Small Details You Missed In Steven Universe: The Movie

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It's finally here, Steven Universe: The Movie, and it's everything we could have hoped for. There are four main things we love about this show: the action, the comedy, the music, and most importantly, the feelings. And in all four categories, this movie thoroughly delivered. We only cried a little bit, we promise.

But there's also a fifth thing that we love about Steven Universe, and that's the detail. Since the first episode, every corner of Steven's world has always been packed with Easter eggs, but because this movie has a higher budget and more detailed animation than usual, and also because the movie is somewhat of a victory lap celebrating the show's first five seasons, Steven Universe: The Movie has somehow crammed in even more subtle details.

After watching the film multiple times, not only can we now confirm that all of these new songs are going to be stuck in our heads forever, but also there is, as expected, so much to unpack. We've cataloged all the visual gags, nods to previous continuity, pop culture references, and clues to ongoing mysteries that we could find, and we're here to run down each and every one for you.

But first, if you just finished watching the movie, please take a moment to dry your tears before reading any further, so you won't mess up whatever device you're reading this on. Okay, are you ready? Then let's get started!

After the opening credits, we see a broadcast in which Steven announces to the galaxy that he will be returning to Earth, saying that even though he is still committed to helping Gemkind recover, he doesn't want to sit on a throne. He wants to continue living in his beach house with his friends.

As Steven is saying this, we cut between different planets and see various groups of Gems watching the feed. There are numerous cameos sprinkled throughout, including the two Zircons from the episode "The Trial," but there is also an amazingly creepy hidden detail during a brief shot of the feed being broadcast in an overgrown ruin, seemingly to no one. Something is looming in the foreground. You might discount it as some bit of strange overgrown architecture the first time you see it, but during your second watch, you'll realize that this location is Pink Diamond's garden, and the thing in the foreground is undeniably Spinel's foot, covered in vines after 6,000 years of standing perfectly still.

As Spinel will explain later in the film, seeing this broadcast finally makes it click for her that Pink Diamond has simply forgotten about her and made new friends. At this moment, Spinel decides to stop waiting, and instead swear vengeance against Pink Diamond. Or y'know, Steven, since Homeworld Gems tend to have a hard time understanding the difference between the two.

One final heartbreaking detail: many of the flowers in Pink's garden are forget-me-nots. Ouch.

Just like how the visual world of this film is an endless buffet of hidden meanings and nods to earlier continuity, the songs of Steven Universe: The Movie are similarly dense with auditory Easter eggs. Steven Universe has been going on for so long that it has now developed a semi-secret musical language in which melodies from previous songs are sometimes used as leitmotifs in newer ones, and each character is represented by a signature instrument that reflects their personality.

Steven's songs tend to feature upbeat chiptune music that evokes thoughts video games and childhood innocence. Pearl is associated with an elegant and mournful piano that reflects both her knightly grace and her melancholy. Amethyst's chaotic and rebellious nature is represented by aggressive rock drumming, with a heaping helping of erratic drum fills. Lastly, Garnet is typically accompanied by deep bass guitar solos that sometimes also contain breakbeat samples, a mixture of sounds that perfectly embodies the character's rock solid reliability and smooth confident swagger.

Musically matching a character with an instrument occurs throughout the film's soundtrack, but the clearest examples of this can be found throughout "Happily Ever After," which contains a verse sung by each of the four principal characters. As you might imagine, Steven's section contains chiptune, Pearl's section contains piano, Garnet's section contains bass, and Amethyst's section contains drums. Additionally, Garnet's verse contains a subtle reprise of "Stronger Than You," her breakout hit (if you'll pardon the pun) from the episode "Jail Break."

Steven Universe: The Movie introduces us to "Little Homeworld," a new neighborhood on the edge of Beach City that is full of the formerly corrupted Gem monsters from the first five seasons of the show, who have now had their sentient minds and humanoid bodies restored.

None of the new Gems get any speaking lines, but whenever there's a scene that takes place in Little Homeworld, the background is populated with former bad guys that are now cured of their monstrous tendencies, such as the puffer fish monster from the episode "Beach Party," who is now wearing a slick red sweater (and whose name was confirmed to be "Watermelon Tourmaline" by co-executive producer Ian Jones-Quartey).

Additionally, in many of the scenes in Beach City proper, we see some Gems scattered about in crowd shots, hanging out with humans, confirming that Beach City's new alien residents have been (at least so far) largely accepted by the humans who already lived there.

However, there's still one formerly corrupted Gem who is notably absent from the film, and that's Jasper. When she was defeated by the Crystal Gems, she was still very much trying to kill them, so it's entirely possible that she isn't as friendly with Steven and his pals as the rest of the Gem refugees. She's most likely living on her own somewhere, and given that she's one of the largest question marks left in the show, Jasper's fate is likely to be explored further when we finally get season six.

Not everyone in Beach City is growing. Onion is exactly the same. By this, we don't just mean that this strange little child is not aging — and for the record, it seems like he isn't — we also mean that he continues to operate outside the normal laws of the universe.

It's easy to miss, but there is a hilarious background detail during the montage when Steven and Lion are searching Beach City for Amethyst. Steven is using Lion's ability to make portals to teleport all around town, searching vast areas of it in relatively short periods of time, and all throughout the montage, whenever Steven arrives in a new location, Onion is already there, doing something in the background. He's buying fries from Beach Citywalk Fries, he's hanging out with an unnamed Gem in front of Funland, he's riding on a rollercoaster behind Steven, and he's sitting on the floor of the Big Donut.

This might just be a dumb continuity joke, but if it isn't, does that mean there are multiple Onions running around? Remember that in the episode "Onion Trade," Onion did get his hands of Pearl's replicator wand for a bit... oh wait, that doesn't work. The copies all vanished when the wand got destroyed, so we're back to square one. All we know for sure is that, after five seasons and a movie, Onion remains a complete enigma, and y'know what? We're cool with that. Keep Beach City weird, Onion.

This movie is just so jam-packed with subtle visual gags and references, if we kept listing them, we'd be here all day, but here's three more little ones that tickled us.

First, at one point when Connie skids to halt while riding Lion, it's a nearly perfect recreation of the iconic shot from the movie Akira in which the protagonist Kaneda pulls off a similar maneuver on his motorcycle.

Next up, during the scene where Peridot is attempting to analyze Spinel's giant injector, we see on Peridot's computer screen a paused video window in which she was apparently watching Camp Pining Hearts, evidence that Peridot's fervor for this Canadian teen drama hasn't diminished over the past two years.

And finally, during an establishing shot in which Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl are waiting in the beach house for Steven and Spinel to return from their trip to Pink Diamond's garden, the memory-wiped Garnet briefly picks up a spork, enraptured by it. It's a subtle joke about the fact that Garnet, a fusion of the Gems Ruby and Sapphire, feels a kinship to this strange utensil, itself a fusion of a spoon and a fork.