“But why would a fish ever bite a hook?”

Something I don’t believe I’ve mentioned here before is that both of my parents are ministers. I myself am not religious (not because of trauma or anything, my folks are great), but I was raised in the Presbyterian Church by a mom and dad who often saw things through a “hey, that could be in a sermon!” lens, and that tends to rub off on a kid. Not to oversell the value of these posts, but it’s not lost on me that I ended up writing something to share with people every Sunday. I can think of worse people to emulate.

So it’s hard for someone like me not to notice that Gems take crucial steps towards becoming Crystal Gems through some pretty baptismal circumstances. I’m not saying the symbolism is intentional, because neither aquatic rituals nor the show’s crew are uniquely Christian—Rebecca Sugar, for instance, comes from a Jewish background—but we’ve yet to see a Gem fall in love with Earth without being reborn through water. Peridot first bonds with Steven in the rain. Ruby and Sapphire land on solid ground together in the rain. Pink Diamond and Pearl first realize they need to rebel as a storm brews.

And then there’s Lapis Lazuli.

Lapis literally entered the series because Steven broke a mirror, so it’s no wonder she’s misfortune personified. Bad things happen to Lapis. Bad things happen because of Lapis. And sure enough, she might control the same waters that herald rebirth for other Gems, but she’s also consumed by them. Her old life can’t get washed away because she’s still submerged. So an episode about Steven trying to reconnect her with water is bound to be a bit more complex than a joyous scene in the rain.

Alone at Sea takes us to a dark place for Steven Universe, even compared to its preceding episode, the harrowing Monster Reunion. Plenty of bad things have happened to our characters, but for the first time since the Week of Sardonyx we must confront that one of our characters has herself intentionally done a bad thing. Not day-to-day meanness or misguided acts of loyalty to Homeworld, but something truly awful. Almost as if we’re priming for some big reveal about a core character’s moral ambiguity at the end of the season.

This isn’t to say that Lapis, who also entered the series by stealing the ocean and battling the Crystal Gems, is a stranger to doing bad things. But there’s a gulf of difference between seeing magic antagonist stuff and the learning that she was abusive to her ex. Not many kids are gonna cause marine catastrophes, but way too many kids are gonna have to deal with abusive relationships one day, so Alone at Sea can’t help but feel more raw.

The first moments of the episode show that Lapis is more than her suffering; she’s capable of having genuine fun, especially with Steven. She hints at her deeper issues by insisting she doesn’t deserve to be treated nicely, but she’s just as quick to snort with laughter. And even after boarding the rechristened Li’l Lappy, she’s willing to give happiness a shot. While she’s uncomfortable about dipping her toe in the water, she still finds moments of joy (particularly when it comes to horns). But more often than not, this positive outlook is hindered by her crewmates.

Greg, bless him, hurts more than he helps. He introduces himself as the guy whose leg Lapis broke, his discomfort around her water powers stifles her floundering self-confidence, and he bores her to death with regular fishing. Likewise, while Steven means well, he’s overbearing in his attempts to make Lapis happy. As awkward as it is, I’m glad the show acknowledges how easy it can be to mess up when trying to cheer up a friend in the dumps. Despite Steven’s apology about pushing too hard, we don’t get an explicit lesson about paying attention to how your friends are feeling instead of steamrolling them with fun. This isn’t a criticism: it’s okay to not get explicit lessons all the time, and it’s a nice change of pace from the show’s recent string of episodes that outright tell us the moral, even though these morals are sound.

Everything comes to a head when the rudder is thrown off, veering Li’l Lappy and her namesake off course. Steven gives that apology, but Lapis reiterates that she doesn’t deserve his help, and this time we learn why: as brutal and bullying as Jasper is, in some twisted sense Lapis learned to love their toxic relationship, using it to take all her grief and rage out on Jasper. We saw a hint of her aggression in Chille Tid, but in Jennifer Paz’s best delivery of the episode, Lapis reveals that she misses Malachite. And right on cue, the opportunity to fuse with Jasper again reveals itself.

Jasper’s last lines that weren’t just shouting “YOU!” at Steven were all the way back in Jailbreak, but Kimberly Brooks is worth the wait. Her hungry correction that she was “looking for you” instead of the crew as a whole is perfect (the woman knows her way around second person pronouns), and she manages to become even scarier when she transitions from menacing to begging. All at once we see that Jasper is still monstrous, but has been changed by Lapis. Not in the way she’s saying when trying to convince Lapis to fuse again—there’s little indication that Malachite would be any healthier if she came back—but in the way this massive warrior is on her knees pleading to essentially be made a prisoner again.

From her debut, Lapis has been the most powerful being on Earth by a country mile thanks to her mastery of its most abundant resource. She effortlessly bested the Crystal Gems in Ocean Gem, and had the mental fortitude to overcome Jasper’s iron will and wrest control of Malachite. But only now, in Jasper’s pleas, does a character finally acknowledge Lapis’s power. It speaks volumes to their relationship, because it’s not just about control and manipulation: at some level, beneath all the toxicity, Jasper understands Lapis in a way others don’t. It’s not enough to make them a functional couple, but it shows that there’s an uncomfortable level of nuance even in relationships that are obviously bad. It would be much easier to write either Jasper or Lapis off as totally rotten, but Malachite wouldn’t work without a hint, however small, of real affection.

