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The idea that Steven is the Princess of the Diamonds has touched every episode since Familiar. He's an heir to royalty who gets locked away in a tower with tiny talking friends, he loves to sing and dance, and he melts the hearts of cruel family figures. He has magic tears and kisses, he wears pink, and he just wants everyone to be happy.

At the start of the movie, the Diamonds expect him to lock into this role, to be their beloved princess for eternity, but in a story that rejects the notion of Happily Ever After, Steven must reject his own fairy tale. And even if he didn't, he just doesn't fit with this branch of his family. The Diamonds want a child of Rose Quartz, a complicated Gem who is nonetheless a physical manifestation of character development, but this isn't a story about Rose Quartz. What the Diamonds need is somebody that they can heal with from the ground up, defined not by previous growth but the desire to grow, driven by the same rage and the same determination to be free of it. They need a child of Pink Diamond.

From the beginning, this has been a princess movie. But only at the end is the greater truth revealed: Steven may be this story's protagonist, but he was never going to be its princess.

"I'll do the hardest part with you."

As she rails against Steven, Spinel is interrupted by Garnet, still in the cotton candy form she took in Ruby and Sapphire's own princess story. The Answer was about a Gem freeing herself from her Diamond's authority, an origin that Amethyst and Pearl don't share because they were on Rose's side throughout, and that Spinel doesn't share because she never broke free of Pink. Our villain doesn't know this part of the story, and thank goodness, because she resents Garnet enough as is.

Garnet has been in her reverted state long enough to develop an actual personality, knowing Steven by name and getting upset when her friends start fighting. She's blithe and colorful and sweet, and it makes Spinel sick to her stomach: the only person she might hate more than Pink Diamond for leaving her in the Garden is her own past self for waiting so long. So while she probably would've snatched up any bystander around to get at Steven (considering her goal is hurting as many people as possible), she takes particular joy in using Garnet for leverage as she tries to force him to admit that he's as hateful as she is. Even as she pushes him away, she's desperate for any sign that she's not alone.

Just like Bismuth in her debut episode, Spinel attacks Steven because she perceives him as a liar like his mother, so his words aren't enough to convince her otherwise. He must speak her language by performing an act of violence, but speak his own by inflicting that violence upon a weapon.

Before Spinel has time to process this development, Garnet's memories finally spark. It really does take everything to bring her back, going all the way through the tail end of the show's fifth season for her last piece: the ability to see herself through clear eyes, rather than the fog of love that prevented Ruby and Sapphire from taking a good look at their relationship and coming out stronger for it. Spinel prompted this new fight by hitting Steven and rejuvenating the rejuvenator, and she sabotages herself again by constricting Garnet and inspiring Steven to inspire the final Crystal Gem. Her violence isn't just mean-spirited, but ineffective, and as she tries to shatter this second mistake before it comes back to bite her, all she does is prove that true love is unbreakable.

Track 13: True Kinda Love

As Ruby and Sapphire dance through Garnet's forms, Estelle's soothing voice fuses with chill instrumentals to slow us all the way down from Spinel's burst of fury. The last big fight of the movie is about to begin, but the Crystal Gems' conflict is over: they're back, and they're here to stay.

Chance the Rapper, one of the most positive musical voices to emerge in the 2010s, is responsible for True Kinda Love's contagious hook: he suggested the trisyllabic "Truuu-UUUU-uuue" as the way a child might sing while swinging their arms back and forth, a moment of carefree delight that can't be punctured by the chaos surrounding our heroes. Other Friends was a fight for the Crystal Gems but a game for Spinel, while True Kinda Love is a fight for Spinel but a dance for the Crystal Gems.

In their first encounter, Spinel pushed Steven away to divide and conquer the Big Three, but now that she's blindly lashing out, his companions can easily coordinate and best her. He spent this whole movie saving the Crystal Gems, and now they get to return the favor, fending off Spinel so effortlessly when she lunges for him that she has to switch up her tactics. She might not be able to put a finger on Steven, but she can use all ten of them to poison his planet.

