Nightmare Fuel / Steven Universe: Future

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Here we are in the future and it's bright!^note Nothing to fear, no one to fight!

While Steven Universe has never been afraid to dip its ankle into some dark waters, Steven Universe: Future decides to simply dive in headfirst, and bathe itself in its murky darkness. With the show mainly focusing on and deconstructing Steven's attempts to adjust to his new life in Era 3, Future ultimately provides new waves of terror even veteran fans weren't prepared for.

All spoilers are unmarked. You have been warned.

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Opening/Trailers

• The new opening includes a brief shot featuring the presumed new antagonists much like the one featured in the original extended intro of the Homeworld gems. Said antagonists include an enraged Jasper, what looks like a fusion between Aquamarine and Eyeball, two newly seen Lapis Lazulis, a Cactus Steven with a huge chest and several heads growing out of it, what seems to be White Diamond tinged pink, and a huge, completely unidentified monster in the back with no visible gemstone. Also, every character's eyes, and in Jasper and the Diamond's cases, facial features are illuminated.
  • The spiked monster in the back is particularly unsettling. To start, it's the only antagonist in the shot that moves, and it ends its motion with an ominious gleaming that reveals two black eyes with glowing white pupils. The creature also is apparently gargantuan, easily towering over the rest of the antagonists (even White Diamond!). Finally, the monster doesn't seem like anything the Crystal Gems have ever faced in the series before. All the other antagonists in the shot are known or recognizable gems or can be explained by elements already established within the show (like Cactus Steven being a result of Steven's powers alike to the watermelon Stevens), but there is no clear hint of what the monster is, making its prominence in the shot even more creepy, especially when we finally get to "I Am My Monster", and said monster eventually turns out to be Steven himself!
• The trailer starts off lightly for ten seconds... then the music suddenly distorts and the tone of the trailer changes to pure Nightmare Fuel.
  • Steven as Pink Steven looking at his reflection, completely enraged, before covering his mouth in shock. The fact that Steven even got angry in the first place could arguably count, as Steven rarely gets angry.
  • A few seconds later, Steven is seen clutching his head in pain, with little context given behind it. The same thing happens to Pink Pearl a few shots later.
  • Pink Pearl just standing there with that familiar blank smile while the crack on her face worsens.
  • Jasper is back, and she looks completely unhinged as she rushes at someone while laughing maniacally.
    Jasper: You are not my Diamond!
  • Last, we see Pink Steven in his full glory. He takes over his human half, and it's clearly very painful for him.
• The trailer for the first half of Steven Universe Future has nothing on the second trailer.
  • Connie finally returns to the show... And her first line is "Steven! I've been worried about you!" That can't mean anything good, especially since Steven is pink as he holds his phone. Doubles as Tear Jerker. Everything after that, however...
  • Steven screaming with very little context given, immediately followed by him in a crater.
  • Steven (in a hospital gown) jumps out of a chair in pain, and there is a very visible growth in his side.
  • An implied nightmare sequence, broken up into pieces. The background is entirely missing except for the house and a strangely wavy sky, and then the porch closes out on Steven. He falls away from the house, before jolting awake...
  • Steven doing something that causes the windows and all fragile objects in the house to crack.
  • At the end of it, Steven's pajamas are torn in very specific places on his wrists, chest and legs. And he's still pink...
  • In general, Steven spends over half of the trailer in pink mode.
• And don't get us started on the final trailer promoting the end of the series.
  • The fact that the two last antagonists (White Diamond and the Spiked Monster) has yet to appear and would make more horrifying implications about what would happen at the end.
  • Steven is still in his older Pink form. He's still using his uncontrollable powers and even denies hurting anyone despite the fact that he outright killed someone with his powers.
  • The Crystal Gems, Greg, and Connie looking in absolute horror at something off-screen.

