Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 3 Review: Off Colors

This Steven Universe review contains spoilers.

Steven Universe Season 5 Episode 3

Steven Universe fans are focused on the Gems. They love the Gems. They write fanfic, draw fan art, cosplay, and discuss the Gems back-stories constantly. While the human characters aren’t unloved, they’re sometimes forgotten.

After this episode fans will have a tough time ever forgetting the humans and shockingly they’ll never forget Lars. Once the fandom’s most hated character, he’s finally turned around. He’s admitted his flaws. Admitted he’s scared of everything. With that he was able to finally stand up and take his place amongst the most courageous characters this show has ever seen.

Seeing Lars save all of these new helpless Gems was one of the biggest “punch the air” moments this show has ever had. People can change and Lars is proof of that. Without him, the Gems would have been dust.

But what is Lars now? Will he have Gem powers? Is he not 100% human anymore? It’s hard to tell, although I hope he’s still human. Giving Lars Gem powers, while cool, might diminish his character a bit.

Lars is so great as a character now because he’s a human. He was scared, more scared than anyone else, and he still stood his ground. If he gains powers, what will that say about him? How will that change him? Will he easily join the ranks of fan favorite characters just because he has powers? I’m not saying it can’t work, I just worry it’s an easy out for the character and for fans to more readily accept him.

Steven’s healing power working on a human is new and is another unexpected side effect of him being half human half Gem. What will he do with this newfound power? Will he try to save more people on Earth? What if Lars does come back to Earth with powers and Connie wants in? Steven healed her eyesight before but what if she could also get powers? Only time will tell on that one but the possibilities are endless.

I adore the new off color Gems. We don’t get much of them but the little bits totally sell their personalities. In particular I love the new Sapphire. She’s so adorable and has a quirky useless power. 

So with the concept of off color Gems, we have to ask how the “coloring” of Gems happens in this society. We’ve seen that Pearl certainly isn’t pink anymore so that does mean certain Gems are given a color when they’re born? Do some never get a color? We’ve seen Pearls, Zircon’s, and now Sapphire’s can have different colors so what about the other Gems? Ah, so many questions!

Also, did anyone get a polyamory vibe off that one giant Gem?

“Six. Or more, if we meet the right gems.”

 Yeah, totally poly right there. I love it. Steven Universe slowly but surely showing all kinds of diversity. Beautiful.

Even if Steven and Lars ended up underground in this episode we still got to see more of home world, in particular a full size Kindergarten. That was something to behold and it makes you wonder how many Gems are out in the universe. Will we see more next episode? Can they even wrap up this story arc in one episode or will we be left hanging until the next Stevenbomb?

Personally I hope the story stays on home world for a while. It’s taken us so long to get here, let’s not waste the opportunity.

Stray Thoughts 

– “Don’t beat yourself up Lars, that’s what the killer robots are for.” Classic Steven zinger.

Shamus Kelley came to this planet from outer space. Follow him on Twitter!