“This looks weird, but don’t jump to conclusions.”

Island Adventure is my lowest-ranked episode of the series, but it’s not my least favorite. All in all, I actually enjoy watching it. The problem, as I explain in greater depth in the review, is that it conveys a horrible message about consent in teen relationships and lionizes Sadie for a bevy of abusive actions, ranging from emotional manipulation to physical assault. And that makes it worse to me than an episode that I just don’t like watching. This is a kid’s show, and it’s not great for a kid’s show to espouse harmful message to kids, particularly when consent is such an important issue in the real world and in Steven Universe.

The New Lars isn’t nearly as bad, but it’s important to compare the two upfront, because both of them rely on the same conceit: Lars is a jerk, so it’s okay when bad things happen to him. The tricky thing is that seeing jerks get their comeuppance is an essential trope in comedy, so it should be okay for bad things to happen to him, but this is the second time that “bad things” involve ignoring Lars’s consent in a way that isn’t inherently comedic. There are fantastical elements to both stories, but forcing someone to do things that they explicitly don’t want to do is a bit more harrowing than, say, getting squashed by a falling anvil. Both episodes are from Raven Molisee and Paul Villeco, two extremely talented animators that I usually love (they did Mirror Gem and Rose’s Scabbard for Pete’s sake), and I wish I could get into their heads just to figure out why they’re so into abusing Lars in a way that evokes actual abuse.

Fortunately, a lot of my problems with Island Adventure aren’t present in The New Lars. We get a crucial slippery slope element to Steven’s behavior that Sadie’s early-episode subterfuge doesn’t grant (we learn that she hid their only way off the island immediately after arriving). Yes, he’s prying a bit too much into Lars and Sadie’s relationship in the first scene, but as soon as he mind swaps he states his determination to “respect Lars’s body and his privacy.” His good nature is his undoing, as he’s unable to play it cruel with Lars’s terrified parents or play it cool with Buck and pals. And it makes sense after seeing positive reactions for following his gut that he takes it over the edge to try and meddle in Lars’s love life. It’s not right, but it makes sense.

(It requires a Steven from a different era of emotional immaturity as well, but this team also did Sadie’s Song so I’ll count their restraint here as a victory.)

((Bear in mind that they also did Warp Tour and The Return and Keeping It Together and Message Received in case y’all think I’m just gonna sit here and pretend Molisee’n’Villeco aren’t amazing.))

Most importantly, Steven apologizes for his actions. If Sadie had shown an ounce of real remorse in Island Adventure, all would be well. The issue isn’t characters behaving badly, because this show would be garbage if everybody was perfect. The issue is not acknowledging bad behavior, and even rewarding it while piling on the victim of it. This episode knows that Lars is the wronged party and that Steven did a bad thing, even if he had good intentions, and in doing so teaches a lesson about consent instead of showing abusive behavior and shrugging it off.

It’s notable that Steven never does anything like this again. Just three episodes later in Kiki’s Delivery Service he accidentally enters Kiki’s dreams and is flustered and apologetic right away despite doing nothing harmful. The best way to make lessons stick is for the characters themselves to learn them, and a big part of Season 3 is showing how Steven has been shaped by past episodes.



And it turns out, a story about how Lars is treated is exactly what I needed. Because after nearly ninety episodes of the series, this is the first time I’ve actually liked Lars as a character. For the whole episode. I’ve always felt something was missing from his generic meanness, but everything clicked when I realized that the self-awareness that fuels his awkwardness is only a small part of his problem: he’s too aware of his status as a side character to be happy.

When Mayor Dewey acknowledges that Beach City is a magnet for disaster in Political Power, it’s a great gag that reveals hidden depths about the character. Lars’s bitter “Every day in Beach City is weird, that’s why I hate it here” is similarly revelatory, but about a character we’ve seen much more of. Lars has been the brunt of weird suffocating plants, a weird mouth-burning prank, a weird island trip complete with weird invisible monster, a weird haunted lighthouse, and now a weird body hijacking. He’s also witnessed the ocean weirdly disappearing and Beach City under siege from a weird space eye and a weird space hand, alongside who knows what else. And the kid who’s always bugging him to hang out is himself weird. This weird kid just took over his body and everyone, including Lars’s own parents, took the kid’s side. Of course Lars sees magic through a sour lens.

