“I’m afraid right now.”

And here, after almost a hundred and thirty episodes of waiting, do we finally see that Lars can make a change.

The Good Lars was a great start, with Lars opening up enough to suggest that he might take a risk and let the Cool Kids know something real about himself. But he never makes it to the party, and as we learn here, it wasn’t because he was abducted. I Am My Mom proves that those events didn’t transform Lars, as when the going gets tough his instinct is self-preservation over all else. But these two incidents in quick succession, combined with his capture and uncertain future, yank him kicking and screaming into the realm of sincerity.

But not at first. After Aquamarine starts the episode off with Steven, reminding us of the recent plot and her all-around awfulness, Lars is discovered just in time to prove that he’s frustrating as well. It’s a different shade, as Aquamarine is a bully at every opportunity while Lars lashes out as a reaction to feeling pathetic, but he has the chance to be an ally when Steven needs one the most, and it’s lousy that he chooses spite.

Don’t get me wrong, Aquamarine is worse for sure: there’s no reason to further ensnare her captives now that they’re on the ship, and the process is uncomfortable for the humans and Topaz, but she orders it anyway. She goes back on her word by refusing to return Lars, which is predictable given they’re already in space, but still displays her lack of honor. She’s not even good at telling jokes, unhelpfully explaining that her fake tear is her gem. And while Lars evolves over the course of the episode, the idea that she would do likewise is silly enough to fuel the episode’s best sight gag.

Still, I’ll give her this: considering how she revels in lording over Topaz, and considering Topaz not only disobeys her but attacks her, Aquamarine has a single quiet moment of empathy when she chooses to let bygones be bygones. It’s the lowest of bars, as she only does so after breaking Topaz’s will and on the condition that Topaz follow her commands, and saying that “we’ll never speak of this again” shows that she wants this toxic status quo to remain forever, but this is a character who takes glee in cruelty, so it’s fascinating that she doesn’t leap at the chance to punish Topaz further. It’s the tiniest speck of affection you could hope for, and it doesn’t come close to “redeeming” Aquamarine, but it’s there, showing that even this little monster has an ounce of depth.

While Lars might have similar jerk vibes, railing against Steven and refusing to even try and break free, it’s just his starting point. Stuck Together crystallizes the loop that has defined Lars up to this point: he’s mean, then he gets some sympathy, then he seems ready to change, then he’s mean again. But there’s a big difference this time, and it’s not just the setting: after putting up with it for the entire series, Steven is done with Lars’s nonsense.

When Lars blames Steven for the alien invasion, Steven doesn’t even apologize, instead saying that of course he’s the reason aliens invaded, but he did everything he could to help and Lars should’ve escaped better. This is huge, as it not only breaks with Steven’s usual patience for Lars’s behavior, but comes at a time when Steven is feeling so low that we might expect more than ever for him to wallow in his failure. We then get into miscommunication: first Steven calls Lars worthless, meaning well but feeding into Lars’s insecurities, then Steven does a shoddy job of explaining a shoddy plan (how the heck was Lars supposed to lasso anything on the other side of the room?). This is not his best self, but if he was thinking things through he probably wouldn’t be on a ship hurtling towards the Diamonds in the first place.

Between the stress of recent events and his frustration with Lars, Steven snaps in a way that’s reminiscent of, well, Lars: short-tempered and impulsive and frazzled and loud. Lars admits at last that he’s always been driven by fear, and that Steven’s enduring faith in him only makes the problem worse. In the same way Lars thinks baking is lame because he likes doing it and he’s lame, he takes it as a given that he’s a wuss, so hearing anyone say otherwise is annoying rather than encouraging. But by explaining it aloud, the flip of personalities begins to form: now Lars is pepping up an ornery Steven, and Steven completes the puzzle by admitting his own fear.

It’s not as simple as Lars becoming Steven and Steven becoming Lars, but both take major cues from the other. And when Lars goes further in his tentative enthusiasm, Steven cuts him off by revealing a brilliant new wrinkle in their relationship: because he’s an optimistic kid with parent figures who have always sugarcoated the bitterness of life, he appreciates the one person who’s willing to talk about how much things can suck. And in this new era of his life, where it’s become clear that the sugarcoating extends past white lies and into major secret territory, it’s more important than ever to have a friend who tells it like it is. There’s been an underlying notion in their entire relationship that Steven wants to help Lars out, but it’s so much more meaningful to hear that Steven hangs out with Lars because Lars is a crank.

This doesn’t mean Lars was perfect the way he was, or else his arc wouldn’t involve him changing. But there’s a huge difference between changing because it’s what makes other people comfortable and changing because it’s good for your soul, and this would be a very different story if Lars only grew to make Steven’s life better. Instead, it takes Steven showing Lars the value of his flaws for Lars to see enough value in himself to want to improve.

