In the new episode of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, the show's leads travel to Gotham City and cross paths with the Golden Age Flash (Andy Ridings) and the villainous Mr. Freeze (Eric Allan Kramer). Both characters have comic-accurate costumes, but Jay Garrick wasn't the show's first choice of hero.
The episode's title is "Spoiler: We Couldn't Get Green Lantern," and it turns out that was true. Why? Well, you can blame DC Studios' Lanterns, which recently dropped one heck of a midseason trailer.
In an interview with Deadline, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe co-creator Zak Penn, who wrote The Incredible Hulk and an early draft of The Avengers, explained, "They told us we couldn’t have him because of [HBO’s live-action series] Lanterns, which I understood."
"Chuck [Lorre] was a little grumbly about it, but Bill and I pointed out to him that Flash was actually perfect," he continued. "If we needed something that’s going from dimension to dimension, Flash worked even better than Green Lantern."
Penn added, "It was half opportunity and half what they encouraged us, but Golden Age Flash appealed to us a lot, just because he’s kind of silly. No offense to Golden Age Flash. Bill [Prady] and I were laughing a lot [about] the whole notion of Gotham City isn’t where New York City is, which makes no sense. All those things were just kind of built up humor and things that we felt about comic books."
"So, the next obvious decision was, in terms of a villain, let’s put the villain who seems right and that people know more, and then have our characters comment on the fact that he’s the wrong villain for this piece," he said of Mr. Freeze.
DC Comics legend Jim Lee helped to develop that villain and Flash, explaining why they're both so in line with the source material. This might not be the last time Stuart and the gang visit the DC Universe either, as Penn tells the trade he "would be shocked" if characters from that world don't factor into the recently announced Season 2.
In Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Comic book store owner Stuart Bloom is tasked with restoring reality after he breaks a device built by Sheldon and Leonard, accidentally bringing about a multiverse Armageddon.
Stuart is aided in this quest by his girlfriend Denise, geologist friend Bert, and quantum physicist/all-around pain in the ass Barry Kripke. Along the way, they meet alternate-universe versions of characters we’ve come to know and love from The Big Bang Theory. As the title implies, things don’t go well.
Check out The Flash and Mr. Freeze's Stuart Fails to Save the Universe cameos in the player below.