As the injector's pink sludge seeps into Beach City, Steven dispatches the Crystal Gems to protect the people while he focuses on the villain, reasoning that their powers will be more useful in the trenches. While the Gems offer some pushback, they fall into the same rut of letting Steven work himself to death instead of giving him a break, because Spinel isn't the only person who needs to make a change. Lapis doesn't even take the second or two to fly him up, nor does Lion warp him; it's just an accepted thing that he has to do the hard part himself. Garnet is the quickest to agree, and perhaps it's because her future vision foretells his gambit working out, but it clearly didn't do much to predict the long-term effects of the self-destructive mindset he shares with his wicked stepsister.

Alexandrite gets to work, but we see her rescue Garnet-related civilians (Jamie, Kofi Pizza and the twins, Cat Steven) because this is still her song, even when she's neither singing nor physically present. Greg and Connie save lives without powers, quietly dismantling the notion that Steven as he is wouldn't be useful in Beach City; granted, Connie has intense training and a magic lion, but all Greg needs is a van and the ability to work through pain to get things done. Steven glances down at Little Homeworld's immigrants welcoming their neighbors, then starts to climb, briefly turning True Kinda Love into a duet before revealing that the top of the mountain is a cold and sharpened heart.

Steven may have promised acceptance at the end of the song, but when Spinel keeps up the metaphor of destroying the world as a game, he loses his cool. Everyone has a limit, and he's finally reached his, unable to even feign patience anymore, but his frustration is soon met by a hit to the face. It turns out she wasn't kidding: she's all out of whimsy, nailing him with a no-nonsense punch hard enough to draw blood and saying in no uncertain terms that she looks forward to killing him.

This isn't exactly new territory for Steven Universe, in terms of on-screen violence (we literally see the life knocked out of Lars) or language (this is a show unafraid to say "die"), but the combination from this villain ups the stakes at least as much as the second injection did. The most similar moment we've seen was Aquamarine mentioning that the Diamonds didn't need Steven's friends "alive," followed by Topaz squeezing Jamie's head as he pleaded for his life, but this time the person making threats is the same as the person enforcing them, and the victim is Steven himself. The rubbery sound of Spinel's fingers releasing him is the sickening punchline, reminding us that even at her most severe, she can't escape her fundamental silliness.

The last two pieces of Steven's memories arrive back-to-back, but only the second is acknowledged. Yes, the final key to his restoration is remembering the importance of change (a result of Spinel's taunting, her third instance of orchestrating her own downfall), but it's also remembering the importance of identity. He spent the entire original series grappling with who he truly was, a struggle amplified in the final fight with entities that refused to acknowledge that he's been Steven all along. It's not enough to relive a greatest hits tape of every bad thing that's ever happened to him, he has to express confusion about who he's supposed to be.

But Spinel tells him who he is. She can't stop calling him Steven Universe, and while Rose Quartz personified a single great change, Steven Universe personifies change itself.

Track 14: Change

Never has kissing away a minor injury looked this badass. Steven doesn't just get his powers back, he regains the confidence and the insight he earned from his showdown with White Diamond. He can help Spinel, but he can't do all the work on his own, and if she's determined to be a bully, he owes it to himself to defend himself. He raises his arm like an opera singer, then drops it to summon a shield.

As his chiptunes and soft strings clash with Spinel's horns and psycho strings, he meets her all-out assault of weaponized slapstick with his own bag of tricks, blocking with his shield and leaping out of the way and absorbing her blows with bubbled fists. After she's knocked back by his burst of power when his abilities return, the only person that lands a hit on Spinel is Spinel, yanking her hair and punching herself in the head when Steven's advice threatens to interrupt her tantrum. She hurls him into the air for a finisher, but he uses the trip to the clouds to keep making his case, putting the onus on her to make a change. The phrasing here is critical: he's not talking about inevitable change, but the active process of making change happen, the decision to grow rather than learning acceptance.

He's optimistic, sure, and he's much more sensitive to Spinel's pain than he was when she first released the injector, but one thing hasn't changed: it isn't his job to fix her problems. Steven didn't do a thing to wrong her, and even if he did, if that made him responsible for her well-being then surely she's far more responsible for his, given she came to Earth to kill him and destroy everyone and everything he loves. If she doesn't want to hear it, there's not a thing he can do about it, and while that's a bummer of a prospect, his victory is coming to terms with this truth.

