A star's life begins with a cloud of hydrogen gas, pulled inward by its own gravity until pressure and friction build enough heat to ignite nuclear fusion. This episode of The Universe traces that arc from birth to death, showing how the resulting glow can burn steadily for billions of years before the fuel runs out. It walks through the different endings that mass determines: smaller stars swelling into red giants and shedding their outer layers, while the most massive ones collapse and detonate as supernovae, briefly outshining entire galaxies in some of the largest and most colorful explosions in the cosmos. Computer-generated visualizations stand in for telescope footage to show processes that unfold over timescales no camera could capture, from the initial gravitational collapse to the shockwave of a star's final blast. The episode treats stellar death as generative rather than just destructive, since those explosions scatter the heavier elements that later form planets and, eventually, life.