“But now, there’s nothing we can do.”

My favorite song from Steven Universe is Change Your Mind. It only needs about three sentences to accomplish this. It’s hard for me to pick favorites in many situations, but I at least am sure that Orbit is my favorite brand of chewing gum, Samus Aran is my favorite video game character, Steven and the Stevens is my favorite Steven Universe episode, and Change Your Mind is my favorite Steven Universe song.

I bring this up because I think it’s important that y’all know What’s the Use of Feeling (Blue) isn’t my favorite song in the original series, because I think that it is, from a critical standpoint, the best. In the same way I consider Here Comes a Thought the most technically flawed song, What’s the Use of Feeling (Blue) is the most technically proficient. I like it just fine, but even more than that, I respect it. This is an exceptionally well-made song.

The contrast with Here Comes a Thought goes beyond the technical level; What’s the Use of Feeling (Blue) acts as a sort of dark counterpart. Both are songs about somebody teaching a lesson on how to deal with negative emotions, the difference being that the former is a dialogue coached by a Gem who’s made of love and the latter is a lecture dominated by a Gem who’s made of wrath.



Garnet’s solution to emotional turmoil is one of harmony, demonstrated not just by the lyrics but the structure: she begins her song with a mantra, and the song ends with Stevonnie echoing the mantra, having learned the lesson. Yellow’s solution to emotional turmoil is one of oppression, and it’s expressed through a warped reversal of this structure: she begins by ordering underlings to drown out Blue’s sadness with a wordless tune, and after succumbing to similar sadness she ends the song by humming the same tune to drown herself out. The hero talks things out and helps her friend, an the villain shouts until she demonstrates how harmful the repression she’s advocating truly is. Every kid on the planet should watch this show.

I’ve always been a sucker for villain songs, and it’s amazing that it took this long to get a proper one (although it isn’t sung by a villain, I’d argue Do It For Her’s cheerful foray into indoctrinating a child soldier was sort of our first villain song). And by some miracle of casting, the villain here happens to be voiced by the legendary Patti LuPone, who effortlessly weaves through Yellow Diamond’s default disdain, her growing contentment at the thought of crushing her enemies, her burst of grief as her defenses crack, and her determination to overcome that grief by force. The shift in tone in “Yes, of course we still love her, and we’re always thinking of her” from patronizing in its first utterance to mourning in its second is incredible. I’m sure other people could play Yellow Diamond, but I can’t fathom anyone doing it better.

But it’s not just the structure or the LuPone factor. I’m aware that this is a sentiment that’s often exaggerated when it comes to reviewing media, but I literally always get chills at the opening melody. The haunting Diamond harmonette rolls out the red carpet while Deedee Magno Hall manages to harmonize with herself while playing two characters that both sound different from her natural voice in different ways. Just hearing the Diamond instrumentation morph into a song is terrific, but the melody itself is a deceptively somber variant on the theme. The standard Diamond motif uses four notes, but this version begins with three notes and a pause, then repeats those three notes and a pause, then uses all four just once before remembering that there are only three.

And I haven’t even talked about the lyrics that accompany the brutal electronic score and wailing pearls. I usually find parentheses in song titles useless (unlike parentheses in sentences, cough), but What’s the Use in Feeling (Blue) makes the punctuation matter by giving every use of the phrase a double meaning. It’s not rocket science that “Blue” is a character and “blue” is an emotion, but every time the lyric is sung, the listener can interpret what Yellow actually means. Is she saying feeling sad is useless, or is she telling Blue that all feelings are useless? And is she definitively saying the latter at the end, or is she so overcome that she just can’t finish the line?

Finally: “An agate terrifies, a lapis terraforms” is the most elegant internal rhyme in the series. Damn that’s a pleasant lyric to listen to. Doesn’t even skimp out by using words that are etymologically related, those are two completely different verbs that sound beautiful together and explain why Holly Blue Agate is a control freak and why Lapis Lazuli can control water. Just awesome.

Rebecca Sugar, Aivi Tran, Steven “Surasshu” Velema, Jeff Ball, Deedee Magno Hall, and Patti LuPone should be really proud of themselves. It’s not my favorite song in the original series, but yeah, I do think it’s the best.