Little Homeschool

• Jasper's "normal" smile when Steven agrees to fight her. Considering this is Jasper - a normally perpetually hostile, Ax-Crazy warrior Gem - that we're talking about, seeing her pull a regular smile is both unusual and sort of frightening. She also proceeds to put on her usual terrifying Slasher Smile right before the fight itself, taunting Steven into making the first move in a rather menacing way.

Volleyball

• The reveal that Pink Pearl/Volleyball's cracked eye doesn't heal naturally, even with Steven's healing powers is really unnerving. Considering that Steven's healing powers helped to reverse corruption (an ailment that proved very difficult to heal in the past), the failure of healing something as simple as a cracked eye tells us that it's horrifyingly bad.
• The reveal that Volleyball's injury was caused not by White Diamond, but Pink Diamond herself, who broke her in a fit of screaming rage when she didn't get what she wanted.
• Pearl and Volleyball get trapped inside the Shell in a claustrophobic moment, then almost get rejuvenated by it.
• Steven loses control of his emotions and starts shouting. His powers respond, he turns into his gem half and smashes a giant crater into the floor. As soon as he comes to his senses, he's horrified.
  • Volleyball's reaction to this is to curl up into the Troubled Fetal Position, and cover her head while shaking and whimpering in obvious terror.

Bluebird

• Eyeball and Aquamarine give Steven an ultimatum: If he values Greg's life, he will surrender, bubble the Crystal Gems, destroy his home and burn Little Homeworld to the ground. All while Aquamarine dangles Greg by his hair in the air and Eyeball has her dagger at his throat. Not helped by Aquamarine telling Eyeball to copy the movie they were watching earlier... The horror movie they were watching earlier.

A Very Special Episode

• Many of the ways Garnet tells the Little Homeworld Gems that they could die, including the Heaven and Earth Beetles accidentally falling into a garbage disposal. She goes so far as to say that many of these already happened in an alternate timeline.

Why So Blue?

• The two Lapis Lazulis introduced in the episode are so oblivious to our Lapis and Steven’s message of preserving life and enjoying nature that they continually attack our Lapis and Steven and literally slice apart the landscape with a giant water bandsaw blade. It’s a powerful reminder of the Lapis Lazuli caste's programming: to use Making a Splash to terraform planets.
• Lapis apparently honestly considered torturing the other Lapis Lazulis to get them to make a Heel–Face Turn, since she considers the torture she went through to be one of the biggest components of her Character Development.
• Some of our Lapis’s attacks themselves can be a bit terrifying, from the giant water projection of herself in a rage, to the water BFS, to The Reveal of her water wings unfurling into hands.

Little Graduation

• The shrinking of Pink Steven’s new, hard-to-control Deadly Force Field dome.
  • Made worse by Steven's inability to control it. As it shrinks and threatens to crush everybody, he grows increasingly panicked and desperate as he tries to stop it and just can't.

Prickly Pair

• Cactus Steven. Not only for its prickles and resilience, but its sheer largeness and Uncanny Valley qualities, and its genius in combat. That’s not even the worst part: the Plant Person unsettlingly warps Not in Front of the Parrot! and Quote Mine for its own Hannibal Lecture to the Gems in the climax, before Steven hugs it to back down and it leaves of its own accord by smashing through the iconic front wall of the beach house.

In Dreams

• Steven keeps trying to reenact Peridot's script in his dreams, even though he dislikes some of the plot elements and is growing more and more restless because he's that scared that she won't stay around if he doesn't do it.
• Steven seems to wake up at one point, only to see a TV test pattern on Peridot's visor...
• While Steven's bizarre dreams are funny, there are some freaky aspects. In one particular dream montage, we get glimpses of the camera cutting to Rodrigo, only to reveal they are characters from Steven's life. A few of these show the Crystal Gems flying off without him, leaving Stefan with a particularly terrified face that those he loves are leaving forever. Another scene shows normal Rodrigo, with Spinel's Injector in the background.

