“This might be serious.”

Those of y’all that check out my episode rankings at the end of every post know that my favorite “normal” episode of Steven Universe (so not Steven and the Stevens or Hit the Diamond, which are in their own category of perfect character studies) isn’t Lion 3 or Alone Together or Jailbreak or The Answer or Mr. Greg or Mindful Education. And, spoiler alert, it won’t be Jungle Moon or A Single Pale Rose or Reunited or Change Your Mind. It’s Mirror Gem.

So it’s not a shocker that I’m drawn to another episode that’s the beginning of a two-parter closing out the first half of a fifty-odd episode chunk, which starts out goofy but grows increasingly ominous and ends in a confrontation with a new blue Gem. In terms of tone, Are You My Dad? is an incredible exercise in tension, albeit one that benefits from two prior episodes’ cliffhangers in a way Mirror Gem manages without (but to be fair, Mirror Gem arrives when we still don’t know there are other Gems, which gives its mystery a major advantage).

The silly beginning here is strengthened by the return of all three original Crystal Gems, who haven’t been in a room together since Rocknaldo. They’re increasingly out of focus as we get into more Steven-centric storytelling, and I’ve heard this lobbed as a criticism of latter-day Steven Universe; while I agree that these characters are terrific and am always down to see more of them, I can appreciate that their big moment is Act II (Seasons 2/3), and Steven’s is Act III (Seasons 4/5). If Act I is about creating Steven’s universe, and Act II is about developing Steven’s family, it’s because Act III, which the other two have been building towards this whole time, is about Steven.



Episodes like Storm in the Room and Lion 4 fundamentally don’t work with the Crystal Gems around, and our last two episodes place Steven among Beach City citizens to prime us for a finale about Beach City paying for Steven’s past. So I get why we haven’t seen the trio as a whole for a while. But I sure am glad to see them again.

Amethyst’s offer of beans and suggestion to barter them for donuts is great, but come on, nothing beats Garnet and Pearl’s sand castle. I love glimpses into the Crystal Gems’ leisure time independent of Steven (he’s around, but clearly wasn’t involved with the construction): because the Gems are so often characterized in relation to Steven and/or in big personal ways, it’s a pleasant change of pace to just see them reading the paper in Watermelon Steven or assembling furniture in Shirt Club. Doug Out and The Good Lars are celebrations of the mundane tainted by the supernatural in their last moments, so it’s perfect to ease us into this new story with more slice-of-life lazing.

Still, this beach day is a backdrop for Steven wondering where his mail is (in the first of many callbacks, we get his Mr. Postman song from all the way back in Cheeseburger Backpack). On its own this might not be a big deal, but we know that Onion and Sadie were being stalked by new Gems and that Lars didn’t show up at the potluck (which, for now, we can lump in with other disappearances), so even though Steven doesn’t know anything sinister is afoot, Jamie’s absence sets off warning bells for us.

The scenes that follow build dread with masterful efficiency. First we get an uncharacteristically worried Sour Cream, which stands out even more than normal because we just saw him behaving as usual in The Good Lars. His concern is tempered by fun visuals: our MISSING poster is a repurposed WANTED poster, and we get a neat flashback aesthetic as Onion’s haunts are seen as if through an old-school View-Master (calling back to Onion Gang, Arcade Mania, and Onion Friend). While the audience knows new Gems are to blame, Steven is able to write this off as another weird Onion thing, and is more disappointed than concerned when he hears the Big Donut is closed.

Even now, Steven thinks things are probably fine, assuming Lars and Sadie are blowing off work to watch scary movies (calling back to Horror Club and The New Lars). It’s here where we’re introduced to the most clever element of this first act: Barb Miller. She’s connected to Sadie, so she can reveal that her daughter never came home after the potluck, but is also connected to Jamie, who she sent out that morning with Steven’s package. And she’s overprotective enough that she doesn’t make rationalizations like Sour Cream and Steven did for Onion (although she does reference Island Adventure, finally acknowledging how weird it is that three kids went missing for days and nobody seemed to care). In one fell stroke, Steven realizes that this is an alarming pattern, and starts looking for answers at last.

