STEVEN UNIVERSE: FUTURE Episode 17 "Homeworld Bound" Full Length Reaction

It's so lovely to finally get a Blue solo song! Yes, yes, on point musings with Steven's pattern of self isolation. This poor kid is just so bad at prioritizing his own feelings, and it hurts me. Now that we're at the home stretch and it's no longer a spoiler as to the broad sort of crisis that tendency ultimately leads... the thing that always makes this show especially rewatchable to me is that the crew always had a very consistent picture of their characters, and so like... there are overtly very early s1 episodes where you can notice Steven developing habits in real time that are the overt stepping stones to him ending up in this bad mental rut. Going back to these with knowledge of what happens in SUF shed an entirely new light on them for me. The one that leaps out in my brain is the S1 episode "The Test," in which- as a lil memory igniter- Steven is super upset at the Gems when he realizes that the whole challenge gauntlet they made him in the Temple so he could prove how much he's improved at missions was like... entirely fake, and impossible to lose at. Of course, when he realized that the Gems were really lost in their parenting of him and simply wanted to provide him a guaranteed win because they were concerned that another failure might crush his spirit, he pushed down his anger entirely to provide them positive feedback so they felt like they were doing a good job at raising him... because he felt sad that they were filled with so much self doubt. That moment comes across as super sweet on the first watch, but upon the second... it kinda hit me that "o h." This is also Steven learning that it's better for him to bottle up his own feelings on a complex situation because other people's emotions are more important than his. It's a big early show example of him starting to prioritize other people and their problems over his own physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Anyways, apologies for the huge long ramble- this show as a whole is simply That Good to me, ahah. Every single day I hope that the cast and crew are aware of the really special thing they created. Thank you very much for the great reaction once more, oh boy. On to the next.

Novantinuum