Growing Pains

• Steven's skeleton as shown with Dr. Maheswaran's X-ray charts is full of fractures, particularly in his skull. While she does make it clear that he is physically healthy in spite of this, the numerous amount of emotional trauma he's suffered over the years causes his body to "react to minor threats as if his life was in danger."
  • Even just the fractures themselves. Throughout all the episodes of the original series, little happy-go-lucky kid Steven Universe was being brutally and savagely injured multiple times over, and we never knew it, not even Steven knew it, since he could just walk it off in a few minutes while his body healed through gem magic. How many times has Steven come close to dying in the original show without anyone, not even the audience or Steven himself, realising it...?
• Speaking of such, Steven's body freaks out harder than it's ever been, including hideous swelling all over his body, constantly aging and de-aging, and limbs stretching beyond proportion.
• Steven recounting his past experiences to Dr. Maheswaran really brings to light how screwed up his life has been when talks about how many times he's been injured, abused, nearly killed, attacked by monsters, lost control of his body, how his loved ones almost died, how his loved ones did die—and hadn't even got through the first season. When Dr. Maheswaran explains how his trauma affects his body, Steven flashes back to some of the scariest, most traumatizing, and most terrifying events in his life in rapid succession.
• The real nightmare scenario? We've seen this before. The fractures in his skeleton and increasing lack of control over his physical form, that's what happens when Gems crack and/or shatter. Only this time, Steven is cracking emotionally, and no amount of Rose's tears or spit is going to save him.
• The music in the episode, right as Dr. Maheswaran brings up the mental stress, gives an outright creepy vibe as Steven recalls all his most traumatizing moments at once, stopping here and there when they're not focusing on the memory. However, it hits a strong pitch and becomes the main background music the moment Steven remembers his proposal to Connie.

Mr. Universe

• The entire argument between Greg and Steven is as horrifying as it is sad. When Steven realizes that Greg essentially ran away from home and his super strict parents much like how Pink Diamond ran away from Homeworld and the Diamonds, Steven flies into a rage, ranting at Greg for valuing his freedom over giving him a normal childhood. The argument culminates in Steven ripping the steering wheel right out of its socket and crashing the van. Thankfully neither he nor Greg are seriously injured, but still...
  • Steven realizing that Greg essentially neglected him from having a normal childhood, and that he has a lot more in common with his mother than he realized. It's that a-ha moment most parents fear the most from their child- the moment they recognize how screwed up their parent really is.
  • The scene where Steven deletes Greg's yearbook photo from his phone. The whole time, he's entirely tuned out Greg and has a look of contempt on his face.

Fragments

• The fact that Steven kills and eats a fish is a telling sign of how much he has given in to his darker impulses, especially when earlier episodes in this series showed him upset at Jasper for crushing a beetle and established him as a vegetarian.
• Jasper's lessons inspire Steven to finally let loose with his powers. She pushes him harder, to hold nothing back, and he complies. Then, as their fight progresses, Steven starts to fly, he glows brighter, and he starts to giggle, which quickly morphs into a genuine Evil Laugh. When he manages to trap Jasper, he summons a wall of spikes, and the last we see of their fight is him bringing it down on her, grinning like a maniac with pink, diamond-shaped eyes, before it suddenly cuts away to a black screen. Zach Callison's performance in this scene is utterly chilling.
  Steven: You're right, Jasper... I HAVE BEEN HOLDING BACK!
  • The next scene sees Steven running towards the temple, hiding something in his pocket. He blows Pearl off and hides in the bathroom, frantically opening the tap for the bathtub and sweeping the bottles of Diamond essence into the tub. Then he takes his hand out of his pocket and uncovers... Jasper's broken gem. Steven didn't just defeat her, he shattered her. In a fit of uncontrolled fury and power, he's killed another Gem for the first time in his life (complete with a tearful face afterwards) and it goes to show just how powerful Steven truly is and that despite normally being a sweet kid, he can be downright terrifying when pushed to the edge.
  • To really show how terrifying this is, before the scene changed, it showed Jasper terrified. She just realized just how screwed she was before the poof. Keep in mind that all this time, up to this point, she was depicted as relentless and virtually without an ounce of fear in her; seeing her so terrified can not mean good news at all.
  • Here's how lasting the shattering is: when Jasper is reformed, one of her horns has been broken in half!
  • The crowning moment of nightmare fuel however is when Jasper, after being brought back, bows down to Steven and addresses him as her Diamond. All of Steven's problems regarding his mother have come crashing down on him. He's not becoming like Rose/Pink, he's becoming worse than her.
  • Many have seen similarities to how Lapis attacked the other Lapises in "Why So Blue", right down to their sadistic smiles and their targets' worried looks, as well as their respect towards how they've witnessed true power. If anything, Steven's becoming more against his own ideals, and more like the pre-Era 3 Diamonds' ideals.
• Admit it, you, yes, you the audience, you didn't think Jasper was going to be restored, or worse, Come Back Wrong until she was fully formed again, did you?
• A lot of people have compared Steven's Pink Form as similar to a Super Saiyan. This episode proved them right, only Steven's not Goku - he's Broly.^note Old Broly, not the new one.