But he still hasn’t caught up to us. Sure, he knows his friends are missing, but he hasn’t seen the looming shadows from the end of Doug Out and The Good Lars, so when he comes across Aquamarine he has no reason to suspect her of kidnapping. A lesser show might build suspense making its characters too thick to put obvious hints together, but Steven Universe makes it clear that none of these threads are obvious to Steven. A more cynical version of the character might deduce earlier that this new Gem is bad news, but despite everything he’s been through in Season 4 he’s still empathetic to his core. After all, the pivotal event of this season was his own dad’s disappearance, so he’s primed to help a kid in a similar situation.

But finally, after knowing more than Steven from the beginning of the episode, Aquamarine asks the titular question and brings us back into the unknown with him. “Are you my dad?” is a brilliantly weird question: of course it’s odd for anyone to ask this of Steven when the answer is so self-evident, but it’s even odder for a Gem to do so. As Steven later tells Connie when she suggests the stranger might be a hybrid, this is a full Gem, and Gems don’t have dads.



Steven’s council of Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Connie shows that his instinct isn’t to go it alone, lending weight to his solo sacrifice at the end of this two-parter. But for now, it offers a moment of respite by reveling in the artistic differences of these characters; on the one hand, it makes little sense for Steven to not just draw Aquamarine himself, considering he’s the one who saw her and we know he likes drawing from Shirt Club and Open Book and Barn Mates, but on the other hand, this scene is a delight. Connie draws a manga-influenced figure using an amateur ball and plane method, Amethyst goes abstract, Pearl undersells her dramatic flourish, and Garnet just draws herself; I actually think Pearl’s is closest, but we go with Connie’s and set off.

This is the second time since Lion 4 where we’ve explored the potential for other half-humans like Steven, and in my first viewing of Are You My Dad I saw it as foreshadowing for fellow hybrid. The trend never really continued, and while it seems like a red herring in retrospect, the close proximity of two stories about Steven maybe not being alone shows just how alone he really is. There’s nobody else like Steven, and while this makes him special, it adds to his burden as a bridge between worlds, a burden that’s partially thrust upon him and partially created by his own sense of outsized responsibility.

Connie lightens the mood as they search by inventing exciting new scenarios to explain this new Gem, contrasting her further with Pearl. Connie’s art is cutesy while Pearl’s is dramatic, and where Connie sees hope for a new friend, Pearl is the only member of the team who advocates preparing for a fight. We don’t go very far down the “optimism is wrong and cynicism is right” road, because that isn’t at all what this show is about, but I love that youthful innocence from both Steven and Connie isn’t championed as an absolute positive in this story.

The light mood of two friends hoping for the best leads to Steven making a game of looking through Onion’s woods, and his facetious search of an empty log ends up getting him trapped. Again, this show isn’t here to build suspense by dumbing down the characters: Steven needs to be out of commission for Connie’s kidnapping to work the way it does, but getting stuck comes from realistic playing around rather than stupidity or ineptitude. And it continues the thread of others getting punished for Steven’s perceived mistakes, which of course adds to his guilt complex (and is furthered by Connie getting kidnapped because Steven shouted her name). These are small moments of getting us from Point A to Point B, but it’s so important that this crew pays attention to such details for the story and themes to flow smoothly.

Aquamarine’s questioning becomes even more confusing when she corrects Connie, saying she’s not looking for “your dad” but “my dad.” Connie’s condescending Tarzan speak is a bit out of character, but it at least makes sense that she wants to simplify her language for someone who doesn’t seem to understand the meanings of words. Aquamarine’s hidden nastiness emerges, with a wicked snicker at Connie’s “Me Connie” routine before she calls for Topaz.

While I prefer Mirror Gem to Are You My Dad? in most regards, the reveal of Topaz takes the cake in the horror department. She’s announced by thundering footsteps that clear birds from the surrounding trees, and emerges first as a shadow before we see our missing friends trapped inside her body. None of the captives’ mouths are free except Onion’s, and he’s nonverbal, so their struggles are joined by muffled and incoherent screams while their captor lurks in silence. The soundtrack lurches into unnerving strings as Connie panics at the sight, substitutes more typical digital music as a moment as Topaz splits up, and returns to even tenser strings as Connie is viscerally absorbed into the giant Gem. As with the Ruby Squad’s giant fusion, it’s a brutally practical application of something the Crystal Gems have made beautiful, and Steven is as helpless as Connie to stop it.