Colin Howard and Joe Johnston should also be proud, because they boarded the episode itself alongside a credited Rebecca Sugar, and beyond What’s the Use of Feeling (Blue), this is a great one.

That Will Be All has a wacky structure where the tiny first act has nothing to do with the longer second act, but then we sorta fuse plot points from both together into the conclusion. We begin right where The Zoo left off, and spend just enough time worried about these amethysts for Amethyst’s prank to work. We got a taste of Michaela Dietz voicing other amethysts, but this is her time to shine as she plays a room full of distinct and delightful Gems. Our Amethyst (Facet-5, Cut-8XM) speaks in a frantic rush that honestly makes it hard to discern what the hell she’s talking about, spouting off facets and cut numbers with glee, but the enthusiasm is what matters. She might not be the focus of the episode, but I love how earned the warm relationship with her purple sisters feels for this allegorical adoptee.

After a too-brief Kimberly Brooks cameo voicing two friendly jaspers from the Beta Kindergarten, Holly Blue Agate comes in even hotter than Gem Heist. It’s nuts that such an over-the-top villain’s antics can escalate further so quickly, but here she is, bullying with words and punches to get the quartzes in line. Holly is more of a plot point than a character, a necessary presence to keep the tension up and to give our heroes a concrete obstacle to defeat, but she embodies Homeworld bigotry so well that the functional nature of her character doesn’t feel nearly as contrived as it should.

Pink Diamond’s chamber is my favorite setting in the station, including the Zoo. In an eerie mirror to the Temple back home, we get a monochrome room full of bubbled Gems, but this time they’re all rose quartzes. Say what you will about the ethics of the Crystal Gems bubbling their opponents, but it’s certainly intended for a better purpose than vengeance against an entire class of Gems for the actions of one rogue. Steven’s ominous tears only add to the mood: inherently sad, but with a bigger dose of tension than melancholy.

It gets even worse when you realize that rogue wasn’t even a real rose quartz, meaning all those Gems have been bubbled for thousands of years based on a lie. Like the Zoomans, this is the fallout of Pink Diamond not thinking her regicide gambit through; either she didn’t consider the consequences of her actions, or she just didn’t care (or, considering the color of the bubbles, she did the bubbling herself as a means of maintaining her cover). Regardless of the severity, Steven’s mom had trouble placing true compassion for others over herself. She tried, which is admirable for a being that didn’t come naturally to empathy, but let’s not pretend this was a selfless hero whose uglier actions can be fully chalked up to well-meaning mistakes. She had plenty of time to help the rose quartzes and Spinel before faking her death, and regardless of intent, she didn’t.

I’ve already talked plenty about the song that follows, but the conversation beforehand and the story the song tells are a fantastic introduction to the relationship between Yellow and Blue. Both continue to live up to their first impressions, with a pragmatic but angry Yellow and a bereft Blue. But we don’t just get Yellow’s breakdown at the end of the song: Blue, after two long scenes of grieving, has a flash of that old tyrant energy when approached by her inferiors.

Sapphire smooths things over with Ruby’s support, and it’s perfect that our seer is terrible at improvising and needs a boost from her spontaneous partner. Lisa Hannigan is venomous when Holly Blue first introduces her old underling, and like Yellow with Peridot, she shows no recognition of whom specifically she’s speaking to. And the best part is, as soon as Sapphire lies her way out of trouble, Blue flips right back to somber mode as if nothing happened. It’s one thing to hear Garnet’s hatred and read the subtext of Blue’s superiority complex, but it’s another to be shown clearly that sadness isn’t the only thing this Diamond brings to the table.

It’s only fair that if Amethyst and Garnet get little victories then Pearl deserves one as well, and hers is the most satisfying in the context of the episode on its own. One of the few things both Diamonds have in common here is a moment of commanding a pearl: Blue has Blue Pearl shut the door, and Yellow has Yellow Pearl sing. Both say the word “pearl” not as a name so much as a rank, as does Holly Blue Agate with our own Pearl, and this dehumanizing (degemizing?) treatment includes being clapped away like a trained dog.

