Diksha Sundriyal
HBO Max’s ‘Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’ takes Stuart Bloom and his friends on a turbulent journey. It starts with Stuart discovering that his meddling with a machine created by Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard has caused this mess, and now, he is entwined with the device in such a way that he is the only one who can use it to fix what he broke. He is joined in this quest by Barry, Bert, and an alternate version of Denise. Each episode lands them in a new universe as they try to figure out how to return to their original timeline and prevent reality from being ripped apart. The final episode lands them in perhaps the most unexpected and eerie place, while also introducing them to a cosmic villain who is hellbent on stopping them to preserve its own peace. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Stuart and His Group Meet a New Challenge
The previous episode landed Stuart and his friends in a reality where they are characters trapped inside a comic book. Stuart uses his knowledge of comic books to find Barry Allen, aka the Flash, who helps them travel across universes. Finally, they land in a world that seems more stable, but it turns out they are back in the world, and this time, they are outside of the comic book. As they become aware of their situation, certain strange things start to happen. Barry hears laughter tracks; the lighting keeps changing from normal to being a bit too bright.
Denise is suddenly angry with Stuart for forgetting her birthday, though none of them have any idea of the day or the year they are in. While the others are either too consumed with how to escape this world or they don’t seem to notice anything at all, Barry can’t shake off the feeling that something is terribly wrong with this world. The truth comes out in the end, but it is much more mind-boggling than they’d initially imagined. And it all begins with the discovery that they are being watched and possibly even hunted by a mysterious entity known as the Adversary, which previously killed Kyle’s friend Trevor for letting the quartet escape the bounds of the comic book universe.
What is the Adversary? Why does It Want to Stop Stuart?
When Stuart and his friends escape the comic book universe, they find themselves back where they started, but things have changed. Kyle explains that there is a dark, swirling mass called the Adversary that existed before anything else. The entity was happy living in nothingness, but the Big Bang disrupted its sense of peace and calm. Interestingly, the entity itself caused the Big Bang, but that shouldn’t be mentioned in front of it, because it’s kinda touchy about the issue. Anyway, the Big Bang led to the creation of the universe, which expanded over a billion years, eventually giving rise to humans like Stuart.
The Adversary hated this new development, and it wasn’t just the humans that irritated it. It hated everything, from the stars and the planets and every other thing populating the space and disturbing the peace it had when there was nothing. It couldn’t do anything to change the situation until Stuart came along and messed up the machine Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard had created. As a rip in the fabric of reality was created, leading to the unfolding of multiple universes, the Adversary finally had a way to sneak in through one of those rips and bring the whole place down. It wasn’t just this one universe, but all the other universes that became its target.
The only thing that could put a stop to his plans now was Stuart Bloom, who jumped across universes with the machine that still needed to be fixed. This is why the Adversary was so intent on keeping Stuart and his friends trapped in the comic book. While Kyle gives a great backstory for the entity now set up as the show’s villain, there is still a lot we don’t know about it. The most pressing question is why, if it’s a seemingly all-powerful entity, hasn’t it already stopped Stuart? Stuart’s involvement in the creation of the multiverse has likely given him some sort of protection from the villain that now wants to stop him at all costs. But the true extent of this protection remains unknown.
Which Universe Do Stuart and His Friends End Up In? Are They in Our Universe?
When the Flash drops off Stuart and his friends, they think they are in just another alternate reality. However, it turns out that they are actually in a place that exists in nothing. After Kyle updates them about the existence of the entity, he also tells them about how it was his and Trevor’s job to make sure they remained trapped in the comic book. But somehow, they found a way out. To isolate them, the Adversary decided to pull the comic book store out and place it inside a bubble of nothingness. So now there is nothing outside the store’s walls, which means they are well and truly trapped. And yet, they notice, they can get food and whatnot delivered to them.
Barry also starts hearing a laugh track whenever one of them makes a joke, and the lighting shifts as well, though it is not immediately noticed by the others. It takes him a bit to realize that they are trapped in a sitcom. It seems that when the entity failed to trap them in a comic book, it placed them in a sitcom, which it thought would be harder to escape because it would be closer to their reality and keep them confused about where they really are. However, the bubble pops soon enough, and the group sees a haze of smoke in place of the fourth wall of the store. It seems that the only way out is through, so, one by one, they walk out of it to discover that they were right. They were trapped in a sitcom that was being filmed in front of a live audience.
The show goes meta here, presenting them as actors playing Stuart, Denise, Barry, and Bert. This also explains why there was nothing outside the store’s walls. Since it’s a show, its world is limited to the sets where it is filmed. This is why, even when they open the door, they have nowhere to go, and yet, they have doorstep delivery. The smoky haze they walked through was the fourth wall that doesn’t exist during filming, because that part is open to the live audience, whose laughter was what Barry had been hearing all along. Shocked and confused, they walk out of the studio, but this is not the world that we, the actual audience of the show, are in. While we have ‘Young Sheldon’ and ‘Two and a Half Women,’ the meta reality that Stuart and Co are stranded in has ‘Young Leonard’ and ‘Two and a Half Women.’ This means that many other things could be different here, but we won’t find out until the next season.
What Happens to Kyle?
While Stuart and his friends make the bold move of stepping into the unknown, Kyle is not so brave. He is already scared of the Adversary, whose reach knows no bounds, and the idea of walking into a smoky haze that could very well spell his death doesn’t seem right in this context. However, with them gone, he is the only one left behind in the comic book store that is suspended in the nothingness that prevents him from leaving it entirely. Perhaps he forgets about it for a bit after being in the company of four new people. So, when they are gone, he picks up the trash, which is when the Adversary appears again. This is when he realizes he has failed in the task entrusted to him. This is a horrific realization because last time Trevor made the mistake of reading the comic book and failed to keep Stuart and Co. trapped there.
For that transgression, he was eviscerated by the dangerous entity who is now before him, reminding him that he had one task and failed at it. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean it will burn Kyle and turn him to ashes. For some weird and unknown reason, it chose the two of them for this hugely important task. Perhaps this time, it might want to change tactics and, instead of killing Kyle, give him another chance. For some unknown reason, it seems unable to kill Stuart and his friends as easily as it did Trevor. This means that Kyle is the only way it can reach them and trap or kill them, ensuring its plan proceeds without a hitch.
This means it could put Kyle on their tail, perhaps even giving him a machine or some other way to travel through universes. Perhaps, Kyle could become its henchman. We might even get another version of Trevor accompanying him, and giving the main characters something more to worry about. Or perhaps, it is finally done using proxies to do its work. Maybe it will conclude that the time has come to take action on its own rather than entrusting others. If so, Kyle is most likely dead.
Read More: Stuart Fails to Save the Universe: Is The Comic Center of Pasadena a Real Place?
You must be logged in to post a comment.