Homeworld Bound

• White Diamond has been acting as a sort of self-help guru by using her powers in reverse, allowing Gems to take control of her. She demonstrates this by having Spinel take control of her. While the scene is meant to be Played for Laughs, watching the calm and serene White Diamond suddenly turn into a cartoon character is more disturbing than funny, not helped by the fact that Spinel's facial features do not mesh well on White's face.
• When controlling White Diamond, Steven suffers flashbacks to all the things she did to him. Suddenly, White shrinks to Steven's size, while Steven grows to White's size. White - in Steven's voice - is yanked around like a marionette, begging Steven to stop as he forces her to walk towards a pillar, and smash her gem into it. Fortunately for White, it was a hallucination, and Steven just hit his own head on the pillar, but after having shattered Jasper in the previous episode and trying to seek help, Steven has just attempted to shatter another gem.
  • After the spell breaks, White Diamond ends up collapsing on the floor, looking completely horrified. White Diamond, the most powerful gem in existence, is absolutely terrified of Steven.
  • With Jasper's shattering in the previous episode, the show left it ambiguous whether or not Steven intended for her to die and deeply regretted killing her later (once the full consequences of committing murder sank in), or if he only meant to poof her and he severely underestimated his own strength. In this episode, Steven's murderous intentions to end White Diamond's life are made completely, unambiguously clear, revealing a vengeful and malicious side of Steven's personality that's directed towards people who've wronged him, a side of him he probably never knew he had, and that scares even him now that he knows what he's capable of.
  • Even more horrifying, Steven threw all of the diamond-essence bottles into the bath during "Fragments", using up everything that they had on-hand. Unless there was a large supply somewhere else, there would've been no way to heal her.
  • While it doesn't look like White was in any danger, the sequence is still frightening when you consider it a muddled mess of all of Steven's biggest issues: his lingering anger at the Diamonds (especially White), his mother issues (and remember, Pink was a Diamond too), his envy at everyone he knows moving on to a happier life while he's stuck in trauma and depression, and his self-loathing from all the issues that come with being brought-up half-Gem. Look at the scene afterward; while White Diamond is still roughly in the place she was standing, Steven had put a sizable dent in a stone pillar by head-butting it.
  • If Steven wasn't scary enough in "Fragments" with his vicious, aggressive demeanor, he's even scarier in this scene with White Diamond. As he forces White Diamond to walk towards the pillar, there's no emotion in him at all. He's completely cold and flat, further proving himself to have become worse than his mother. Zach did an absolutely tremendous job with his voice acting in this scene. Fans have collectively agreed that Steven's voice is terrifying.
    White Diamond: (in Steven's voice) No, stop it! I don't like this!
    Steven: Too bad.
    White Diamond: (in Steven's voice) Let me go! Please! You're scaring me!
    Steven: This is for everything you put me through!
  • What makes this scene much worse is how cold and calculated it is. It isn't like "Fragments" where Steven allowed himself to be as violent as possible and Jasper got caught in the aftermath, Steven is fully intent on what he's doing, and just the fact that he restrained White Diamond before forcing her to nearly destroy her own gem is so sadistic and ruthless that it's hard to believe that it was done by our Steven.
• The entire episode, despite the lighthearted elements that attempt to better the mood, is a collection of scary content. Steven is losing control of himself, glowing pink every now and then and showing signs of gradual mental breakdown. And it gets progressively worse throughout the episode. It starts with him spontaneously glowing and brushing his friends and Jasper off, and ends with him attempting to shatter one of the Diamonds and then running back home as his body once again suffers random deformations as if he were an unstable fusion. Even worse, Steven doesn't want to do any of this, but unfortunately for him, he's getting more and more consumed by his own turmoil and it's only a matter of time until he loses himself and something very bad happens.
• Since the intro was unveiled, everyone wondered why White Diamond seemed to be included among the antagonists despite her Heel–Face Turn. Now we know, and Steven's Sanity Slippage combined with the upcoming "I Am My Monster" means that the last figure in that part of the intro, that colossal beast that dwarfs all of the other antagonists, is most likely (and ultimately is) Steven himself!