And sure enough, Spinel is the one who makes a change. She keeps hitting Steven, growing her fists in hopes of countering his shield, and maintains her barrage even after she cracks her heart, delivering one last diatribe as she unravels before us. No matter how hard she tries, she can't keep forcing her anger to push away her grief, but she still needs to vent before she reaches this conclusion.

She may hate Pink Diamond, but Spinel can't escape from her example. In the Garden, Pink needed to put aside the things she'd outgrown in order to evolve, but the problem was that the "thing" in question was a living person. And on her heart, Spinel needs to uselessly hit something enough to realize that hitting things isn't going to make her feel better, but yet again, the problem is that she isn't hitting a "thing." Both Pink and Spinel emerge from their bad choices with an understanding that they need to change, but that doesn't do much for their victims.

The difference is that while Pink never looks back, Spinel's realization happens in real time. Sarah Stiles never forgets that she's playing a performer, making the inner anguish clear as Spinel rages against Steven until all that's left is desperation for approval. Her similarity with Pearl is a given, and her similarity with Garnet's rejuvenated self was highlighted in our last scene, but here we quietly see her similarity with Amethyst. Unlike Pearl and Garnet, who rejected the roles they were made for, Amethyst wants to be a mighty warrior, and Spinel wants to be a good friend, but through circumstances beyond their control, neither gets to be the Gem they wanted to be.

But Amethyst and Spinel both have Steven on their side, and even after Spinel breaks her own heart, he saves her from the explosion. To her immense credit, her reaction is immediate regret, worrying about the damage she caused and explicitly apologizing in a way Pink Diamond never even implicitly did. It doesn't change how much she hurt Steven and Beach City, but it changes who she'll be from now on, and while that might not be the greatest victory in the world, this isn't a movie about clean fixes. When she frets about Steven's "happily ever after," he's finally able to admit that it doesn't exist, but does so with a heavy heart. There's a difference between accepting this truth as a burden and accepting it as an opportunity, and that's the difference between the end of the movie and the end of Future.

Until then, Steven gets to reunite with Connie and his family, healing Greg before a joke from Amethyst inspires him to heal the planet. It would be a fun little capper on this story, but we can't, and shouldn't, forget Spinel. This time Steven takes extra care to assure her that he's coming back, but as he mingles with the Crystal Gems, Spinel can only gaze at what she knows she'll never have with him. I've given Stiles a lot of credit for Spinel, but the perfectly ambiguous expression on her face is all art team: she's so happy for him, and so sad for herself.

Spinel has grown enough to understand that Steven has taken her as far as he can go. It's unclear how much he still wants to help directly, because even at the end of the movie he has trouble communicating clearly in uncomfortable situations, but after roundly dismissing the idea that life can be a fairy tale, the Diamonds remind us that this isn't real life. It's a princess movie, and they've come to fetch their princess.

Yellow and Blue have their words, but White takes clear command of the trio as she decides to settle on Earth. She's even more overwhelming than she was in the beginning, loudly guilting Steven into listening to her complaints, and all because Homeworld is "boring." The only crisis here is her self-centeredness, and although it's now used for comic effect, it's the same core flaw that makes her the actual villain of the movie in terms of greater scale. One could make a good case for Pink Diamond being our true villain, as her actions are what drove Spinel to cause this whole mess, but if we're using that transitive property, White Diamond was the one whose actions drove Pink to cause this whole mess. As in Change Your Mind, Steven and White represent two extremes, and Pink and Spinel are both caught in the middle, with White's abuse trickling down through them to Steven.

White doesn't want to be bored anymore, and she needs to do a lot more changing. Spinel wants to entertain again, and she needs to do a lot more changing. Neither wants to be on Earth, and neither would be good for Steven's mental health if they hung out too long, so the solution is obvious.

