Together Forever
Original Air Date: 3/14/20
Official synopsis: Connie has a really clear vision for her future. Steven wants to make sure he’ll be a part of it.
The episode begins with Steven and Connie on a video call during one of Connie’s 15-minute study breaks. Connie is still a couple of years away from college, but is already certain about where she wants to go and what she wants to major in. Steven asks Connie if she became interested in her intellectual pursuits because of her experience with the Gem war and she makes it clear that she’s really just interested in a normal human career rather than an intergalactic one.
Before their call ends, Steven makes a bid for connection that Connie misses by asking if she wants to come over to retrieve the college brochure that she left at his house. Not understanding that he’s really asking to spend more time with her, she tells him that it’s not necessary. After the call, he looks at the brochure and realizes that the college where Connie wants to go is really far from Beach City. Turning pink, he begins to sink into his bed.
Steven’s isolation continues to be apparent in this episode. He needs someone to talk to, but Connie is studying all the time, Greg is on tour with Sadie and Shep, and the Gems are busy with Little Homeschool. He goes downstairs, surprised to find that Garnet is still in the house, although she is about to run to the two classes that she’s teaching: Sapphire to a lecture on alternate timelines and Ruby to her scout troupe. Steven follows Ruby to her troupe meeting where she adorably sends her scouts on a nature-sketching mission before talking to Steven about what’s bothering him.
Once again, Steven is feeling like everyone around him knows what they’re doing with their lives except for him. Connie's certainty in particular is hard for him because her plans for her own life will take her away from Steven. While describing his dilemma to Ruby, Steven gets the idea to fuse with Connie so they can be Stevonnie forever. Ruby takes this idea one step further by telling Steven to propose and she sends Steven to Sapphire to confirm that this is the right choice.
When Steven shows up to Sapphire’s lecture at the beach, she knows why he’s coming and what he wants to ask about. She draws an elaborate equation in the sand by which Steven could tell whether or not proposing to Connie is a good idea, but then it’s washed away by the waves. Sapphire uses this as a lesson to show Steven that love can make anything happen, and that you can’t predict how love will change things. Sapphire also enthusiastically encourages Steven to propose.
A montage then ensues where Steven dresses up, prepares an adorable picnic basket, and gets a glow ring (a throwback to when they first met) to propose to Connie. He takes Lion to Connie's house and convinces her to come with him for a walk during her next fifteen minute study break. As they walk down the beach, they reminisce about the first time they met. Then Steven shows Connie the picnic he has made on that very spot.
It's clear that Steven has planned everything about this moment perfectly. On the picnic blanket are flowers along with a plate of toast and jam and durian juice boxes. He picks up his guitar and sings "I'd Rather Be Me With You." During this whole time, Connie is smitten...up until the moment that Steven gets down on his knee with the glow ring and proposes that they get married and live as Stevonnie. Completely surprised, she asks to slow down, reminds Steven that they are really young and that she wants to live her own life apart from him and Stevonnie, too. She gives him a hug and he asks if it's a "no." She says it's a "not right now." Her study alarm goes off and Steven encourages her to go back to studying, which she reluctantly does.
With Connie gone, Steven no longer hides how devastated he is by Connie's refusal. He collapses onto the sand, turns pink, and blasts a giant crater around him that destroys his guitar and the picnic setup. Sunset turns into night and Steven finally emerges from the crater, looking like he's been crying for a long time. Garnet sits on the sand by his picnic basket, waiting for him.
As they walk back home, Steven blames Garnet for misleading him--not only because of Ruby and Sapphire's advice, but because Garnet makes their relationship look so easy. Garnet points out that there was no future in which Steven didn't propose to Connie but he can't use her to fill a hole in his life. Steven decides to make himself feel better by eating the now-ruined cake he got, which had "Together Forever" written in icing on the top. Garnet tells him it won't make him feel better as he stuffs his mouth anyway.
★
I see “Bismuth Casual” as the true end of the first half of Steven Universe Future.
