggerated slow motion and looks very much like Sonny Corleone’s famous death in The Godfather, with Gary repeatedly hit as the others watch.
The remaining four eventually decide they need to retreat. When their sergeant insists on continuing the fight, Kripke shoots him, and Stuart, Denise, Bert, and Kripke make their way back to camp.
Waiting for them is another familiar face from The Big Bang Theory: Captain Williams.
In the original series, Richard Williams is a colonel in the U.S. Air Force who becomes involved with the navigation system developed by Leonard, Sheldon, and Howard. Here, Williams is once again a military officer, and he has no intention of letting Stuart and the others walk away from the fight.
He orders the battalion back into battle. The four stay behind, and Stuart decides that this time they’re leaving without the machine, but they don’t get far.
Stuart figures out how to get the other machine
Stuart, Denise, Bert, and Kripke are arrested before they can make it back to their tent.
While sitting in a cell at the base, Stuart realizes they may have been approaching their problem the wrong way. They don’t actually need to find the other machine in this universe. They can go back and get it.
If they use their current machine to travel backward through three universes, they can reach an earlier version of themselves and take the machine with the controller from them. It’s a plan. The only real problem is that they’re currently locked inside a military prison.
Before they can solve that one, they’re taken to a court-martial, where Episode 8 brings back another familiar face.
Joshua Malina appears as their military lawyer. Malina played Dr. Siebert, the president of the California Institute of Technology, in The Big Bang Theory. And on the other side of the proceedings is Major “Firing Squad” Penny.
The four face charges including desertion and mutiny. They plead not guilty, and Stuart even attempts to explain the truth about the machine and the different universes. Unsurprisingly, that explanation doesn’t get them very far in a military court. They are sentenced to death by firing squad.
Penny accidentally travels into the centaur universe
At the execution site, Major Penny gives Stuart one final opportunity. She believes the group has been passing information to someone, so she wants Stuart to contact them using a fake battle plan, more importantly, she gives him the machine.
Stuart agrees and turns it on. The others immediately move closer to him so they can be taken along when he leaves the universe. Penny is standing close enough that she comes too.
They land back in the centaur universe, where Penny gets a very different body. And she seems pretty impressed with it. Considering Kaley Cuoco’s love of horses, Penny becoming a centaur is a particularly fun choice.
There isn’t much time to enjoy it, though. Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke still need the other machine, so they continue traveling backward through the universes.
This is where Episode 8 gets a little difficult to explain. It is also exactly the kind of multiverse problem that Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj could have spent hours arguing about on The Big Bang Theory, so bear with me.
The team goes back through its own journey
The four eventually reach the cow universe at the exact point we already saw in the previous episode.
Except we’re now watching that moment from the other side. The versions of Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke we’ve been following in Episode 8 are the Marines from the war universe. They arrive in the cow universe and take the machine from the versions of themselves wearing white lab coats.
With the machine they finally need in their possession, the Marine versions travel back to the war universe.
There, they hide and wait until they find the other versions of themselves. Those are actually the earlier Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke whose journey will eventually take them into the centaur universe and turn them into the versions we were following at the beginning of the episode. Bare with me because yes, it’s a lot.
When the two groups finally cross paths, there isn’t another machine exchange. The group we’ve been following simply activates the machine and leaves for another universe.
For the moment, that’s probably the easiest way to look at it: Episode 8 takes scenes we’ve already seen and circles back through them from the perspective of another version of the same four people.
Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 8 ending explained: Who trapped the group?
The ending cuts away from Stuart and the others and returns to Kyle and Trevor in the shop.
They are taking instructions from the mysterious black, mass-powered being. It tells them that the team’s progress has been stopped and that their only goal now is to keep Stuart, Denise, Bert, and Kripke where they are.
And “where they are” turns out to be much stranger than another alternate universe. The four are trapped inside a comic book.
The comic is called Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, and the story is titled Trapped.
What remains unclear is exactly who the black being is and why keeping the group trapped is so important. For now, Kyle and Trevor are following its orders, while Stuart and the others have no apparent way out of the comic book.