Everything's Fine

• The mere promo image◊ has fans unsettled due to it depicting an all too calm looking Steven and proclaiming everything to be fine. The fact that Steven's breakdown-induced Diamond Pupils are visible in the promo art only makes it scarier.
• The opening scene sets the tone for the nightmare to come. Steven arrives on Earth and finds his powers are completely out of control. He's constantly in his muscular Pink form and his subconscious is broadcasting itself even while he's awake. When he looks to see he still has his Diamond eyes, he has a mini Freak Out and fully retreats into the last coping mechanism he has left: putting on a happy face and pretending everything's okay. The cracks in his voice are a red flag that he's completely losing it.
  Steven: No, no, no, no th-thi-this isn't happening... I-I didn't think about shattering White, I-I didn't shatter Jasper, I didn't fight with dad, I-... I'm Steven Universe! ...I'm fine... I'm (voice cracks) FINE!! (window next to him cracks)
• Steven catching the baseball flying at the Heaven and Earth Beetle's window, and right as he expresses relief that he didn't mess it up, his excitement causes him to utterly level the building by accident.
• Steven's comment about nearly killing White is clearly meant to parallel intrusive thoughts.
• This episode brings the moment that fans have been dreading since the show started: Steven’s corruption.
  • The process begins with Steven finally snapping, at first downplaying his issues throughout Future, then revealing that he shattered Jasper and thought about smashing White Diamond's head into a pillar in front of Greg, Connie, and the Crystal Gems. This then descends into a fit of self-loathing and he collapses to the floor, decrying himself a fraud and a monster just like his mother before he transforms. Once again, Zach Callison gives a truly terrifying performance as you can hear the raw madness and anguish in his voice as Steven completely falls apart. Making everything so much worse is the background music, which sounds just as sick to its stomach as Steven himself probably feels at this moment. It makes the pure pain the poor kid is going through so palpable throughout his entire breakdown that it's almost a relief when he finally caves in on himself.
    Steven: You're making a big deal out of nothing! Have I done some things wrong? Sure! I trashed the house today! I broke an anvil, what teenager hasn't?! Dad and I had a little disagreement, but that's practically a rite of passage! I mean, it would be weird if we didn't right?! And maaaybe I've had a not so nice thought or two about, like, you know, slamming White Diamond's head through a pillar. But it's not like I actually went through with it!! I only ACTUALLY shattered Jasper!!
    Everyone: (gasps in horror)
    Amethyst: WHAT?!
    Connie: You...you're joking, right?
    Steven: Ohhhh don't worry! I fixed that too! I can fix ANYTHING!! I can just keep messing up and fixing things forever!! And you'll never have to know or think about any of it!!
    Garnet: Steven...
    Steven: ...How messed up is that? That I've gotten away with this for so long. You have no idea how bad I am! Y-You think I'm so great and so mature and I always know what to do- but that's not true! I haven't learned a thing from my problems! They've all just made me worse! You think of me as some angel, but I'm not that kid anymore...! ...I'm a fraud... (Breaks down to the floor, sobbing) ...I'm a fraud. I'M A MONSTER!
  • Focusing on one moment of that breakdown, for most of it Steven sounds stressed and unstable. But during one line in particular, "smashing White Diamond's head through a pillar", his voice suddenly gets much calmer, and only for that one moment. It doesn't help that he gains a Slasher Smile during that moment.
  • This episode plays out disturbingly like a real-life mental breakdown from PTSD, depression, or worse, suicidal ideation. It's important to note Steven didn't spend the episode holding himself together. He had already lost control, and his only coping mechanism left was to pretend that everything was fine and try to be a version of himself that wasn't even real.
  • Through the whole thing, the Gems, Connie and Greg are standing there in horror as they all see the full picture of what's been going on with Steven lately, and it's much worse than any of them thought. The fear of realizing that your child (or friend) has gotten to such a bad place almost without you realizing is very strong.
  • A brief Freeze-Frame Bonus (if you can even call this a bonus): When Steven turns into Stevenzilla, his transformation doesn't happen like a standard Gem transformation (where they turn into a white blob that changes into the new shape). Rather, Steven falls onto his stomach, and then a giant pillar of spikes come tearing out of his back.
• Much like the previous episode before it, this episode, despite its attempts at levity to lighten the mood, is a collection of scary moments as it features Steven hitting the climax of a prolonged emotional and mental breakdown. It begins with Steven putting on a Mask of Sanity in a desperate attempt to hide his emotional problems, then having the mask gradually fall apart until he's finally forced to admit that everything's not okay... and then he turns into a monster, leaving the Crystal Gems to confront their biggest challenge yet: a corrupted Steven.

