“Betcha can’t top that.”

Watermelon Steven is the last of its kind.

Once Lion 3: Straight to Video comes into play, purely lighthearted episodes start to take a backseat. They’re still around, of course, and Steven Universe always has time for levity even at its most dramatic, but Watermelon Steven is the final episode to focus on Steven goofing off by himself in Beach City.

There are variations as soon as Alone Together, but his local excursions from now on will crucially involve another character. It’s a twist on one of the assumed virtues of maturing: growing up is often associated with gaining independence, but Steven only grows closer to the people around him, forgoing solo adventures for team-ups. Maybe this shift was inevitable; we’ve really gotten to know Beach City by now, so now we can zero in on specific individuals within it. Maybe it’s due to Steven’s perspective changing after watching a certain videotape soon after his melon adventure. It’s hard to say, but the show gets stronger for it: Cat Fingers and Steven’s Lion meownder meander without good motivation, while Mirror Gem’s strength comes from the suspense of knowing something must be wrong with the Mirror.

Watermelon Steven shares the aimlessness of the “Steven Goofs Off” stories’ lesser examples, but ratchets up the pace to include many small plots rather than a single drawn-out stretch. Steven heads to Beach City proper to show off, just like in Cat Fingers and Steven’s Lion, but this escalates with every scene: we go from giving the melons away to selling them to chasing down Onion to realizing they’re alive (not even Steven is too shocked by this) to getting them all back to fighting them to making them wander away. Steven’s just as directionless at the start of his excursion, but we’re led through a whimsical ride instead of an authentic but dull depiction of conflict-free lounging.

Speaking of lounging, I don’t want to ignore the opening scene, which is classic Steven and Greg. It hints at the episode’s quick escalations by having the pair one-upping each other, but gives us a nice dose of realism to contrast with the zaniness of what’s to come. As usual, their relationship oozes verisimilitude, and the visuals enhance the vibe: you can just feel the stickiness as Steven lies in the hot sun, rind-crown on head, soaked in melon juice.

As is standard for a Beach City romp, we get to run the gamut of characters: that wonderful low-key Greg scene, all three Gems sharing screentime, Mr. Smiley blithely accepting bribery, Sadie being sweet without being passive, Onion stealing, and Ronaldo taking his love of all things weird too far—this is Zachary Steel’s third appearance in four episodes, and while this is a lot of Ronaldo (and Ringo) to take, Watermelon Steven shows how great he is in a smaller role, drawing out every word of his blog post and appreciating strangeness even mid-pummeling.

But unlike Cat Fingers and Steven’s Lion, these characters are largely seen on their own, allowing each to have a humorous vignette instead of sharing the spotlight. There’s certainly merit to seeing characters bounce off each other, and we get a taste for it seeing the Gems with each other (as usual) and Sadie with Ronaldo, but Smiley’s lighthearted corruption and Onion poking out from the tablecloth work best without any distractions. With a variety of characters comes a variety of comedy (the highlight, of course, being Amethyst’s burial service), further lending to an utterly entertaining adventure.

The Melon Stevens are as cute as they are uncanny. They’re animalistic protectors, a test run of Steven’s latent plant powers, which makes it okay when they’re horrifically destroyed. Super Watermelon Island will see them advance into a functioning community, so it’s nice to get some dark humor out of them before they evolve and earn more empathy (although that dark humor returns with a vengeance in Escapism): the seagulls plucking them away as they march into the ocean is great, but nothing beats Steven silently eating Baby Melon’s remains.

(Technically, Baby Melon’s enduring presence means that Steven isn’t actually alone in this episode, but considering it neither speaks nor returns, it’s hardly comparable to the human partners Steven teams up with and develops.)

The theme of the melons keeps the episode’s jolly tone going even when the fangs come out; one of the many things I admire about Aivi and Surasshu is their devotion to leitmotifs even for minor happenings and characters like these. It ties the episode together, and allows for callbacks should the subject of the music suddenly return, as will happen in Super Watermelon Island and Escapism. Aivi and Surasshu are skilled enough to get away with writing generic incidental music, but like Michael Giacchino’s outstanding work on Lost, recurring thematic music within a television series shows a deep respect to continuity.

While Watermelon Steven veers pretty close to filler in tone, it subtly primes us for Lion 3. We haven’t addressed Steven’s role as the inheritor of Rose’s powers since he lost his healing spit, and his plant powers, while rarely used, are a direct link to Rose. Moreover, it evokes her moss in Lars and the Cool Kids and the thorns of An Indirect Kiss, the first two episodes where Steven talks at length about her. So far, weird plant stuff has happened when Rose has been most important, so an entire episode about weird plant stuff is bound to yield a hell of a harvest.

Future Vision!

The watermelon battle is the first time we see Garnet’s fist-rockets, Pearl’s laser spear, and Amethyst’s spin dash attack, each a sign of more intense battles to come.

Creating sentient plants might not come up often, but it does lead to the birth of Pumpkin.

Hey look, it’s the librarian from Buddy’s Book! She’s right under that…erm…interesting hot dog business.



If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

Okay, even if this counts it’s just barely, but why would the Gems be reading newspapers? Time and again, the show makes a point of how uninterested they are in current human events (with the occasional exception for Amethyst). And before you ask, no, I’m not bringing this up just because I love this shot of them reading the papers and couldn’t think of anywhere else to put it in this post. Shut up.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

This is fluff, but it’s some of the best fluff in the series. And it’s a nice break after Season 1B’s string of episodes showcasing flaws in Pearl, Pearl and Amethyst, Sadie and Lars (but mostly Sadie), Ronaldo, Connie, and Garnet. Everything’s about to change forever, so let’s give this swan song some props.

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