Review: Steven Universe “Kevin Party”

Let’s party!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The episode begins when Steven sets up missing posters of Lion due to Connie straight up stealing him after the events of “Dewey Wins” only to come across the millennial hipster douche-monkey Kevin who’s infamously had an intense rivalry with Steven & Connie’s “Stevonnie” fusion for quite some time. At one point they even psychologically dicked with him in the episode “Beach City Drift“. Kevin gives Steven an invitation to partake in a party of his which at first Steven turns down until Kevin says to him that Connie will show up knowing that the popularity of his party would be elevated if Stevonnie is there. At this point, Steven doesn’t pass up this chance to fix things with her but I couldn’t help but feel creeped out that Kevin acknowledges Stevonnie as two separate underaged teens throughout their ongoing rivalry, yet never questions why or how this is possible but is obsessed with the idea of her coming to his party.

We later cut to the party and as Steven enters, Kevin reveals that he invited the two with the hope they’ll transform as he sees their fusion as a gimmick he can exploit for popularity but the plot starts to pick up when Steven discovers Lion is there and awkwardly notices Connie who looks dramatically different but is scared to approach her until Kevin unexpectedly decides to help him make things right after hearing about their recent falling out and shockingly coaches him to be approachable without losing his cool while giving him a new look and spends most of the running time in a montage helping Steven look cool around everyone while pretending he isn’t interested in Connie so she’ll chase after him but you know what the strange part of all this is? Kevin’s plan actually works.

When Kevin notices Connie approaching, he tells Steven not to lose his cool around her if he really wants to fix things. At first, the conversation has an awkward start but eventually, Connie reveals that she wanted to speak to him “face to face”.  As they both vent out their emotions, it leads to a touching scene that manages to look at both sides of the argument but they slowly begin to apologize & reconcile while expressing their mutual disdain for Kevin. The episode comedically ends when the two ditch the party without forming Stevonnie, leaving Kevin extremely pissed.

Our Take

I really enjoyed this episode. Despite Kevin being an extremely unlikable character, he at least did something right in the scene when he starts coaching Steven, it’s heavily implied that Kevin had his heart broken at some point and even accidentally name-drops the person’s name being “Sabina” but despite this attempt at giving this contemptuous hipster any kind of depth, it’s hard to make him a sympathetic character when he just wanted to exploit Steven & Connie’s fusion as a parlor trick for one of his parties. And I probably laughed the hardest when they bonded over how despicably pathetic Kevin is while the writers cleverly made this a Stevonnie episode without actually showing Stevonnie.

To quote Henry Rollins: “Nothing brings people together more than mutual hatred.”