I Am My Monster

• Steven's corrupted form gives us a look at what would happen if someone with the Diamond's power became corrupted: a Godzilla-like pink kaiju that's bigger than the temple and the hill it's a part of. Worse yet, nothing the other gems do seems to faze him: he defeats Alexandrite with relative ease, it takes all of Lapis' power to temporarily hold him back, the Diamonds' own powers essentially bounce off of him, and even the Cluster itself can only slow him down. If it weren't for all of Steven's friends, allies and former enemies giving him a massive group hug and snapping him out of it, then they'd be faced with an unstoppable monster.
  • Take a moment to realize that Steven's ultimate monstrous form is, for all intents and purposes, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the unstoppable, unkillable, world-destroying creature that has been feared and hated by absolutely everyone. It's bad enough if the Crewniverse used this as a metaphor, but the real nightmare scenario is Steven unconsciously selecting this form because this is how he's come to see himself.
  • The scene where Stevenzilla's spikes glow and then he unleashes a roar powerful enough to free himself from Lapis's water chains, knock everyone down (including the Diamonds and their ship!) and unfuse Garnet. The worst of all is that such power is probably just a mere glimpse of what the creature is truly capable of. Considering that Pink Steven was already terrifyingly strong with his diamond powers, Stevenzilla could have easily unleashed hell on Earth had he been actively malicious and willing to use his full power.
    • Add to this the fact that Steven isn't even doing this consciously! His monster form is terrified and upset, and is lashing out at everything around him. Just as dangerous animals are known to do when incredibly stressed out. Steven's stress at all of the out-of-control situations that have been going on have corrupted him into a frightened, cornered animal. And as anyone knows, there's nothing more unpredictable or dangerous than a frightened, cornered animal.
  • The soundtrack... The start of his rampage is preceded by what seems to be a completely broken rendition of Steven's theme, with the cheerful notes playing slower amidst a malformed drone of instruments.
• White's attempt to link with Steven's mind to help him leads to her being knocked over and crying out "That's not Steven anymore!", while Sapphire mentions later that if they don't do something soon, Steven will be trapped in that form forever. This seems to confirm that The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body in this scenario.

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