Hi all!  I’m back again with my quickie mini review of the two new Steven Universe Future episodes that aired last weekend…and the ones that aired two weekends ago.  Let’s dive in.

Bluebird

Steven and friends finish filming a Little Homeschool commercial, when Steven discovers that someone has been “pranking” him.  Like, gingerly stacking toilet paper rolls on top of the Dondai (the horror). Steven soon realizes the prankster is a new fusion, Bluebird Azurite, a four-legged fusion that Steven immediately recognizes as Aquamarine and Eyeball–the dagger wielding Ruby that Steven once tricked into playing a game of baseball (also he threw her out into the vacuum of space).  Despite the bad blood between them, Bluebird quickly wins over the other Crystal Gems who convince Steven to give their colorful new guest a second chance.

The latter half of this episode’s plot is, honestly, a bit cliche by Steven Universe standards.  We get a series of scenes in which the suspicious Steven seems to catch Bluebird in the act of attacking his friends, only for the situation to be revealed as much more innocent.  While this has been done before, it does lead to the funniest moment in the episode. Steven shows Amethyst a bunch of awful drawings of him that he thinks Bluebird made to mess with him, only for Amethyst to say, “Steven! Those are my drawings!” and run away crying.

At the climax of this episode we learn that (dun dun dun) Bluebird was evil all along?!  Yes, Steven’s suspicions are validated when Bluebird takes Greg hostage, dangling him from the roof by his glorious hair.  Unfusing, Aquamarine and Eyeball reveal that they have become outcasts on Homeworld ever since the Diamonds came to embrace Steven and his Crystal Gem values.  They threaten to drop dear old dad unless Steven agrees to destroy his own house, burn down Little Homeworld, and bubble the Crystal Gems. Suddenly, Greg snatches away Eyeballs dagger and slices off his hair to get free of Aquamarine’s grasp.  As Greg mourns over his severed locks, Steven glows pink and lunges at Aquamarine and Eyeball.  However, the two Gems are too distracted arguing over who’s at fault for Greg’s escape to complete their fusion.

Steven tries to teach Aquamarine and Eyeball that they shouldn’t fuse out of hatred for him, and that there are better reasons to fuse, like friendship and love.  Aquamarine and Eyeball quickly reconcile when they realize they both find Steven incredibly annoying, and fuse into Bluebird. However, they are quickly defeated by Garnet Amethyst and Pearl who fuse into Alexandrite.  Aquamarine and Eyeball fly off into the sky Team Rocket-style and deliver a final insult, “You smell!” 

Steven comforts Greg who delivers the episode’s core message: Everyone can change, but not everyone wants to.”  They release Greg’s hair into the ocean waves in the style of an Irish funeral and the episode comes to a close.

While the cliched main character doesn’t trust the obvious bad guy who seems good but eventually reveals that they are, in fact, the bad guy plot of this episode was a bit of a letdown, it did hint at some interesting topics the show will presumably tackle as this series continues.  Aquamarine and Eyeball were once revered for capturing Steven. But after he won the Diamonds over, Aquamarine and Eyeball were treated as villains and exiled from Homeworld.  In Era 2, Homeworld Gems who fused for love or were deemed “defective” were persecuted and treated like outsiders while Gems who conformed to the strict hierarchy had status and the admiration of their peers.  Now it seems that the tables have turned, and I think the writers of SUF want us to understand that this is not necessarily a good thing.  I think back to Holly Blue Agate in Rose Buds, frustrated that the Fam-ethyst is no longer afraid of her and desperate for an order from the Diamonds who cannot stop talking about “Steven, Steven, Steven.”  Not everyone is happy with how things turned out after Change Your Mind.  Era 3 has created new outcasts who are frustrated with new world order, and they won’t hesitate to take it out on Steven.  Let’s not forget about that angry orange quartz hiding in the woods and preparing for a battle she thinks will take place sometime in the future.  Happily ever after here we are not. Something is coming.

Pearl Points:

• How did Bluebird Azurite come up with her name?  She’s comprised of two Homeworld Gems who can’t have spent enough time on Earth to know what a bluebird is.  
• Aquamarine still thinks Greg’s name is “My Dad”
• Steven empathizes with Aquamarine and Eyeball when he realizes they fused out of hatred toward him, as he and Connie had once fused out of their disdain for Kevin in Beach City Drift.

A Very Special Episode

Steven accidentally promises to babysit Onion as Rainbow Quartz 2.0 and teach an Earth safety class as Sunstone on the same day.  Do I smell hijinks? I think so!

