Here’s your everyday casual reminder that the original Steven Universe is dead and we’re all watching everything that happens in an alternate timeline.
No really.
I’ve only been in the Steven Universe fandom for a few months now but I haven’t seen anyone talk about this.
The episode Steven and the Stevens is admittedly not one of my favorite episodes. I think they made Steven (and Steven and Steven and Steven and Steven and St) way too annoying and out of character. But it also brings up one of the most fascinating plot points in the entire show that nobody in the fandom seems to want to talk about. Or maybe, as a newcomer, I’m just looking at it wrong but I think the evidence is clear.
The episode starts off with Steven getting the hourglass and going back in time:
There he styles his hair:
Which is really important; this way we know that he is Steven, our Steven.
So chaos ensues and he eventually goes back to stop his past-self from getting the hourglass:
Which causes him to go mad with power:
He then realizes that none of this is right and he realizes that there’s only one way to fix it – destroying the hourglass:
And then he dies.
And then he dies:
He dies.
The original Steven Universe dies!
The Steven that we’ve watched for twenty-two episodes at this point dies, scarring his past-self who now lives in an alternate timeline where he never used the hourglass to go back in time.
Granted, we’re still watching Steven. But he’s slightly different than the original Steven that we’ve watched for twenty-two episodes. That Steven completely sacrifices himself and dies a horrific death on-screen and nobody seems to want to talk about it!?
And now, everything that has happened since that episode and everything that will happen is on an alternate timeline.
Don’t believe me?
Steven says it himself, when he’s singing at the end of the episode:
“I accidentally created an alternate timeline.”
Boom.
The original Steven Universe is dead and everything that we’re watching now is on an alternate timeline.
A Homestuck here. We’ve dealt with figuring out this kind of time nonsense for years.
The alternate timeline was created was when a Steven from the future didn’t appear. At that moment, the timeline was a Doomed timeline, but one that would affect the Alpha timeline.
That means that the Steven from episodes 1 to 21 is still the Steven from episodes 23 onward, and is the Steven in the final timeline of episode 22, but the Steven we see at the start of episode 22 IS from a different timeline.
And because he is from a non-Alpha timeline, Steven22 could not survive when he entered the Alpha timeline, but by appearing in the Alpha timeline, he ensured that it stayed on the Alpha path.
So, he is effectively the Davesprite of Steven Universe.