We wait just long enough on Topaz for her voice to matter most, threading the needle between emotional beat and punchline. Martha Higareda sells her change of heart in no time, showing the first instance of a same-Gem fusion having the deep relationship we’ve seen from cross-Gem fusions like Garnet; perhaps our ornery rubies are closer than we think when they form Big Ole Ruby, but we haven’t seen any evidence of it.

In lesser hands it might be hackneyed for the stoic character to reveal a soft heart, because the gentle giant is a bog-standard “don’t judge a book by its cover” trope. But this is our fifth episode in a row featuring Topaz as a wordless brute, first as a silhouette and then contrasted with a talkative brat of a partner. Are You My Dad in takes her into monster movie territory, complete with bloodcurdling music and tree-clearing stomps when she reveals her body full of writhing captives, and squeezing Jamie’s head in I Am My Mom is the most visceral threat we’ve seen a human face on the show. This isn’t just some big galoot opening up, it’s a Terminator showing she was a real girl all along.

A big reason why this works is that we don’t go full cloying, instead tempering the reveal with humor that’s both inherent (we don’t expect Topaz to get this emotional) and specific (using Steven’s pants to wipe the tears away). Instead of swinging for a Big Moment that exposes Topaz’s turmoil in a dramatic fashion, the mood is quiet and sweet. Topaz isn’t just a softy, she’s sort of a dork, and that extra bit of characterization for someone we’ll never see again in the original series is what makes Steven Universe so great. Effort always matters!

After seeing Steven help not one but two people begin to change, we see that he’s still stuck in his own rut of martyrdom: he plans to send Lars back alone and continue along his sacrificial path. Perhaps there’s a level of rationality to this, as if they both escaped then the ship would turn right back around to Earth. But Steven isn’t operating on rational thought, and he hasn’t been since his friends were first endangered: going to the Diamonds as Rose Quartz might secure his friends’ safety, but at the cost of near-certain death, so from a pure odds perspective it’d be better to go to the Zoo incognito where known allies like the Zoomans and Famethyst could help out. But he’s acting out of a misguided sense of duty, so he doesn’t express any tactical purpose for sending Lars away, instead repeating the idea that he must pay for Rose’s actions.

The perfect response to the downside of Steven’s selflessness is Lars presenting the upside of his selfishness. It might not be brave to run away, and Lars might only be on the ship in the first place because he ran away, but he’s right: if Steven doesn’t want to be punished for his mother’s mistakes, he shouldn’t have to be. It might be the easy way out, but we just saw Steven praise Lars’s ability to cut through the BS and find the truth, and here we see a prime example. And for just a second, Steven thinks about it.

But then Aquamarine barges in, because Steven isn’t allowed to learn his lesson quite yet. In the same way corruption is the Diamonds’ greatest sin, attacking many of their own troops to spite their foes, this is perhaps Aquamarine at her worst: it’s one thing to bully your enemies, but cruelty to a partner is a step beyond. Contrast has defined Topaz and Aquamarine from the moment we saw their shadows, and this is the final stage. We already knew one was big and the other was small, one was quiet and the other was chatty, but both acted as a single front with different but united antagonism. Now one is an ally and the other is an opponent, one is cute and the other is vicious, and while Topaz might have the upper hand in a physical fight and the heart to do the right thing, Aquamarine only needs her words and her ruthlessness to win the day.

This is the last we’ll see of Topaz and Aquamarine until the time jump, and it’s surprisingly brutal. We got a test-run of this story with Holly Blue Agate, another cerulean tyrant dominating a larger, friendlier force (this time in terms of size as well as numbers), and it ended with our new friends overcoming their oppressor. Not this time. Aquamarine emerges victorious, while Topaz splits up and slumps away in defeat, and that’s it until Steven Universe Future gives the latter a happy ending at Little Homeschool and the former a new role as Team Rocket villain.

Topaz getting her brief burst of joy snatched away sets the mood for our Homeworld adventure. We’ve long known that the Crystal Gems are a stubborn group of rocks, but at least they have the freedom to change if they wish. Homeworld Gem stubbornness is reinforced by a society that persecutes anyone that doesn’t fall in line, from the outcast Off Colors to the Diamonds themselves.

But the mood of this arc is also set by Lars, because like the ending of Stuck Together, this is a story about Lars being taken away from Steven. But it’s also a story where Steven helps Lars change, and with change comes a glimmer of hope.

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



A great showcase for Steven and Lars, and a great coda for Aquamarine and Topaz. There’s not quite enough going on for it to make my favorites list, but it’s up there.

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6. Horror Club

5. Fusion Cuisine

4. House Guest

3. Onion Gang

2. Sadie’s Song

1. Island Adventure

(No promo art for this one, so I went with Jastea’s gorgeous take on Topaz.)