If you could only know what we really are...

You've watched the internet explode in joy and tears every time Steven Universe comes on TV — but you're still not sure who Steven is, much less whether or not Universe is actually his last name. If you're the uninitiate, let us walk you through the ins and outs (with as few spoilers as possible) of Cartoon Network's biggest hit in years.

This is the TOC title What is Steven Universe?

Steven Universe is an all-ages animated series that airs intermittently on Cartoon Network. Episodes run at about 10 minutes long, and — depending on timeslot — are either aired alone or in half-hour blocks of two. It comes from the mind of animator Rebecca Sugar, making it the first Cartoon Network original series created by a woman. Rebecca Sugar via Getty/Theo Wargo Sugar is one of a busy generation of animators to have come out of Cartoon Network's epic Adventure Time series and gone on to craft their own successful, original projects — she shares that "origin story" with folks like Natasha Allegri (Bee & PuppyCat) and Patrick McHale (Over the Garden Wall). While on Adventure Time, Sugar took storyboarding duties — which, in Adventure Time production lingo, is synonymous with "writing duties" — on episodes like "It Came From the Nightosphere" and "Simon & Marcy," both of which were nominated for an Emmy. "Nightosphere" was actually her first storyboarding work on the series. But she's probably best known to Adventure Time fans as the person behind some of the show's most enduring music, including "Fry Song," "I'm Just Your Problem," "Nuts/Remember You," and, of course, "Bacon Pancakes." And Sugar's keen musical talents are in full force in Steven Universe, even in the voice cast. British singer/songwriter Estelle plays a lead role in Steven Universe as the Crystal Gem known as Garnet, and the show has boasted cameos from the likes of Aimee Mann, Patti LuPone and Nicki Minaj. (Other names of note who play recurring roles in the series include Joel Hodgson as Mayor Dewey, Sinbad as Mr. Smiley, Brian Posehn as Sour Cream and Tom Scharpling as Greg Universe.) But Steven Universe's cast has another thing that sets it apart from many kids' cartoons: It's overwhelmingly composed of actors of color. That's a rare choice for a children's show that is not primarily about racial themes — not to mention a show in which a large portion of the cast come in literally every color in the spectrum. And in animation, a medium where the actor's appearance can always be easily divorced from their character's, it's clearly a deliberate choice, too. This is the TOC title Who is Steven Universe about?

Steven Universe is what happens when a generation who grew up watching Sailor Moon and other Magical Girl anime alongside standard Western Saturday morning fare grows up and becomes animators. The show follows the adventures of a group of warriors known as the Crystal Gems as they fight to protect life on Earth from monsters and other threats. Our superheroic roster consists of Garnet the inscrutably cool team leader; Pearl, the voice of reason; Amethyst, the hothead; and our main character, the titular Steven Universe (yes, it is his last name), the bumbling kid sidekick and the only boy on the team.

It also follows the Crystal Gems' interactions with the citizens of their hometown, Beach City: Steven's failure to launch father Greg Universe; his sheltered, overachieving best friend (and maybe more, someday) Connie Maheswaran; Lars and Sadie, the employees at the local doughnut shop; and many more. Nothing is simply what it seems at first glance in Steven Universe Now, these are all simplistic descriptions of these characters — but they're also how the Crystal Gems, et al. appear upon first watch: as stock tropes from team action cartoons. Steven Universe is, in good part, about Steven growing up, and it's not afraid to start the series while he's still very much an excited, inexperienced kid. But, since the beginning of the series, we've explored Steven's complicated relationship with his mother, the founder and former leader of the Crystal Gems, who "gave up her physical form to bring [Steven] into the world" (a line of dialogue that's casually tossed off in the second episode without so much as giving the viewer a chance to gasp). We've also watched him grow into his Crystal Gem powers, turning from the trainee team member who only gets to go on the easy missions to a fully fledged Crystal Gem. And we've watched him, the only known human/gem hybrid, learn how best to embody his role as the link between two cultures. We know the understandable reasons why Amethyst craves attention and approval, and acts out when she can't get it. We know that Pearl's worrying and need for order is an important part of what keeps the Crystal Gems together. We know that Garnet ... well, Garnet's still cool. We just know that she's even cooler than we originally thought. Nothing is simply what it seems at first glance in Steven Universe. Even episodes that start out with stock plots never finish that way, and the show subscribes heavily to the Adventure Time/Gravity Falls rising scale of world building and emotional complexity. But where Adventure Time does its explosive plot events whenever it feels like, Steven Universe is clearly playing by plan. It is possible to look back at the series' second episode, "Laser Light Cannon," and find foreshadowing for events that took two seasons to become fully apparent to viewers. What are those events? Westernized Magical Girl adventures are, after all, not everybody's cup of tea, nor does the phrase properly indicate the show's surprising depth, or even the majority of its subject matter. So if you're willing to hear some spoilers in order to find out whether you'd really be interested in the show, keep reading. If not, click here to scroll past the spoilers to where we talk about Steven Universe's general themes.