A key element of Steven’s martyr complex is that his sense of ownership over everything bad that happens around him is unwarranted, and this sequence is a perfect example. Yes, he’s stuck in a log when Connie is taken, allowing him to blame himself for the kidnapping, but once he’s free he doesn’t stand a chance against Aquamarine’s magic wand. In the best-case scenario, where he and Connie manage to fuse and fight off Topaz, Stevonnie would still lose: as we see in I Am My Mom, even four Crystal Gems working together are beaten with ease by the wand’s ridiculous power. If anything, getting stuck in a log was the only reason Steven was able to regroup and fight back later in the first place. But in the moment, it seems like he made an avoidable mistake that cost Connie her freedom, which is certainly on his mind when he makes his sacrifice.

Aquamarine follows the Holly Blue Agate mold of brief but memorable villains, and while both are petty monsters, Holly Blue Agate’s Professor Umbridge has nothing on Aquamarine’s Eric Cartman. It’s one thing to let middle management power go to your head, but Aquamarine is cruel for the simple joy of being cruel, an attitude captured magnificently by Della Saba’s refined British accent. She taunts Topaz as readily as her enemies, and unlike the fiercely loyal Homeworld villains we’ve seen before, she sees her duty as a waste of time that she begrudgingly fulfills because she’s the best. Like Kevin, this is a troll who’s just mean to her core, but she unfortunately has a lot more power than your everyday toxic douche.

As is standard for two-parters by now, we end with a cliffhanger, this time evoking Steven’s Dream (another first-parter that ends with a new blue Gem). A loved one has been taken, Steven blames himself because he put this person in harm’s way and couldn’t stop it, so now it’s time for a rescue mission. An unprecedented streak of consecutive serialized episodes already began with Doug Out, but now we get a proper two-parter, then a four-parter, then a six-parter, then another two-parter all in a row. It’s a special time in the series, highlighted by Earth plots and Homeworld plots colliding in ways that backdrop Steven’s role as a child of two worlds, and Are You My Dad excellently escalates the plot.





In closing, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is the final episode from the amazing Raven Molisee. Other veterans like Joe Johnston and Kat Morris ended their roles as lead-credit writer/storyboarders to fulfill other roles for the show, but this is it for Molisee’s tenure as an active member of the Crewniverse. Her work speaks for itself: she helped introduce Lapis in Mirror Gem, Peridot in Warp Tour, Jasper in The Return, Yellow Diamond in Message Received, and now Aquamarine and Topaz in Are You My Dad?. She helped bring to life the comedy of Kindergarten Kid and The New Crystal Gems, the tragedy of Rose’s Scabbard and Monster Reunion, the horror of Frybo and Keeping It Together, the wonder of An Indirect Kiss, the catharsis of Earthlings, and so much more. We were lucky to have her, and I really hope she didn’t leave because she was abducted by aliens.

Future Vision!

Steven is down to watch a movie about an orphaned Gem whose parent figure left for Beach City and never came home. So were the fans, apparently.

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

The ages of Lars and Sadie were nebulous at first, but it’s more or less been established that they’re teens of sorts by now, which makes Barb’s declaration that Sadie’s an adult confusing in a way that I find surprisingly annoying. It’s really not a big deal, but it bothers me way more than your average nitpick.

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



It’s not unheard of for first-parters to make my greatest hits list: Mirror Gem is certainly one of them, and we’ve also got The Return and Steven’s Dream. But it’s hard to put an episode without a proper ending up with the best, and despite its wonderful tone, meeting Aquamarine lacks the conclusive impact of meeting Lapis, we don’t get a huge moment of Steven summoning his shield and protecting his team, and Aquamarine isn’t a Big Deal like Blue Diamond. I still love Are You My Dad a lot, but this is a hard list to crack and it does feel like half an episode when viewed alone.

Top Twenty-Five

Love ‘em



Like ‘em

Enh

No Thanks!

6. Horror Club

5. Fusion Cuisine

4. House Guest

3. Onion Gang

2. Sadie’s Song

1. Island Adventure

(It took some serious sleuthing, because the amazing Are You My Mother parody image is unsourced on Google Images and comes from a TeeSpring shirt that is no longer available, but I tracked down the artist as Zaccrim.)