Steven Universe is a show that was extremely frustrating to watch. I was following it ardently and closely ever since its pilot released, and the state of social justice ideas in the mainstream of culture were still kinda niche back then, and I was begging for a show like this to exist, a show with a variety of women taking center-stage, of different body types and ethinicities, it was incredibly fresh and new at the time. The reveal of Garnet being actually two women (or, I guess women-coded aliens) in a gay relationship was blazing new ground for not just cartoons, but even mainstream entertainment as a whole. The way the show was framed as through the eyes of Steven made all the gem stuff just so mysterious and magical and wondrous early on, it was definitely something.
But then the show just kinda, lost itself. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many outstanding episodes and plot beats after the first season (the episode with Volleyball in Steven Universe Future is incredible and one of my favorites), but how it came together as a whole was disappointing. It feels like a show that definitely knew the general direction of where it was going to go (I don’t doubt that the finale’s script was pretty much written early on), but it didn’t know what moving parts to use in the meantime, and how and where to introduce them. Mysteries and pressing issues would be introduced only to be addressed again many episodes (sometimes whole seasons) later in a hurry. The mystique of all the gem stuff quickly went away as they stopped doing missions to old gem historical sites and the show had no interest anymore in old gem tech or culture, and when the characters of every Crystal Gem were already easily understood and had barely anything to reveal anymore (with the exception of maybe Pearl). Steven Universe is no doubt a complex show to manage, probably one of the most complex, with its different tones, characters, plotlines, mysteries, but, maybe it should’ve been simpler if we were going to get something that juggles so many things in such an awkward way?
There’s just so much that I can go on about that felt lacking (like the insistence on beach citizen episodes long after they felt necessary or welcome) but the thing that’s most shocking in my mind is how dark the show would get and how awkward it would try to shift its tone back to a state of normalcy afterwards. Why does something so dark like the Cluster exists, especially when it was solved by… not solving it at all? Here, a living graveyard of broken destroyed minds mutated into an Akira monstrosity that eats up the entire planet. How are we gonna solve it? I guess we don’t. Steven just tells them to, like, not panic. It’s fine. Oh, also, the one responsible for this is also fine. Yknow, she did several genocides, but it’s fine, she learned that she was being a bad mom and that killing is bad so she still gets to be the emperor of gem society, because she was born a Diamond and I guess only Diamonds can rule, in a show where one of its messages is about how the circumstances of your birth don’t determine who you are or what your place in society should be. What!