Up until now, most of the episodes have been what I’m calling “follow up” episodes. That is, their purpose is mostly to check in on how certain characters are doing after the end of the main series, or to follow up on plots or tensions left unresolved before now. So far we have followed up on: Jasper (“Little Homeschool”), Amethyst and the Gems attending Little Homeschool (“Guidance”), the Human Zoo and the state of Steven’s feelings about his mom (“Rose Buds”), Pearl and Pink Pearl (“Volleyball”), Aquamarine, Eyeball Ruby, and the idea that there are Gems out there who don’t have an interest in Era 3 (“Bluebird”), Sunstone and Rainbow Quartz 2.0—and Onion (“A Very Special Episode”), the relationship between Steven and the three Gems, as well as their fusions (“Snow Day”), Lapis Lazuli (“Why So Blue?”), Steven’s Beach City human friends (“Little Graduation”), Peridot (“In Dreams”), and Bismuth (“Bismuth Casual”). We do not see most of these characters again after these episodes, except as short cameos. The cast now starts dwindling down to the core six characters: Steven, Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Connie, and Greg. Jasper, Spinel, and the Diamonds will all make important appearances, but the focus is on Steven and those closest to him.
For the most part, you could watch the first 12 episodes in the series out of order and it wouldn’t make that big of a difference in your understanding of the plot. They are, well, episodic. We do see Steven’s mental health begin to disintegrate in the background of the first 10 episodes, but it doesn’t become the main subject of the series until “In Dreams.” However, both “In Dreams” and “Bismuth Casual” wrap up with tidy endings that don’t quite make us feel like we’re watching a mental health crisis. By the end of “Together Forever,” though, that crisis becomes unavoidable.
In "Together Forever", Steven swings in the opposite direction from "Bismuth Casual." In that episode, he was afraid of spending too much time with Connie, taking up too much of her attention from her other friends. But after having one amazing moment where he fuses with her and feels good--probably for the first time he's felt good in months--he starts to see spending time with Connie as the only way he can feel good and desperately grasps for that feeling.
Connie is absolutely right to reject this vision of the future that Steven has for them, even if she can't quite see where it's coming from. Steven wants the certainty that Connie has and he's willing to completely give up on his individual life choices just to be guided by her. Connie knows that she needs to develop as a person and figure things out for herself--and, implicitly, that Steven needs to do so as well. She's not concerned that they won't have the ability to spend their lives together. The conversation they have after she proposes has a lot packed into it, but I think this is the moment that's most telling:
CONNIE: We've got plenty of time, don't worry.
STEVEN: I'm not worried, I'm just...happy to be with you.
Connie is seeing Steven's proposal as if it were given in a normal frame of mind. Thinking practically, she says that they don't need to worry about getting married right away because they have a lot of time for their lives to develop. But that's the opposite of what Steven wants. He needs to feel better right now, not some time in the future. And so seeing that Connie doesn't have the same urgency as him, he hides his feelings from her. During that pause, which I've represented with three dots, he looks away briefly. Deciding that he can't tell Connie what's really going on, he decides to stick to the safe narrative that this is all just about how much he loves her. When Connie's study alarm goes off, he insists that she goes back to studying, putting on the act that none of this is a big deal. Only when he's alone does he fall apart.
Steven's conversation with Garnet at the end of the episode helps us understand why this all went down the way it did, but it doesn't help Steven much. Sapphire and Ruby, who both have positive experiences with the power of love and limited experience with the human institution of marriage, encouraged Steven to propose. But neither of them guaranteed that Steven would get married to Connie. What Sapphire actually said to Steven is that even though she has future vision, she cannot predict how things will turn out when love is involved, so he should do it anyway. Steven, however, took this as certainty in his mind that he should propose and it would turn out well. Given that he has been so directionless, it's not a surprise that he latched onto Ruby and Sapphire's advice without hesitation and prepared for proposing to Connie as if their marriage was certain. Now, after he's been rejected, Steven feels betrayed and humiliated.
When Garnet tells him at the end of the episode that he can't fill a hole in his life by marrying someone else, Steven gets a look of shock and anger on his face. That's what he'd mistakenly thought Ruby and Sapphire were doing all along. It's a big disappointment to understand that they'd had to put in the hard work of having their own lives and being in a relationship, like everyone else.
And while Garnet could have seen the likely possibility of Steven's rejection, she doesn't quite understand what it means for him. For Steven, being rejected by Connie feels like losing his last hope of knowing what his life is about and over the next several episodes we'll see him search for that hope more and more desperately.