Track 15: Let Us Adore You (Reprise)

The straightforward answer of sending Spinel off with the Diamonds would be a little too tidy if we didn't have an entire movie's worth of context telling us that this isn't happily ever after. Spinel introduces herself with a joke and a handstand, pushing down her pain with humor instead of anger, and she relishes the attention this brings. We combine Let Us Adore You, a song about trying to form a family by force, with Found, a song about rushing into a new relationship far too quickly, and no matter how beautifully the words are sung, knowing what Pink Diamond was like makes "you remind me so much of her" raise major red flags.

But this isn't as simple as a bad ending masquerading as a happy one. The Diamonds and Spinel do get what they want, and even though they don't know it now, they also get what they need. All four of them need to grow, but unlike Era 1, all four of them know that they need to grow. As we'll see in Future, they continue to put in the work, even if they still have a lot to do.

Spinel still needs to find healthy ways of coping with her trauma, and in the epilogue she still has her boundary problems, but at the end of the day she performs because she loves it, in the same way Amethyst still brawls, Peridot still makes things from the ground, and Bismuth still builds. It makes her happy to make people happy, and while going too far on that train can lead to trouble, there's nothing wrong with making people happy.

Spinel began the movie as the witch, and took up the mantle of comic relief, damsel in distress, and wicked stepsister before settling into the role she deserves. The Diamonds are an imperfect family, and Homeworld is an imperfect planet, so as long as she feels loved and is surrounded by people who are willing to make a change, she's more than worthy to take the throne as their imperfect princess.

Still, after she's whisked away to the palace to start this new chapter of her life, it's up to her stepbrother to clean things up after her coronation.

Track 16: Finale

One reprise brings in another, and a third Happily Ever After culminates the lessons Steven learned from this very busy day. He's fused the mood from the first version's "here we are" with the lyrics from the second version's "there we were" to create a song that at last celebrates the future rather than assuming that it's something he already achieved. He sprinkles in a bonus "happily ever after" as he sings about the things to come ("so happily we'll face whatever comes our way, and after we might do it all again"), and everyone from the B-Team to Lars'n'Sadie to Greg to the Big Three sings along. All is well.

And frankly, in my first viewing I felt that all was going a bit too well. We just got an ending for Spinel that clearly wasn't as happy as it looked, but Beach City recovering from its massive damage in a quick montage rang hollow in a movie about the hard work. Glossing over the rebuilding process feels counterproductive to the message that not everything gets solved with the snap of a finger, especially when it leads to what looks like an unqualified happy ending. If this was the end of Steven Universe, it would've been my only major complaint about the movie.

But this isn't the end. Future is right around the corner, and if it teaches us anything, it's that Steven is very good at healing the surface, but not as experienced dealing with the poison underneath. He can kiss as many flowers into existence as he wants, but Spinel's damage is done. Steven was wrong to assume he could just bask in his victory forever, but his pledge to keep doing work becomes an overcommitment, an obsession with pleasing everyone around him lest he start thinking about his own pain. Spinel is similar to Pearl and Garnet and Amethyst in their own ways, but in the way that matters most, she's a dead ringer for Steven. He loves to put on a show.

But this is hardly a moment of doom and gloom; like the reprise of Let Us Adore You, the celebratory ending isn't completely undone by deeper implications. Bringing everyone together for one last group song is a touching way to end this story, and Zach Callison leads the charge with his breathtaking pipes. He gives us a happy ending with a caveat: he'll be ready every day, but only for as long as he can say "I can make a change." And while he may forget that lesson in the future, Connie's voice emerges from the background harmony to assure us that she'll be there to remind him.

It's a gorgeous ending to a gorgeous movie, a victory lap with a few lumps of salt to keep us honest. It's hard to say goodbye to the things we love, and Rebecca Sugar and her full crew, many of whom said goodbye to the show they helped her build when the movie was complete, gave the audience the best possible parting gift: the promise that nothing really ends, and that this is what makes life wonderful. Your typical princess movie might tell you that wishes and hard work can give you a happily ever after, but Steven Universe takes its audience seriously enough to tell the truth.

We're the one, we're the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Steven and the Stevens is my favorite episode of Steven Universe. But this isn't an episode.

