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Steven universe no longer home page 3511/22/2023 ![]() TV series largely focus on significant stakes and character-shaping, story-changing action. ![]() Fantasy’s escapist nature leads it to focus on huge conflicts and huge victories. Once the big battles of a TV series, or fantasy story in general, are over, the aftermath is almost never a priority. Image: Cartoon NetworkĪnd that’s startling, even for a series that’s made a habit out of groundbreaking content (from gay relationships to devoting an episode and a song to head-clearing meditation) and exploring emotion. The quick problems and quicker resolutions hearken back to the show’s first season, when overplot adventures were rare, and most episodes were just brief and sometimes downright silly trials. The scripts focus more on Steven continuing to mature into his powers and his responsibilities, and on various Gems healing their past traumas and looking for personalized, specific ways forward. Introducing them to freedom of choice and a peacetime mentality could be a monumentally difficult task.īut so far, the conflicts have been mild, mostly caused by Steven overreaching in his attempts to push the new Gems out of their comfort zones, or by a few old enemies pouting at the new order. Steven Universe offers another level to that metaphor: Gems are basically construct warriors, created and trained for complete obedience and service to an aggressive expansionist empire. The idea can be a clear metaphor for human immigration stories, and a way to tackle prejudice, racism, culture clashes, and otherness in a new light. The premise of an inhuman species settling in on Earth has driven entire films and TV shows, from District 9 to Alien Nation to Amazon’s recent series Carnival Row. But now dozens of other alien Gems - the formerly corrupted survivors of an ancient war for Earth - are being resurrected and integrated into society. Steven and his warrior friends Amethyst, Pearl, and Garnet are still spending time in their Beach City home, interacting with the quirky human locals. Steven Universe Future has yet to introduce any major new traumas that seem likely to change that dynamic. They’re sticking around to explore what victory, normality, and happiness look like after the kinds of world-threatening drama that’s so common in fantasy stories. The six episodes released so far all suggest Sugar and company are doing something TV virtually never does. Now, the series’ conclusion, the limited series Steven Universe Future, is looking deeply into that happily ever after. Instead, the movie blitzed past all those dire possibilities, resolved the situation, and put everyone back on track for their happily ever after. The stage was set for a long road back from square one, a journey that could have potentially set up entire seasons of conflict, or a story that used the same characters, but took a completely different route the second time around. But then the film introduced a new, horrifically dangerous enemy who erased most of the protagonists’ memories, resetting them to the start of the Steven Universe story. Steven Universe: The Movie presented a bright new future, still worry-free and relatively placid. In September 2019, creator Rebecca Sugar and her team released a follow-up film, set two years later. ![]() Suddenly, the series seemed notably short on remaining threats or dangling plot hooks. ![]() But in season 5, they faced what seemed to be the last of their major adversaries, and as usual for the show, Steven eventually got through to her with a mixture of sharp reasoning and insightful emotional appeal. The stakes faced by half-alien hybrid boy Steven Universe and his alien warrior friends, the Crystal Gems, kept escalating throughout the series. When Cartoon Network’s animated series Steven Universe wrapped its fifth season in January 2019, fans worried that there was nowhere left for the show to go. ![]()
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