Review: Steven Universe “Steven’s Lion”

Spoilers!

Walking through the desert, steven is acting out how you’re supposed to act in the desert. They find the temple where the gem is hidden, while Amethyst and Pearl are continuing their spat from last episode. The other gems leave him to get the gem. While he is alone, he is confronted by a lion. It seems to fall asleep right in front of him. Once he gets over his slight fear of it, he plays with it, and starts to cuddle with it. The gems think it’s dangerous, so they get Steven to leave it.

They’re back at home, and Amethyst and Steven are in a pillow fort pretend sleeping. The lion is scratching at the door. They stay outside, and Steven is playing with him like a puppy. During a very punny trip to the pizza shop, Lion ditches Steven to get back to the house. It turns out that Lion is only after the Desert Gem. Steven makes a stupid move, and throws it on the beach. It rebuilds the entire temple. He goes after the gem, but falls, only to be saved by Lion. It turns out that the lion is trying to destroy the gem. They get the gem, and Pearl bubbles it out to where ever they bubble the gems to. They decide that they are going to let Steven keep the lion, because they decided to keep Amethyst.

Well, that was unexpected. Steven got a lion! The question going forward is, “Where is all of this leading?” It just seems to me that the show is gathering all of this cool stuff, but it will never amount to much. I can’t say it for sure, but that’s just the feeling I get. The episode, however, was funny. Steven didn’t get that they lion wasn’t really a dog, so fetching a ball wasn’t really going to work. I was ecstatic that they didn’t use the status quo “introduce something, something betrays, defeat something.” For once, that something (in this case, the lion) was on their side, and just trying to destroy the desert gem. The episode was put together well, and seems to follow the formula for a good Steven Universe episode. However, there needs to be something that stitches everything together to show what the bigger plot is.