So while it’s awesome to see Amethyst outclass a fellow whip user in front of her sisters, and it’s hilarious to see Garnet summon her huge gauntlet only to give a love tap with her regular fist, Pearl’s verbal takedown of Holly Blue Agate is the sweetest victory of all. Holly gets one last speech praising the Diamonds beforehand, and we get a repeat of Back to the Moon’s gag of a nearly complete con ruined at the last minute, but Pearl’s schooling is the punchline to Holly’s entire character; I’m not sure it quite deserves to have the entire episode named for it, but it’s great to end on a “That will be all” and a clap.

This lighthearted fun is a nice way to wrap things up in theory, but what sells me most on this episode (besides the song) is that our happy ending is tainted by the knowledge of events to come.

Yes, the mission is a success, and all three lead Gems get their time in the sun, and the Famethyst gets a break from Holly Blue Agate’s iron fist, but the last conversation between Steven and Greg has serious ramifications for our hero’s journey. When the dust settles, Steven doesn’t just blame himself for everything, but specifically attacks his own curiosity. Greg does the right thing by telling Steven he has nothing to apologize for, but Steven’s new sentiment is that the answers he deserves no longer matter compared to finding his dad. Which, sure, Greg might matter more in the moment, but Steven still deserves to know the truth, and he’s convinced himself that he doesn’t.

A big part of Steven’s big picture character arc is learning to stand up for himself and that he deserves the same things he fights for on behalf of others. Just because something bad happened to Greg doesn’t mean he was wrong to look for answers when the rest of his family wouldn’t provide them, and this adventure reinforces several wrong lessons. That his happiness and well-being doesn’t matter compared to that of his loved ones. That because the truth might bring pain, it isn’t worth pursuing. That it’s okay to leave his friends behind in an emergency. Things may look tidily wrapped up for now, but sooner than later, the consequences of a mindset emboldened by these past few episodes will become more apparent.

The tension of this arc is amplified by how much Holly Blue Agate’s high tempo theme sounds like the unnerving instrumental music accompanying the credits in Steven Universe’s third act. I think it’s more of a Homeworld theme in general, given it also pops up during Steven’s capture in I Am My Mom and in Steven and Lars’s battle in the Homeworld Kindergarten to the same effect: as great as it is that our heroes are gaining momentum, the mood is clouded in the same tension that the Love Like You reprise has until we finally reach familiar ground again. Add the visual of both Diamonds’ arm-ships wreathed around Pink’s space station, and the joy of a successful rescue starts to feel even more like a half-victory.

As high as the stakes were in Greg’s kidnapping, Steven’s life is about to get even worse. It may have taken months for the next kidnapping arc to air in real life, we’re only seven actual episodes away from Aquamarine stealing the show(’s human cast). And between these Steven Bombs, we get fascinating stories of our hero’s angst coming to the surface (yes, including Rocknaldo). There’s a marked difference in Steven’s attitude before and after this odyssey to the stars and back, and while it might’ve been nice to have seen a bit more open reflection about his mother before now, we’re about to make up for lost time.

Future Vision!

The discussion between Blue and Yellow ends with a compromise and an ambiguous new plan to save more humans. So, given they think the world is ending, I guess that sort of makes Aquamarine a hero?



(Naw, she’s awful, more on her later.)

Reunited also relies on the Diamonds’ continued belief that the Cluster’s a-comin’. We’re reaching a point in the show where long-ago plot elements can start affecting the present in huge and surprising ways, and it feels terrific to see it all come together.

also relies on the Diamonds’ continued belief that the Cluster’s a-comin’. We’re reaching a point in the show where long-ago plot elements can start affecting the present in huge and surprising ways, and it feels terrific to see it all come together. The rose quartzes were a huge hanging thread after Reunited, so it’s lovely to see that they’ve gained their freedom in Steven Universe Future, lasting trauma be damned.

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



As wonderful as the song and mood may be, I still think Steven’s Dream is the best individual episode of this little arc (no song, but better mood). And considering it’s right there at 20, That Will Be All can’t make the top list. Still, it stands above the preceding three episodes in my book, which is what this blog essentially is (I’m well over 200,000 words at this point, imagine putting that energy into fiction).

Top Twenty



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6. Horror Club

5. Fusion Cuisine

4. House Guest

3. Onion Gang

2. Sadie’s Song

1. Island Adventure