SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” Season 1 Episode 2, now streaming on HBO Max.
“Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” Episode 2 was chock full of cameos and guest stars — but saved the biggest one, at least for “The Big Bang Theory” fans, until near the end of the episode: The return of Kaley Cuoco as Penny. But a very different Penny.
In the episode, “Spoiler: Zack’s In This One,” Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Kripke (John Ross Bowie) and Bert (Brian Posehn) land in a much less apocalyptic Pasadena than the one they just escaped — and in this world, Kripke is no longer a vicious ruler (he plays off killing Raj in the previous world: “There are two possibilities. One, the world we were just in no longer exists. In which case I did not kill Raj. Two, that world and this world are part of an infinite number of worlds, in which case I killed one in an infinite number of Rajes. Mathematically, a rounding error.”)
But in the happy-go-lucky, peaceful new universe they land in, things aren’t as cracked up as they seem: The characters all have a device planted on the back of their necks, sending them an electric shock whenever they argue or get angry. And for this crew, with Stuart and Kripke going at it, that’s a lot.
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Denise (Lauren Lapkus) didn’t make the trip through the wormhole with them, so Stuart goes looking for her — and finds her with her new beau, Gary (Tommy Walker). Meanwhile, hoping to find Sheldon and Leonard to get some answers, Kripke and Bert head to Caltech, where they find an extremely unhelpful receptionist (Riki Lindhome, who originally played Dr. Ramona Nowitzki on “The Big Bang Theory”).
The receptionist angers Kripke and Bert so much that they are picked up by the police — along with Stuart, who had also been arrested. They’re sent to a reprogramming facility, where they watch a video hosted by Christine Baranski, playing herself. (On “The Big Bang Theory,” Baranski played Leonard’s mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter.)
After thirty months of rehabilitation, the trio are finally released — and immediately kidnapped by a resistance group. That organization meets inside a warehouse, where we discover it’s led by. Penny (played by Cuoco). But this isn’t the Penny we remember from “The Big Bang Theory.” This one is a badass soldier/leader, who can’t stop slapping Stuart, Kripke and Bert. Denise is there too, as is Penny’s ex-boyfriend Zack (Brian Thomas Smith).
“A big part of it was offering them a challenge to do something entirely different,” co-creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre says of bringing back some of the original “The Big Bang Theory” cast members in new versions of their characters. “As you’ve seen in Episode 2, Kaley’s not playing the server in the Cheesecake Factory. It’s still Penny, and now she’s a badass guerrilla leader. That was part of the design from the very beginning. In a multiverse environment, these characters could recur as themselves, but with an entirely different backstory.”
On “The Big Bang Theory,” which ran from 2007 to 2019, Penny moves into an apartment next door to Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons); as the series progressed, Penny and Leonard became a couple and eventually married.
At the end of Episode 2 of “Stuart Fails,” Penny’s secret hideout is discovered by the authoritarian bots that control human emotions, and just in time Stuart, Denise, Kripke and Bert fire up the Leonard, Sheldon and Howard quantum interference device that takes them to another universe: And next episode, it looks like things get a little magic.