Stuart Fails To Save The Universe (Big Bang spin-off TV series: trailer).
There are spin-offs, there are cash-ins, and then there are spin-offs that appear to have escaped from a CERN laboratory after being struck by lightning while clutching a box set of Red Dwarf. HBO Max’s Stuart Fails To Save The Universe looks very much like the latter.
Yes, The Big Bang Theory universe is expanding again, like a Marvel timeline left unattended near a microwave burrito. Only this time the focus lands on everybody’s favourite perpetually exhausted comic shop owner, Stuart Bloom, played once more by Kevin Sussman, a man who has spent over a decade looking like he’s survived three apocalypses and a particularly savage Comic-Con queue.
The premise sounds like someone fed a stack of old DC Comics crossover events into an AI trained entirely on Mountain Dew and late-night physics lectures. Stuart accidentally breaks a reality-bending device created by Sheldon and Leonard, causing multiverse Armageddon. Naturally, the fate of existence is then entrusted to a man who can barely keep a comic book shop solvent.
The teaser suggests chaos on an industrial scale. Alternate universes, collapsing timelines, weird science, and Barry Kripke once again weaponising his speech impediment like a Sith lord with a throat infection. John Ross Bowie’s return as Kripke may actually be the most dangerous thing in the multiverse. Somewhere out there is almost certainly an alternate Earth where he became Emperor.
Lauren Lapkus returns as Denise, who appears to have inherited the unenviable role of “the only vaguely competent person in the room,” while Brian Posehn’s Bert lumbers back into action like a lovable geological siege engine. Together, they form a rescue team with all the efficiency of a pub quiz team assembled during a gas leak.
Meanwhile, the teaser heavily leans into the sort of reality-hopping lunacy that modern genre television can’t resist. There are hints of alternate versions of familiar Big Bang Theory faces, suggesting the producers have finally realised fans secretly wanted to see Sheldon variants battling across dimensions like over-caffeinated Doctor Whos armed with whiteboards.
The really odd thing? It might actually work.
One of the great hidden truths about The Big Bang Theory was that Stuart often felt more like a tragic Douglas Adams character who’d wandered into the wrong sitcom by mistake. While everyone else paired off into cosy domesticity, Stuart remained a permanently anxious nerd marooned in retail purgatory, surrounded by mint-condition collectibles and the smell of stale cardboard. Giving him the keys to a multiverse disaster feels strangely appropriate. Like appointing a raccoon as caretaker of a nuclear submarine.
Chuck Lorre, Zak Penn, and Bill Prady are steering this ten-episode experiment, which means the show could land anywhere between affectionate sci-fi parody and full-blown continuity spaghetti. Either way, SFcrowsnest suspects viewers will tune in just to see how badly Stuart can break reality before somebody from another timeline tries to invoice him for damages.
Stuart Fails To Save The Universe debuts July 24th on HBO Max in the UK and Ireland, with new episodes dropping weekly. Somewhere, Sheldon is already explaining why the multiverse technically invalidates spoilers.
And somewhere else in the multiverse, Stuart probably saved everyone first time. Sadly, this does not appear to be that timeline.
