{"id":612937,"date":"2026-07-31T06:10:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/612937\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T06:10:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:10:16","slug":"stuart-fails-to-save-the-universe-how-kaley-cuoco-cameo-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/612937\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’: How Kaley Cuoco Cameo Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0<\/strong>This story contains spoilers from \u201cStuart Fails to Save the Universe<\/a>\u201d Season 1 Episode 2, now streaming on HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStuart Fails to Save the Universe\u201d Episode 2 was chock full of cameos and guest stars \u2014 but saved the biggest one, at least for \u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d fans, until near the end of the episode: The return of Kaley Cuoco<\/a> as Penny. But a very different Penny.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the episode, \u201cSpoiler: Zack\u2019s In This One,\u201d Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Kripke (John Ross Bowie) and Bert (Brian Posehn) land in a much less apocalyptic Pasadena than the one they just escaped \u2014 and in this world, Kripke is no longer a vicious ruler (he plays off killing Raj in the previous world: \u201cThere 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.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in the happy-go-lucky, peaceful new universe they land in, things aren\u2019t 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\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcolin remas brown<\/p>\n

\n\tDenise (Lauren Lapkus) didn\u2019t make the trip through the wormhole with them, so Stuart goes looking for her \u2014 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 \u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d). <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tThe receptionist angers Kripke and Bert so much that they are picked up by the police \u2014 along with Stuart, who had also been arrested. They\u2019re sent to a reprogramming facility, where they watch a video hosted by Christine Baranski, playing herself. (On \u201cThe Big Bang Theory,\u201d Baranski played Leonard\u2019s mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter thirty months of rehabilitation, the trio are finally released \u2014 and immediately kidnapped by a resistance group. That organization meets inside a warehouse, where we discover it\u2019s led by. Penny (played by Cuoco). But this isn\u2019t the Penny we remember from \u201cThe Big Bang Theory.\u201d This one is a badass soldier\/leader, who can\u2019t stop slapping Stuart, Kripke and Bert. Denise is there too, as is Penny\u2019s ex-boyfriend Zack (Brian Thomas Smith).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA big part of it was offering them a challenge to do something entirely different,\u201d co-creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre<\/a> says of bringing back some of the original \u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d cast members in new versions of their characters. \u201cAs you\u2019ve seen in Episode 2, Kaley\u2019s not playing the server in the Cheesecake Factory. It\u2019s still Penny, and now she\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn \u201cThe Big Bang Theory,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the end of Episode 2 of \u201cStuart Fails,\u201d Penny\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers from \u201cStuart Fails to Save the Universe\u201d Season 1 Episode 2, now streaming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[265],"tags":[39385,18,117,19,17,46633,169221,128],"class_list":["post-612937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-chuck-lorre","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kaley-cuoco","tag-stuart-fails-to-save-the-universe","tag-tv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}