My Take on the 4 Upcoming Steven Universe Episodes

Spoilers for titles and descriptions of upcoming Steven Universe episodes!

Cartoon Network’s long-term TV listings have updated and we’ve got titles and descriptions for the four Steven Universe episodes following “Lion 4”, likely the final four episodes of Season 4. “Lion 4” is still yet to officially air and will do so before these four episodes; I won’t discuss it here.

There are dates associated with these episodes, but as has been proved to us repeatedly, Cartoon Network listings not from their internal schedule or without an official press release are incredibly unreliable. It’s not even worth discussing when these episodes are “slated” to air because it probably won’t happen. (Wait for a press release before anything — and even then CN pulls episodes last minute sometimes.)

• Doug Out [S04E21]
  Steven and Connie join Connie’s father on a stake out.
• The Good Lars [S04E22]
  Steven, Lars and Sadie get invited to a party with the Cool Kids.
• Are You My Dad? [S04E23]
  People disappearing from Beach City, and Steven tries to solve the mystery.
• I Am My Mom [S04E24]
  Steven struggles to fix his mistakes.

This is an interesting grouping of episodes, with two seemingly plot-related and two more …character-based, as we’ve seen a lot of lately. While there are some good theories already in how those first two could secretly be plot-related, even if they loosely connect to the plot of the finale, you’d have to imagine they’ll still be relatively inconsequential.

Neither “Doug Out” or “The Good Lars” seem particularly exciting to me, especially given the context of the current frustration of so few consequential episodes this season. I couldn’t care less about Connie’s dad, but I am excited at the prospect of a Connie episode. Similarly for “The Good Lars”, I definitely don’t care about whatever party they’re having, but the prospect of the first real post-coupling Lars & Sadie episode is exciting.

“Are You My Dad?” and “I Am My Mom” are incredibly, incredibly intriguing titles with pretty interesting descriptions to accompany them. The connecting titles indicate a two-parter and these two likely being the season finale only further indicate that big things will happen. It is worth noting though that going by the original 52-episode season structure, this is the “mid-season finale for Season 3”, so think more the scale of the Season 2 finale (which was also a “mid-season finale” going by that structure) than all the craziness of the end of Season 3. That being said, maybe things are ramping up as we get closer to the end of the show’s run, and each finale will just escalate from here.

I’m very excited in particular with “I Am My Mom” being the finale title, indicating a more definitive and large conclusion to this Steven’s-angst-about-Rose arc that we’ve been on than we’ve gotten recently. It’s easier to view “Storm in the Room” and similar episodes as a build-up to a larger culmination, than as culminations in their own right. A strong end to this season will make the entire thing better.

In terms of specific predictions for the finale, I don’t think we have a lot to go on. There aren’t any hanging plot threads that we know will be addressed in these four episodes. There are a lot of potential things for the future, but I don’t see anything that if wasn’t addressed would be wrong or frustrating. The obvious connection to people disappearing from Beach City would be Blue Diamond taking more humans for the Zoo, but I don’t really see why she would come back and do that again. It also seems like too recent of a thing to revisit directly.

To me, the most pressing plot things to address seem like Yellow Diamond and The Cluster. It’s easy to imagine Yellow Diamond being notified of the Zoo break-out either by the Rubies or security footage. Also she never followed up on wanting Jasper back… she just seems like a ticking time-bomb for the Crystal Gems. The Cluster was seemingly resolved, but Yellow Diamond definitely foreshadowed a further advancement with it in the Zoo arc. That seems like the most likely explanation for the disappearances to me. Some sort of Cluster shenanigans could make sense, and it’s been the thing most directly foreshadowed recently in the show. Lock that in now as my prediction for whenever these air: the Cluster is eating people!

Tags: steven universe