“And this is Lars. He’s all human.”

Forty-seven seconds is an eternity in an eleven-minute episode. Steven and the Stevens (the song) is forty-one. The final scene of Winter Forecast, my favorite in the series, is an even thirty. And when Pearl first poofs in Steven the Sword Fighter, it may take her several weeks in-universe to come back, but it’s only seventeen seconds until Amethyst and Garnet reveal that she’s okay.

Off Colors ends with Lars at his finest, bouncing around from friend to friend to save their lives from an alien drone, culminating in a brave, goofy rodeo show on the robotic menace. He comically yelps as the machine bucks and sprays lasers everywhere, then the baker who was once terrified of letting people try his food yells “Eat this!” as he deals the final blow, solidifying the cartoonish victory we’ve seen time and time again in action shows for kids. But then the drone explodes, and it kills him.

Laramie Barriga, the first person we ever see Steven speak with, the first human who’s ever named on the show, a depressed grouch that has resisted every opportunity to grow but can’t help growing anyway, who after countless false starts has finally seen his inner hero emerge, dies a sudden, violent death. And he remains dead for forty-seven seconds.

False deaths abound in Steven Universe, from Pearl’s aforementioned poofing to the Pink Diamond faking her own shattering. But none feel as visceral as Lars’s, because it isn’t false. He not only dies, but we see his lifeless body tumble to the ground like a rag doll, and must linger with him as the weight of his death settles in. The Off Colors are jubilant at their victory, and their cheers create the discordant atmosphere that so often accompanies death, the shock and confusion as life goes on even as another life ends. Steven is the only person on the planet who understands that humans don’t die the same way Gems do, and he doesn’t need to say a word as he grasps for signs of life and finds none.

According to interviews with the crew, there was some question over when the episode would end, and whether this death would be a cliffhanger. I’m so glad they went with this approach, and not because I think it would be too brutal for young viewers (I was raised on Don Bluth and The Lion King, kids can handle it); reviving him in the next episode would be a pacing nightmare, but reviving him here forces that uninterrupted wait, a moment that can’t be escaped by the episode ending and focusing on something else until the next one comes on. Plus, I’d imagine it helped with the censors to have him come back in the same scene, because I’ve never seen a children’s show portray death with this much physical realism; in the rare instance of a character dying on-screen, it’s always a dramatic affair with a final speech and a last gasp, but Lars is dead before he hits the floor.

The other reason Lars’s death stands out is that even if it’s temporary, it’s permanent. The rules of Steven’s inherited revival powers aren’t examined too deeply, but it’s clear that Lars is no longer mortal in the way he once was. He’s pink, with white hair. He barely has a heartbeat. If he’s anything like Lion, there’s a chance he’ll never age. This and more will be covered in Lars’s Head, but even now, it’s clear that the Lars we knew died on a cold and foreign world, and it’s another Lars that wakes up.

There’s obviously more to Off Colors than Lars’s death, considering the episode is named for the new set of characters that we spend most of our runtime meeting. But its very first line, after another stylish pan down from the title card, is “Lars, are you okay?” Much like The Good Lars appears to be a Lars episode but ends up being about Sadie, Off Colors appears to be an Off Colors episode but ends up being about Lars. Every moment he’s on screen is a reminder that he’s an alien on Homeworld, from his earthly need for food to his battle plans adopted from Jurassic Park to his vital lack of a gem. Even before he literally changes color, he fits right in with the misfits.

But let’s not cut the Off Colors short. It isn’t easy to introduce four distinct characters at once, so each gets a quirk to make them stand out fast. The Rutile Twins have two heads that paraphrase each other. Rhodonite fuses the nervousness we’ve seen from rubies and Pearl into a whole new level of perpetual fear. Fluorite speaks in the deep, slow voice of a six-Gem fusion. And, of course, Padparadscha has visions of the recent past, a running gag that I don’t predict I’ll ever get tired of.



Still, even in this first appearance, there’s more to this little family than their quirks. We meet the Rutiles first, voiced by Ashly Burch (one of the 2010s’ best new talents and the co-writer of my favorite latter-day Adventure Time episode, Hall of Egress), and despite a lifetime on the run their instinct is to help instead of hide. Rhodonite, voiced by Enuka Okuma (who like Padparadscha/Sapphire’s Erica Luttrell is a Canadian actress who started young and has steadily built up a considerable resume), doesn’t let her anxiety or societal pressure stop her from living as a fusion, which in a way makes her braver than the more confident Garnet. Fluorite, voiced by Kathy Fisher (primarily an EDM singer for the band Fisher) is proudly polyamorous and has a lot of grace for a giant caterpillar. Padparadscha, voiced by the aforementioned Luttrell…well, she pretty much is just her quirk, but she’s still a delight.

