Review: Steven Universe “Stranded”

“Bingo-Bongo!”

Overview (Spoilers below)

“Lars of the Stars”

The episode begins after Steven picks up a care package from Lars’ parents and proceeds to leave with Connie to visit Lars for delivery. After entering through a portal, we discover that Lars is now dramatically different and oozing with confidence like a ballsy Captain Kirk mixed with Captain Harlock while being pursued by an Elite Gem named Emerald who’s pissed about her spaceship called the “Sun Incinerator” being stolen by Lars and the Off-Color Gems who serve as his crew.

Most of the episode is later spent on Lars catching up and learns about how much Sadie has changed which gets under lars’ skin as his insecurities about Sadie being happy without him to get the better of him but Steven & Connie by transforming into their Stevonnie fusion while getting the point across that his motivation to go through all this trouble for the sake of seeing Sadie again should be what keeps him going and shouldn’t give up just because Sadie found happiness elsewhere. Later on, Emerald catches up with Lars and the Off-Color crew and entrusts Stevonnie to drive a mini-spaceship to destroy Emerald’s defenses only to be shot down landing towards a Jungle planet.

“Jungle Moon”

As Stevonnie crash-lands in the unknown planet, he/she is at a disadvantage, but survives thanks to Steven’s Bubble abilities and encounters unusual flora & fauna within the planet while hoping Lars will find them and decides to hold out and survive using some survival Rambo-skills but it’s kinda weird to see Stevonnie shave using Roses sword establishing that the fusion also gives this form whiskers.

Most of the episode is spent on Stevonnie learning to survive and what’s edible until they decide to camp out in a cave which leads to a trippy dream sequence that raises more questions than answers but begins to unravel some memories that flesh out new pieces of information including the reveal of a character whose death was the catalyst to the Gem War, Pink Diamond. The sequence while trippy as hell, do give us some idea of what came to the decision of Pink colonizing earth except what she really looked like while smashing a mirror, only for Stevonnie to wake up and figure out the cave has recognizable markings and turns out to be an old Colony Gem-ship and memorizing how to use the device from the dream which resembling a game of Simon. Stevonnie finally contacts Lars who manages to rescue them and the episode ends when Stevonnie decides to call it a day and come back inside Lars’s portal-head back home.

Our Take

Holy Fuck! Normally when something like Star Vs the Forces of Evil condenses two episodes into a half-hour, they don’t always tie together like this but this one delivered in terms storytelling, character development and plot-twists in spades. While the dream sequence Stevonnie experienced is cryptic, the twist at the end along with the reveal of Pink Diamond was quite an eye-opener. I’m not sure if they’ll touch upon this later-on but learning that Pink wasn’t as towering as Yellow Diamond kinda explains that she may have been killed by someone equal or close to her height.

As for Lars’ development, sometimes people change and move on and while it must be hard for Lars to comprehend that Sadie is finding happiness without Lars, it doesn’t mean she’s completely forgotten him. The bigger question should be how will they react if they re-connect? Will it be a happy or a bittersweet reunion? Let’s hope they touch upon this in later episodes.