Malachite made both Jasper and Lapis feel stronger, but they weren’t strong in the real way: they were suffering, and instead of trying to fix this problem, they each learned to like the suffering. And it might be easy to place more blame on Jasper than Lapis, because even here we see how manipulative and violent she can be, but Alone at Sea doesn’t shy away from Lapis’s complicity even when presenting her in a more heroic light. Steven doesn’t call her out on her behavior, but he doesn’t exactly correct her when she reveals how terrible she’s been.



Back in It Could’ve Been Great and Message Received, we got a taste of uncertainty in terms of Peridot’s future. Sure, a promo spoiled that she was staying with the Crystal Gems, but otherwise there was no telling whether she was a temporary addition. Lapis has the same quality, but amplified to a thrilling degree due to her rockier stance with the Crystal Gems. When I first watched Alone at Sea, I legitimately didn’t know what would happen next. Lapis was such a new and tenuous ally and had so much baggage with Jasper that it wouldn’t have shocked me if she had gone back to being Malachite, especially considering how underused Malachite ended up being. It gives the episode way higher stakes than, say, the Week of Sardonyx, where despite the turmoil you could pretty much guarantee that the Crystal Gems would come out of it okay. Lapis is fundamentally not okay, so anything could happen.

And that actual chance of returning to Jasper makes Lapis’s rejection so much more triumphant. She seems to sincerely consider Jasper’s offer, even when she sounds sickened by the prospect, but when given a true choice she’s able to see past her longing for that life. Malachite began with Jasper’s forceful “Just say yes,” and she can’t come back if Lapis says no. It might be alluring, but unlike Jasper, Lapis refuses to take the bait.

I haven’t gushed about Aivi and Surasshu for a while, have I? I’ll be honest, a big part of that is that with the release of Steven Universe’s first soundtrack, the composers stopped releasing background tracks on the internet, and only several years later have these tracks finally popped up again. Access to their music got scarcer and scarcer, but I’m so glad that before it dried up, we got the instrumentation of this final sequence, because it’s really something.



As the clouds gather and she talks about her time fused with Jasper, we hear the buildup of Lapis’s darker theme, and the moment she reveals that she misses being Malachite, the fusion’s ominous two-note motif clangs just once. The track is soon overtaken by Jasper’s synth drum war march, with only hints of Lapis’s celesta leaking in (just like in The Return), but as Jasper begs to fuse again we get the very first quiet version Malachite’s motif (at 1:49, it’s so easy to miss); the fusion’s theme is no longer a force of nature, but a desperate plea.

A piano rendition of Lapis’s theme drowns out Jasper as she considers her options. Strings build to the same fever pitch that we got when Lapis first agreed to dance, but they fade to a quiet conclusion as she refuses to go back to Malachite. Jasper’s drums make one last appearance as she lashes out at Steven, but Lapis’s counterattack is as musically calm as her rejection. Lapis could have gotten loud, dramatic variants of her theme for her one-two punch defending herself and then Steven, and it would have sounded awesome, but instead both big moments show that she’s shunning loudness for peace. Tying all these musical themes together is impressive enough, but that restraint ties the whole scene together.

Jasper is about to dominate the final arc of the season in a story that has nothing to do with Lapis, but everything to do with Lapis. It’s safe to say Jasper doesn’t handle their breakup well, and her collection of Corrupted Gems is less a matter of a soldier raising an army and more a jilted lover looking for acceptance after being abandoned for what’s likely the first time in her very long life. This is the first in a string of blows that knock Jasper down more than her fight with Garnet ever did: it’s one thing to lose, but it’s another to be rejected, and until Jasper learns to make a change, rejection is the only future she’s got.



Lapis goes right back to being an angsty teen after this, despite getting more comfortable around Peridot. But Alone at Sea makes me appreciate her eventual abandonment of Earth when the going gets tough again, because while it’s not the right thing to do, it makes sense that a character with massive unresolved trauma would follow the most defensive instincts possible to avoid further pain. I’m not huge on the show just saying Lapis did something awful and not following it up with much soul-searching, but she does plenty of work outside of Jasper and perhaps it’s for the best that she focused on less toxic parts of her life for self-improvement.



The big bummer of Lapis and Jasper’s story is that it never really resolves: even when Jasper halfway reforms, she and Lapis will never share a screen again, let alone have a conversation. I’m not saying I want a reconciliation, but apology is good for the soul, so I hope that someday Little Homeworld sees a moment where Lapis says she’s sorry for her part in Malachite’s agony, even if Jasper was worse.



Still, seeing Lapis refuse to re-fuse still works as a resolution to the episode, if not the arc. And she does work on her issues in other ways, even if Jasper doesn’t. But even though this is their last interaction in the series, admitting your mistakes and choosing not to repeat them is itself a noble step.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?



She’s not even in the episode, but Pearl and her swim cap are the winner of this entry. Does nobody else care about their hair?



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



This is our second excellent feel-bad episode in a row. We may not ever get an acknowledgement about the abusive nature of Lars and Sadie’s relationship in Island Adventure, but at least we have this episode addressing the issue.

(Bear in mind I’m not champing at the bit for more abusive relationships in children’s media, but if you’re going to have them, I just think it’s irresponsible not to use them as an educational tool, is all.)

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5. Horror Club

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