The episode opens with Rainbow Quartz 2.0 playing with Onion, utilizing Pearl’s motherly caretaking and Steven’s capacity for friendship.  Rainbow even gets a song in a sequence that pays homage to A Spoonful of Sugar.  Clearly those Mary Poppins memes that sprang up after this fusion’s debut were spot-on.  Playtime is interrupted when Garnet calls and reminds Steven he promised to teach an Earth safety “Gem-inar” with her as the fusion, Sunstone. Steven books it to the temple and leaves Pearl alone with Onion.  Oh dear.

Steven is forced to rush back and forth between his competing commitments as Pearl and Garnet drop the ball the millisecond he leaves them alone.  Pearl is poorly equipped to handle Onion’s weirdness on her own. Without Rainbow around, Onion ransacks his house and escapes Pearl’s sight, leading to one of my favorite Pearl freakouts, “I think he’s in the walls, and I don’t know how to get him out!”  Meanwhile when Garnet is left to teach Gems about safety on her own, she just describes various timelines in which they die horribly in freak accidents.  There’s one timeline in which the Heaven and Earth beetles fall into the garbage disposal and no one realizes until it’s too late (yikes).

Increasingly drained from constant fusing and de-fusing, Steven brings Pearl and Onion to the safety Geminar.  Onion then leurs the student Gems into the woods and tricks them into walking right off a cliff. Garnet and Pearl argue over which of their Steven-fusions would rescue the students fastest, and then Amethyst shows up.  Now she needs Steven, “I miss you, man!  I haven’t seen you in like, eleven minutes.”  Steven passes out, regretting having overloaded his schedule.  As the screen pans out, the entire episode is revealed to have been a Sunstone PSA warning viewers about the dangers of overloading one’s schedule.  Remember, kids: Having a work-life balance is totally radical!

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode.  It’s full of hilarious lines, references, and WTF Onion moments I didn’t have time to get into.  The weirdness and the lengths the writers and animators reached blew me away. Some of the alternate timeline deaths Garnet saw in her Future Vision were…pretty damn graphic.  I think the inside of her brain is just like a perpetual rerun of all those Final Destination movies from the early 2000s.  Also, it makes sense for Pearl to lose control of Onion the moment Steven leaves.  Aside from Greg and Steven (who is half-Gem), Pearl has had little interaction with humans.  At one point she tells Steven that he was never like Onion and that he was always such a good kid (aww).  Despite Onion’s penchant for wrecking havoc and making everyone besides his mother extremely uncomfortable (seriously, why does this kid hate food?), he actually really likes Steven.  This episode was a fun way for viewers to get to know more about Rainbow Quartz 2.0 and Sunstone’s personalities, like how Know Your Fusion explored Smokey Quartz and Sardonyx’s personalities.  I’m excited to see how these fusions will be utilized in future episodes.  Now let’s roll onto the Pearl Points!

Pearl Points:

• So…does Onion not age?  He hasn’t grown at all since season 1 and appears to still need a babysitter when Vidalia is away.  Maybe if he swallowed food instead of regurgitating it to freak people out, he’d have hit puberty by now!
• Garnet traumatizes the student Gems with deadly alternate timelines like she did to Steven back in Future Vision
• We see Nephrite (formerly, Centipeedle), Angel Aura Quartz, and the Heaven and Earth Beetles in this episode

Snow Day

Steven wants to focus on running Little Homeschool, but the Crystal Gems want to hang out with him like in the good old days.  One after another the Gems’ efforts fail. Steven won’t eat pizza with them (he’s vegan now–what?!), he skips out on “together breakfast,” and when Pearl hands him his cheeseburger backpack, he says he doesn’t use it anymore.  

When the house gets snowed in, Amethyst initiates a classic game of Steven Tag.  Soon Garnet joins in, and even Pearl shapeshifts into season 1-5 Steven to join the fray.  Real-Steven manages to fight off Garnet-Steven, Amethyst-Steven and Pearl-Steven–at one point forming mini-bubbles around his fists and KO-punching each of them.  However, Garnet-Steven unfuses midway through the game and Sapphire-Steven tags Real-Steven.

At the Gems’ insistence, Steven transforms into his younger self.  He then explains to the Gems that he’s grown up now and is no longer the same goofy little kid he used to be.  He asks them to accept him for the more mature and responsible person he has become. The Gems apologize and explain that they just miss hanging out with him.  They all make up and play a new game of Steven Tag in which the Gem that is tagged has to turn into grown-up Steven.