Between incredible music, incredible pacing, and incredible character work, there's very little I don't love about this movie. The biggest qualm I have gets fixed in retrospect, but even if it didn't, I'm not sure the issue of Spinel's injector getting tidily wrapped up could overpower just how much I love the rest of the story. This is the greatest show of the 2010s, and its movie is a masterpiece.

The Pinnacle

Steven Universe: The Movie (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Top Thirty

1. Steven and the Stevens
2. Hit the Diamond
3. Mirror Gem
4. Lion 3: Straight to Video
5. Alone Together
6. Jungle Moon
7. Last One Out of Beach City
8. The Return
9. Jailbreak
10. The Answer
11. Mindful Education
12. Sworn to the Sword
13. Rose's Scabbard
14. A Single Pale Rose
15. Change Your Mind (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
    
16. Reunited
17. Earthlings
18. Mr. Greg
19. Coach Steven
20. Lars of the Stars
21. Giant Woman
22. Beach City Drift
23. Winter Forecast
24. Bismuth
25. Escapism
    
26. Back to the Kindergarten
27. Steven's Dream
    
28. Kevin Party
29. When It Rains
30. Lars's Head
    

Love 'em

• Laser Light Cannon
• Bubble Buddies
• Tiger Millionaire
• Lion 2: The Movie
• Rose's Room
• An Indirect Kiss
• Ocean Gem
• Space Race
• Garnet's Universe
• Warp Tour
• The Test
• Future Vision
• On the Run
• Maximum Capacity
• Marble Madness
• Political Power
• Full Disclosure
• Joy Ride
• Keeping It Together
• We Need to Talk
• Chille Tid
• Cry for Help
• Keystone Motel
• Catch and Release
• Back to the Barn
• Steven's Birthday
• It Could've Been Great
• Message Received
• Log Date 7 15 2
• Same Old World
• The New Lars
• Monster Reunion
• Alone at Sea
• Crack the Whip
• Beta
• Back to the Moon
• Kindergarten Kid
• Buddy's Book
• Gem Harvest
• Three Gems and a Baby
• That Will Be All
• The New Crystal Gems
• Storm in the Room
• Room for Ruby
• Lion 4: Alternate Ending
• Doug Out
• The Good Lars
• Are You My Dad?
• I Am My Mom
• Stuck Together
• The Trial
• Off Colors
• Gemcation
• Raising the Barn
• Sadie Killer
• Your Mother and Mine
• The Big Show
• Pool Hopping
• Letters to Lars
• Can't Go Back
• Now We're Only Falling Apart
• What's Your Problem?
• The Question
• Legs From Here to Homeworld
• Familiar
  

Like 'em

• Gem Glow
• Frybo
• Arcade Mania
• So Many Birthdays
• Lars and the Cool Kids
• Onion Trade
• Steven the Sword Fighter
• Beach Party
• Monster Buddies
• Keep Beach City Weird
• Watermelon Steven
• The Message
• Open Book
• Story for Steven
• Shirt Club
• Love Letters
• Reformed
• Rising Tides, Crashing Tides
• Onion Friend
• Historical Friction
• Friend Ship
• Nightmare Hospital
• Too Far
• Barn Mates
• Steven Floats
• Drop Beat Dad
• Too Short to Ride
• Restaurant Wars
• Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service
• Greg the Babysitter
• Gem Hunt
• Steven vs. Amethyst
• Bubbled
• Adventures in Light Distortion
• Gem Heist
• The Zoo
• Rocknaldo
• Dewey Wins
• Together Alone
  

Y'all, It's Complicated

• Made of Honor

Enh

• Cheeseburger Backpack
• Together Breakfast
• Cat Fingers
• Serious Steven
• Steven's Lion
• Joking Victim
• Secret Team
• Say Uncle
• Super Watermelon Island
• Gem Drill
• Know Your Fusion
• Future Boy Zoltron
• Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

6. Horror Club
5. Fusion Cuisine
4. House Guest
3. Onion Gang
2. Sadie's Song
1. Island Adventure

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Source: https://stevenuniversallyreviews.tumblr.com/post/630272233944809472/the-princess-the-movie-tracks-13-16

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