It’s so much easier to empathize for someone as ornery as Lars when there’s a good reason behind it, and noticing just how lousy life can be when you’re a regular person in a world of magic is a great reason to be ornery. It’s an excellent contrast to his former friend and fellow frustrating character Ronaldo, and allows Lars to grow within the context of a magical show. I’m not saying Lars is only irate because of this situation, people can be jerks just because they’re jerks and he’s a jerk in mundane situations, but after so many episodes where he seems to learn something and then goes right back to being a jerk, it’s such a relief to get this kind of depth.

And seriously, thank goodness Matthew Moy is still capable of emotional range after spending so many episodes voicing a jerk. He shows it off a bit when Lars admits he’s depressed in Island Adventure (which would’ve been a better character moment if it went anywhere in that episode), but voicing Lars as Steven must have been a blast. Even as a kid, it always bugged me when mindswapped characters switched voice actors, because that’s not how voices physically work and I was a stickler of a kid. Moy shines as an exuberant, doofy, melodramatic invader in his character’s head, to the point where you can tell when Steven is being himself versus when he’s trying to impersonate Lars. That ain’t easy!

On top of this, Moy still shows his practiced mastery of Lars’s crabbiness spectrum. I like his withering asides about Steven interrupting his workday, even though I’m all about deducing the laziest animal (Koala all the way by the way, sleep>slowness on the lazy scale), and I love his reaction upon waking up, where his justifiable fury with Steven is ramped up further by his family and peers backing up the kid. As in Joking Victim, Moy shows off his flair for comedic screaming, which also ain’t easy.

What’s doubly nice is that Kate Micucci also gets a showcase of her growing character that isn’t Sadie’s Song. While we wisely avoid too much detail about the exact nature of their relationship (not just because this is a kid’s show, but because it’s none of our business) Sadie is done with Lars’s nonsense, and I love hearing such decisiveness from the Big Donut’s resident wallflower. This episode could have crashed and burned if not for Sadie’s fed up reaction to “Lars” declaring his love for her, and Micucci sells it perfectly while still making the most of Sadie’s shyness in asking Lars to hang out in the first place.

This is also a great episode for other townies. Onion gets a hilarious cameo, and the Barrigas give a sterling first impression as loving but beleaguered parents. But come on, we gotta talk about the Cool Kids. Right off the bat, we get definitive proof that they’re not big on Lars (especially Jenny). It’s not shocking that such a jerk would be unwelcome, but it speaks well of the group that they keep giving him chances, and that Buck is quick to think the best of Lars when given the opportunity. It’s well-established that these are good kids, considering how awesome they are with Steven, but The New Lars shows that they’re even better than we thought they were. And we get a zany off-screen dance competition subplot.



I’ll be honest, I was shocked by how much I liked this episode on rewatch. Season 3′s midsection contains a cluster of episodes that I’d literally never rewatched since they first aired, so I let a bad first impression shape my views a little too much. At that point in the show I was so done with Lars that I wasn’t willing to give him a chance, but knowing where his story is finally going made me reevaluate his behavior here. Because things do get sort of different for him now after numerous false starts. He’s still gonna be a jerk and make mistakes, but seeing what his friends and family think of him seems to jolt his system in a way Life Lessons With Steven couldn’t.

Knowing where a story is going isn’t enough, though; if it was, I’d like Sadie’s Song a lot more than I do, because I am all in on Sadie Killer and the Suspects. I think I was so against Steven’s actions in The New Lars that they loomed larger than the part where he and the show acknowledge that he was wrong. I rewatched this three times for my review, because I was all primed to dislike it again and want to give episodes like that a fair shot (which, yeah, meant I slogged through Sadie’s Song multiple times, you’re welcome), and the apology just makes everything better. I can focus more on the episode’s strengths, which are stronger than they first looked, and appreciate that this is a story about a kid making a mistake and learning from it. I wish Island Adventure had concluded with a similar realization, but I’m thrilled to see a show grow in its storytelling.

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

Again, this was a surprise. I don’t wanna overcorrect and put it in my Top Fifteen or anything, but man this is more solid than I remember. Goes to show how far hindsight and a solid apology can take a story. If you’re like me and didn’t like The New Lars back when we were lousy with new episodes in the Summer of Steven, give it another chance.

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5. Horror Club

4. Fusion Cuisine

3. House Guest

2. Sadie’s Song

1. Island Adventure