I like how this episode explored the change in dynamics between Steven and the Gems now that he’s gotten older.  In the original series, Steven was a typical human child who initiated silly antics while the Crystal Gems were serious former soldiers focused on completing missions properly.  Now Steven is a teenaged interplanetary diplomat, peace advocate, and educator. The baby of the family is all grown up. And as much as he used to annoy and distract them during missions in the past, the Gems sometimes miss the child Steven used to be.

Pearl Points:

• Snow Day contains callbacks to Together Breakfast, Cheeseburger Backpack, and Keep Beach City Weird (the first episode in which Steven, Garnet and Amethyst play Steven Tag)
• Pearl finally shapeshifts!! And Steven is so proud of her
• I think the scene in which Amethyst tags Pearl from behind while she was distracted talking to Steven is a reference to Steven the Sword Fighter.  In that episode, Pearl gets stabbed in the back by Holo-Pearl because she was distracted talking to Steven.  Steven, stop distracting Pearl
• Cat Steven makes a couple appearances in this episode.  This episode about the Gems missing younger Steven includes the kitten Garnet adopted because she missed having a cute and vulnerable little one in the house
• Nightmare fuel: Amethyst’s egg yolk eyes and Pearl’s panda face mask (eek!)

Why So Blue?

Steven and Lapis Lazuli team up to investigate a planet that is being terraformed by a couple of Homeworld Gems.  After searching through a forest populated with adorable (adoooorable) flower bud-shaped aliens, Steven and Lapis quickly discover who has been slicing up huge sections of land like sticks of butter–two Lapis Lazulis whom I will refer to as “Freckles” and “Anime Mean Girl Hair” or AMGH for short.

Steven, in classic Steven fashion, explains to Freckles and AMGH that they no longer have to terraform planets like the Diamonds once forced them to.  Freckles and AMGH understand they don’t have to terraform, but they want to because it’s fun.  So Steven and Lapis try to teach Freckles and AMGH about all the fun things they can do on Earth at Little Homeschool that don’t involve destroying planets–like creating Meep Morps, dancing, and singing.  Lapis sings the titular song about the beauty in experiencing the full spectrum of emotions. Unfortunately, Freckles and AMGH are not swayed. They make fun of Steven and Lapis and continue destroying the Flower Bud aliens’ home with their weaponized water waves, until Lapis snaps.

Lapis unleashes her devastating water manipulation abilities on the marauding Homeworld Gems.  They begin to battle, two on one. But Lapis eventually overpowers Freckles and AMGH. Right when it seems that she’ll deliver a final blow, Lapis looks back at Steven who appears concerned.  Lapis calms down and ends the fight. Freckles and AMGH promise to stop destroying the planet, but when they praise Lapis’ superior strength, she rebuffs them. She says that resorting to violence was a show of weakness, not strength.

She and Steven return to Little Homeworld and regroup.  Lapis tells Steven that Freckles and AMGH remind her of herself in the past, and that she thinks her violent outburst is proof she has not changed as much from her past self as she hoped.  Steven reassures her that she has grown and changed for the better. Suddenly, Freckles warps in and asks Steven and Lapis if she can enroll in Little Homeschool.

This episode explores how much Lapis Lazuli has changed from the volatile character Steven first met in Mirror Gem.  With two other Lapis Lazulis fresh from Homeworld as a comparison, we can see just how far Lapis has come.  She enjoys singing and dancing. She’s more optimistic, trusting and patient than we’ve seen her in most of the original series.  Even though she does lose her cool when Freckles and AMGH torment her, she also reigns herself in before she does too much damage.  Hooray for character development!

Pearl Points:

• Next Xmas I want a Flower Bud Alien throw pillow!  Get on it, Cartoon Network toy manufacturers!!
• Once again SUF sends the message that not everyone can be persuaded to change.  Freckles eventually comes around to Steven and Lapis, but Anime Mean Girl Hair does not.
• The is the first time we’ve seen another Lapis Lazuli.  Apparently Lapis Lazulis are all incredibly strong and have a bit of an attitude problem.
• At one point Freckles and AMGH tease Steven and Lapis’ singing and dancing by comparing them to Pearls.  I guess Pearls are still looked down upon on Homeworld (sigh).

Well that’s it for this installment of Steven Universe Future Quickie Mini Review.  Stay tuned for the next installment when I (hopefully) publish in a timely manner.