HBO’s Stuart Fails to Save the Universe has just given the best episode in the series so far with the seventh one, titled Spoiler: Dexys Midnight Runners Get a Royalty. The gang this time is thrown into a world where everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts - a concept most audiences have already seen, but the execution with this bunch of characters just hits different. The efficacy of the plot has significantly increased ever since the show turned its focus away from surviving problematic universes and toward carrying out the mission at hand while hopping to different realities with some pretty insane quirks.     

The episode does not waste time on figuring out the rules or habitability of the world. It just starts with fixing the damage to reality caused by Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard’s reality-jumping machine thingy. The confusion and chaos in this one is very different than earlier episodes, and it has started to feel more like a multiversal crisis now that the season is drawing to a close.

But things started very smoothly, especially for Stuart this time, with everyone in agreement on what they wanted to do about the situation.

With Stuart Fails to Save the Universe  episode 7, the gang now seems to have fallen into a rhythm where they are in agreement about saving their universe and going back to their lives as soon as possible. They are not trying to scout for a place for themselves in different realities or just wiggle their way out of the responsibility of saving the multiverse. They know that their first priority now is fixing the machine.

So, when they arrive in a world where they can hear each other’s thoughts, Stuart is the one who takes charge, which is very unlike his natural instincts which were in full swing in the initial episodes. He draws everyone’s attention to the bigger problem at hand right now, and the rest just follows his lead, though Kripke has some issues with the leadership automatically going to Stuart, as he cannot accept that a comic book owner is giving orders to him, a PhD holder. 

Throughout the episode, this becomes a point of contention between them, and the banter as a result is hilarious. Bert is just chill as per his nature; nothing can throw him off easily. Denise, however, is enamored by Stuart’s authority and leadership. This even gets him lucky once in the episode. Denise is so into him right now that she is mulling over having his kids. This just might be the best possible universe for Stuart to be in right now.

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However, he does not let this significant development in his love life get in the way of his mission.

Stuart is very clear that someone is trying to help him with his mission, and whoever they are, they have sent a message through the manual that came with the machine in the previous episode. He concludes that the most important thing that the machine lacks is a control mechanism that can take them back to the time and place when everything went to shambles.

The only place they could find something like that is the engineering department of Caltech University. There, they look for Howard Wolowitz, but to their surprise, no one exists of the name. They could not even find him on the internet. They did find Bernadette, though, and decided to pay her a visit to find out what is actually going on.

Bernadette is a tap dance instructor in this universe and an abusive one, for that matter. Turns out, she had a rough childhood, being forced to do beauty pageants growing up, and now she is projecting all that trauma onto the young minds (very “wholesome”). When the gang meets her, she does not seem to recognize them or the name Howard Wolowitz. She never even met a man with that name; talk about marrying one.

The gang is now confused as to what to do about the control mechanism. Just when the mission seemed to be in jeopardy, Stuart came up with another idea.

When they could not find Howard, they needed another way into the engineering department. Infiltrating through deception could be the way here but the obvious flaw in that particular idea is the mind reading thing. How can you fool someone when they can read your thoughts? However, there was one and Stuart could not have been more right about that.

When they tried to get access inside the faculty under a false delivery claim, they all started singing in their heads to avoid their real intentions being discovered. This way they got inside but what they found was shocking even more than the mind reading in this world. Versions of themselves were already there with other device just like theirs and when they saw them they started jumping realities. 

When they eventually caught up to them, both the parties were confused as to what was actually happening. While they were figuring out which of them has the real mission of saving the universe, another group arrives in military uniform, takes the device form the send group and then vanishes. Our gang chases after them only to lose them in the process and wind up in a world where they are all Centaurs.

The series is now getting more intense and things have started to unravel. The upcoming episodes will lift the curtain on more such mysteries and truths. Once thing is for sure we are going to see Shelden, Leonard, and Howard pretty soon, as they are the ones who can tell the gang more about how this all came to be and what they can do to fix it. The next few episodes are going to be crucial.

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Why do you think there are other versions of the team running around with the same mission? Do let us know.