‘Stuart’ Episode 3: Wil Wheaton, Brian Posehn & John Ross Bowie Talk Wizards, Puppies, Penguins, Fireball Fight, Easter Egg & That Shocking Death

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about Episode 3 of HBO Max’s Stuart Fails To Save the Universe.

Three episodes in, Stuart Fails To Save the Universe has brought back seven actors from the original show in addition to the spinoff’s leading quartet of Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Brian Posehn (Bert), Lauren Lapkus (Denise) and John Ross Bowie (Kripke), and has killed off two OG characters in two different universes.

First, it was Kunal Nayyar’s opening episode who was shot dead by Kripke. In Episode 3, it is Wil Wheaton, killed with magic by another Stuart Fails To Save the Universe lead character, Bert.

Set in a world where magic is real and where, per the opening credits spoiler, “Bert is magic,” Wheaton is a representative of the Wizards Guild of America. He comes after Stuart for unwittingly enabling Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) to resume her demon form after she had been expelled from the guild and stripped of her magic powers. (You can read about Rauch’s return and Bernadette’s beef with the WGA here.)

Bert shields Stuart from Wil’s deadly fireball, which leads to a magic fight to the death between the two that destroys most of the comic book shop and ends with Wil’s demise. (You can watch most of the scene below.)

“I remember when the script was sent to me, and I was reading through it and not getting most of it because I hadn’t seen anything else,” Wheaton told Deadline. “We get to the magic shop, and I knew that I was going to be a wizard because I’d had a costume fitting, but I didn’t know anything about what it was going to be. What I see in the script is Wil Wheaton and Bert have an epic fireball fight, and I took a picture of it and I texted that picture to Bill and I just said ‘thank you.'”

Wheaton spoke about the logistics of filming the fight, in which the Star Trek: The Next Generation alum also got to flash the Vulcan salute.

“We had so much fun. Tom [Mahoney], the visual effects supervisor, and Brian and I really went through blocking and coordinating this entire fight sequence, and it was about like, well, how do you tease the fireball up in your hand, and how do you shape the fireballs in your hand?,” he said. “And for a particular kind of nerd, it’s a really big deal to be a wizard throwing a fireball, and to see that, like, I look so much cooler than I’ve ever looked ever in my entire life.”

Wheaton revealed an Easter egg he had asked the show’s costume designer Valerie Klarich to incorporate into his costume — which she did.

“The character that I play in Felicia Day’s series, The Guild, is Fawkes, he’s the leader of their rival guild. Felicia and I wrote a comic book together about him, and on the cover, there’s this really cool artwork that is Fawkes in a wizard’s robe with all these glowing runes on it. So Val said, ‘Do you have any requests for your costume?’ And I said, ‘If you could put some runes down the sides of the cloak, that would be really cool.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, we know a 3D printing guy who prints on fabric.’ So I got it.”

He shared his reaction to the Fawkes-inspired cloak.

“When I saw that, I was just like, there’s this great moment in Almost Famous where Lester Bangs says to the kid, ‘Oh no, they made you feel cool, and you’re not cool, so you’re trapped. They made me feel cool, and I’m not cool, and I was like, ‘This is an entirely fine place to be trapped.'”

Posehn spoke of the cool and dark side of Episode 3 where Bert can do magic but he also is almost burnt at the stake for being a scientist.

“People here think science is evil,” Kripke said about the magic-ruled alternate reality, to which Stuart responds in a rare topical comment on the show, “How is this different from our world?”

“That was a funny episode, and then also that we play off it, where somebody goes, ‘In this world, science is forbidden,’ and Stuart goes, ‘Isn’t that kind of like our world?’ That joke I loved,” Posehn said. “But getting to be burned at a stake as a metalhead — it wasn’t a bucket list thing but getting to do it was super fun.”

Posehn is known for his lifelong love for heavy metal which he has blended with stand-up comedy in his novelty comedy-metal tracks.

There was another big draw for him in the episode.

“I’m the biggest dog nerd you’re gonna meet, so having magic powers where I could make a puppy just transform out of nowhere — that was so fun to shoot,” he said.

In the episode, Bert is asked by his acolytes to manifest life and he does it by conjuring up a puppy.

“He was so excited about the dog, it was so cute,” Bowie said. “He was so, so pumped about the doggie they gave him.”

Added Posehn, “Every time I had to be joyful when I said ‘Abracadabra puppy,’ it was like the easiest acting job I’d ever done because there was a puppy on my lap. So I’m like, ‘Hehehe, look at him! He’s adorable!’ That was super fun to play.”

In the episode, Bert also takes revenge on Kripke for not helping him when he was at the stake by turning him into a penguin sporting Kripke’s hair. Bowie spoke about the method acting involved in playing a penguin.

“I went back to the the time in my life that I was a flightless waterfowl, and really went through a lot of sense memory on that,” he joked. “No, it was incredibly fun because I’ve never done mo-cap, I’ve never had one of those suits with the little buttons on them and the camera right in front of your face.”

There was some VFX wizardry involved in the transformation but also old-fashion practical special effects.

“They built a mock-up of the comic book shop that was proportionally larger, and they put an elastic band around my knees so I had to waddle,” Bowie said. “It was really fun, and then the finished product looks amazing, and I love that he’s a penguin with my hair. I thought that was a really good choice to keep this magnificent coif on the penguin. Yeah, I enjoyed that a lot.”