Steven refers to himself as "half magic" on his mother's side, but the series is actually rooted heavily in science fiction — in Steven Universe, sufficiently advanced technology really is indistinguishable from magic. The Crystal Gems are actually thousands-of-years-old rebels from an alien empire who turned from their conquering ways when their leader, Rose Quartz (Steven's mother, or, in some senses, his previous form) realized that the native life on Earth had inherent value greater than the planet's mineral core. It is implied that the war between the Crystal Gems and Homeworld took place during human prehistory or possibly even earlier, and that it significantly altered Earth's geography from the continental shapes we are familiar with.

While Gems always present in a way that humans would recognize as female and use female pronouns, they do not have sex or sexes. Gems aren't even strictly corporeal: their humanoid forms are actually projections emanating from the gem that forms the core of their physical being — giving them powerful regenerative and shapeshifting abilities. Most important of these is their ability to form Fusions, composite beings made up of two or more Gems — and thus proportionately larger. Every well-matched Fusion, we learn, is a concrete being with her own personality, identity and desires, who exists only when her component gems fuse. Amethyst and Pearl's fusion, Opal In fact, in the climax of season one, Steven Universe reveals that Garnet is a fusion of two smaller Gems, Ruby and Sapphire, who care for each other so much that they choose to live as one being. Garnet is the physical embodiment of their relationship. To get metaphorical, it's also the moment that the show rips down the curtain labeled "Subtext" to reveal a mural of the word "TEXT" in large block print: Gems identify as female. Gems love. Gems have same-gender relationships. The leader of the Crystal Gems is literally a large, super strong lesbian made up of two smaller lesbians. And Steven Universe presents this idea with a triumphant musical number — the series' first solo song for Estelle, Garnet's voice actress — that is also a fight scene and an escape sequence that takes place on a crashing alien ship. Ruby and Sapphire forming Garnet The existence of Ruby and Sapphire isn't the episode's only reveal at the close of season one: The centuries of relative peace that the Crystal Gems have spent fighting the dregs of a Gem army, mutated into unrecognizable monsters, are over. Homeworld has had centuries to develop technologically since they last visited Earth — the Diamond Authority is coming to finish what it started. And that's without addressing the human characters in Beach City, who are just as important to the development of the show's characters as its plot and setting reveals. But that's enough about the show's story. What's just as important in understanding what makes Steven Universe a hit is its themes. This is the TOC title What is Steven Universe about?

Rebecca Sugar has said that her biggest inspiration for Steven Universe is her own childhood spent playing video games, watching cartoons and hanging out with her own brother, Steven (who, incidentally, designs backgrounds for the show). Above all, the Gems are a supportive and loving family, and it's easy to see the sibling archetypes in its main cast: Garnet as the ineffably cool older sibling, Pearl as the older child trying to mother the younger before they've really developed the maturity to do it, and Amethyst as the bigger kid who forgets their brother can't play as rough as they do.