Review: Steven Universe “Room For Ruby”

Not to be confused with RwBy.

Spoilers Below

While star-gazing with Garnet, Steven notices something falling toward Earth. It turns out to be Naval (Navy, for short), one of the Rubies from the Ruby Squad. Naval says she has left Homeworld and begs Steven to let her stay on Earth. Garnet is hesitant but Steven is all in. He takes Navy to the barn to live with Lapis and Peridot. Lapis is also hesitant but Peridot seems OK with it. So the pair accept Ruby into their barn and begin teaching her about Earth. When Navy proclaims that she loves everything, Lapis gets angry. She doesn’t understand how Navy can be so accepting of everything when it took her so long to love it. Navy, sad that she upset Lapis, notes that she misses her ship, as that is the only thing she has ever known. Steven happily points out that they have her ship. The group agrees to let Navy take them for a ride to show them how to fly it. As they fly over the ocean, Navy betrays Steven and the Gems. She tells Steven to push a button, which opens the hatch and shoots everyone out of the ship. Navy drops them all in the ocean and flies off. Lapis, angry at first, is happy that she was right. No one could be that well-adjusted. Garnet doesn’t seem too angry about the situation either.

On one hand, I really wanted one of the Rubies to be a good guy. On the other hand, we already technically have a good Ruby. She’s just fused with Sapphire. Since everyone from the Ruby Squad was shot into space, I wonder if they managed to get together to formulate this plan or if this is something Navy came up with on her own. It was also nice to see that Lapis still has some emotional baggage hanging on. I hate when shows, whether they are cartoons or live action, act like characters never had any problems in the past. They met the protagonist and now life is awesome and nothing bad ever happened. In this show, the characters have pasts and sometimes those pasts come back. Sure, Lapis is awesome now but she had to work hard to get there. She is one of my favorite characters on the show because she has no problem saying “hey, remember when this sucked? Why are we pretending it didn’t?”