Given how many characters we meet and the amount of time we devote to Lars’s heroism and death, Off Colors can’t do much with its new characters besides introduce them. But the episode reveals their struggles not only with their words, but the setting they hid themselves in. Rather than spend any amount of time in the high tech environment of modern Homeworld (the place that reared the likes of Peridot and terrified Lapis Lazuli) we head straight to the ancient remains of perhaps the oldest Kindergarten in the universe, a massive chamber in a hollowed world without any more room to form new life.

Like Earth’s Prime Kindergarten, it’s a perfect place for horror, this time from a drone that’s so relentless that it kills one of our characters. The drone’s theme resembles the opening of the Love Like You reprise and Holly Blue Agate’s motif, adding another layer of looming alien danger to the atmosphere, and the machine itself has the vicious efficiency of Peridot’s old robonoids. The world is old, but the technology hunting the Off Colors down is new, lending the sense of an endless struggle that must be endured rather than overcome.

Life on Homeworld is dictated by doing what you were created to do, but it’s important to show that deviating from this path doesn’t lead to instant happiness. If Gems could break away from their oppression with ease, it wouldn’t be much of an oppressive state, so the Off Colors trade lives in constant servitude for lives in constant survival mode. It isn’t as if we needed more evidence that Gem society is a mess, but there’s power in personalizing how misfits are persecuted to this day, compared to how the Crystal Gems were able to form in the past. The struggles from back then remain the struggles of the present, and the only way to fix them is with an outside push. We won’t see that push until the end of the series proper, but are primed to understand the power of external changers from Blue Zircon’s own ability to stand outside of the story and punch holes in the narrative the characters took for granted. It’s no wonder that Steven is fated to do the same thing.

It’s refreshing to see Lars and Steven get along from the start, instead of going through the usual ornery motions until they reach the sense of understanding they had in Stuck Together. It makes sense that we’d cut to the chase in an episode with this much to do, but given how often Lars forgets his lessons, it’s a nice change of pace for his growth to stick.

Even more refreshing is Steven forgetting about his martyr complex for a moment as his own survival instincts take hold: we see him instead channel the leadership lesson he learned with Peridot in the drill, assuring Lars that everything will be okay even when it’s clear that he doesn’t believe it. This time it’s Lars who must deal the barriers he sets up for himself, railing against his own cowardice and needing Steven’s positivity in the same way Steven needed his negativity on the spaceship. When Lars shows signs of an imminent panic attack, Steven gives him the same hand to the heart we’ve seen in Lars and the Cool Kids and Lion 3 and tells him that it’s okay to be afraid, a line Lars repeats to psych himself up for his last stand.

Steven also forgets about Zircon’s big reveal, which initially seems like a negative. As viewers, we’re invested in learning the truth about Pink Diamond and are made to wait even longer to get more clues. But I see this as the beginning of a major step forward, because even though Steven is hardly over his issues with Rose, this is where he starts focusing on where his priorities should be: his life in the present, rather than his mother’s ancient past. In Off Colors and Lars’s Head it’s all about escaping Homeworld and helping Lars and his new friends, then it’s straight to the Breakup Arc, and both journeys recenter Steven in a way that lets him grow enough to reexamine Zircon’s information through fresher eyes.

And as complicated as his relationship with Rose has become, let’s not forget that this episode ends with the first instance of her healing tears emerging from her son. He’s had healing spit for ages, his own Steven-y take on his mom’s power, but he evokes her far more directly as he revives Lars with a method that solves a mystery we weren’t even thinking about as we entered Homeworld: the origin of Lion. But more on that next time.

For now, it’s enough to have a full-to-the-brim episode of new friends and tense drama, written and animated to punch you in the gut with a surprise death that feels no less powerful when it’s half-reversed. The Off Colors show us problems unique to Gems (Homeworld society, fusion stuff, malfunctioning psychic powers), and Lars shows us problems unique to humans (general physical frailty, from hunger to the inability to shrug off explosions), but both reach an understanding that makes their imminent team-up feel as natural as can be. Each of them lives in fear, and each of them learns that the only way to work past this fear is to accept it and work together to overcome it. I know that they can be strong in the real way, and they’re about to prove it.

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



The streak of Love ‘em episodes holds strong. What seems to be a pure set-up episode is blown up by its shocker of an ending, and while it may lead to yet another cliffhanger, there’s a sense of completion as Lars goes from cowering mess to genuine hero.

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(Despite the header image looking very Sugary, there’s no official promo art; that lovely picture is actually from the wonderful ferryperson.)