Steven Universe: Marble Madness

March 6, 2015 12:49 PM - Season 1, Episode 44

The Crystal Gems follow one of Peridot's drones to find out her plans.
posted by Small Dollar (5 comments total)

This is the last episode before the upcoming STEVENBOMB, the airing of six new episodes, including the season-ender, in one week. (Note: next week's new episodes are all at 5 PM, not the usual time! Set your bat-watches accordingly.)

The activity over each new episode has been growing over on the Steven Universe subreddit, with Marble Madness approaching a thousand comments in a day. I don't even want to speculate yet what's going happen when there's six new episodes in a week instead of one.

As for this week's episode, well, it's great. Peridot finally shows up again, and while her action at trying to crush Steven let us know she's not going to be win-overable easily, we did see that she's more of a functionary than anything else. We also found out that it was her who sent the Red Eye, signalling that the threat from Homeworld has been stirring since the second episode.

As for what Steven did, yeah, it's easy to be down on the kid. But really, it would have had to have happened eventually. As Garnet said: "We can't keep doing this forever. Well we can but I don't want to!" At least they tried to be friendly about it. And now the Kindergarten control room is smashed. BTW, it was interesting the the Gems didn't know how the gem tech works. I get the feeling that Rose was the one among them that understood it the best.

A couple other points: The look on Connie's face when she found out Steven hadn't been reading the books in order. Amethyst with the "goop hugs" at the start was so sweet. And Pearl announcing the team when they revealed themselves was about as badass as she's ever been.

Note, the next episode, it seems, contains two additional voice actors.... (Hover for spoilers)
posted by JHarris at 1:26 PM on March 6, 2015

I could hardly keep myself together during this episode, five episodes and a finale next week are gonna kill me. In a good way. Like being eaten by a pack of ferocidorable puppies.

I've got basically my own geeklist this time.

• The Unfamiliar Familiar, Connie's synopsis sounds a bit like the setting of His Dark Materials, are there other likely series this is referencing?
• We don't know what this stuff is. Implying that leftover monster goo actually could be something besides set dressing. Between this and Viscera Cleanup Detail I don't think I'll ever be able to so much as hit slimes with a stick in a video game again. Somebody 's gonna have to clean that up, dude!
• So in Space Race Pearl says it will take 50 years to get to the nearest star system and back by spaceship, but Peridot's ballistic marble bots get to Earth in like, a couple days? At most a month or two if she fired off a bunch at once after Warp Tour instead of one after another after the first failed to reactivate the Kindergarten. Either the non-Crystal Gems have non-warp pad FTL, or maybe she's not so far away...
• OVERNEATH The UNDERWORLD
• Every single second of Connie in this episode is gold. The look indeed!
• So, when marble #2 shows up the Gems exit the temple from Pearl's room. Marble #3, Garnet's.
• Garnet uses her future sight (presumably) to figure out which warp location to check out. So exploitable.
• Pearl! Put that away!
• But the Red Eye didn't report the presence of any gems on this planet! But it did on others? Sounds like Earth isn't the only planet to have cut contact with the rest of Gem society.

posted by books for weapons at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was thinking -- while Earth's Galaxy Warp might be down, that doesn't mean a different warp has to be. Maybe there's one on, say, Mars?

When Lapis Lazuli flew off, she didn't think about taking a warp. Either she doesn't know about warps, or the Galaxy Warp, or she knew somehow that it was broken.

Note, three episodes of season one have been moved to season two, including, unfortunately, the one I had been looking the most forward to, Story for Steven, the story of how Greg and Rose met.

Second note: The Crewniverse is working on the last episode of season two right now. Let's keep our fingers crossed for more stories of Steven and his friends.
posted by JHarris at 3:27 PM on March 6, 2015

"We don't know what this stuff is."

Well, I'm guessing it's mostly silicon, since 4 of the 5 gems are named after silicon based gems. In fact... the only gem who isn't is Pearl. You might say they're silicon based life forms! I admit this interpretation would make more sense if Amethyst and Pearl swapped names. So I doubt the show makers had this in mind from the start.

And to add fuel to the "Garnet is a fusion" conspiracy theories, Garnet isn't a specific gem, but a family of neosilicates. Their color varies, and Garnet's color suggests pyrope. But pyrope is often found in mixture with almandine and spessartine, in varying proportions.
posted by pwnguin at 11:02 PM on March 8, 2015

I just rewatched Warp Tour, and Peridot definitely mentions locating and reactivating the kindergarten in that episode. Which means she was definitely trying to reactivate it in this episode.

Speaking of Peridot, she didn't seem worried or intimidated by the Crystal Gems. Hmmmmm
posted by sleeping bear at 11:45 PM on March 8, 2015