Review: Steven Universe “Dewey Wins”

We are all winners.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The episode immediately picks up after the events of “Lars Head” where Steven discovered one of the side-effects of Lars’s resurrection is making his head function as a pocket dimension back to Earth with Lion’s head being the entrance back. At first, everyone is glad for Steven’s return, except for Connie who’s less than thrilled after the events of “I Am My Mom” when Steven gave himself up so Aquamarine could spare everyone else from abduction. You can make the argument that what Steven did was incredibly selfless but for better or worse, his actions were not without consequence as shown with Connie being emotionally hurt for Steven giving himself up so easily instead of putting their “Stevonnie-training” to use against Aquamarine. And rather than try to further explain to Steven why he massively fucked up, Connie straight up leaves with Lion.

The next day after filling Sadie in about the shit that went down after the first four episodes of season five is when we quickly get to the real meat of this story as local elderly resident “Nanefua Pizza” rallies up a protest against Mayor Dewey after the near-abduction experience a select few had in “Are You, My Dad?” and proclaims that she will run for Mayor of Beach City with the promise of not repeating any of Dewey’s mistakes, while Dewey is on-edge as he’s never had his Mayor-status challenged before. With Steven backing him up, much of the episode’s running time is mostly spent on Steven’s attempts to clear Dewey’s Mayor-status by accepting responsibility, but through a series of attempts, Dewey keeps digging himself into a deeper hole when the mention of Lars being “lost in space” is touched upon.

By the 3rd Act, Beach City decides to hold a debate between Dewey & Nanefua with Dewey & Steven struggle due to lack of sleep. When the debate begins, Dewey makes a strong argument that people need to stop blaming the Mayor when bad things happen within Beach City. While Nanefua insists that everyone should hold themselves accountable for when bad things occur. The episode ends on a disappointing note when things don’t exactly go as planned for Dewey, but in the process, Steven finally gains perspective to what Connie was talking about earlier in the episode.

Our Take

With the aftermath of “I Am My Mom,” it’s clear that Beach City won’t be the same. It kinda reminds me of when J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man comics became New York’s Mayor at one point or when Lex Luthor ran for president and won in the DC universe which were both things nobody expected at the time. Steven’s attempt at being selfless while well-intentioned, may have potentially cost him his friendship with Connie, Lars his humanity after his transformation into a Pink Alien-like entity after the events of Off Colors  and Dewey his political career so now I’m curious if any further changes will happen or if Steven will fix things with Connie in later episodes.

Whatever happens next, I’m hooked to find out.