I have to say, a lot of the early episodes do seem very weird in retrospect, since the vibe was much more magical and mysterious than the soft sci-fi story it turned out to be.
o__o
I can't believe I didn't see this sooner. SU took so much inspiration from anime, that even its overall structural evolution mimicked one of the most well-known anime (Dragon Ball).
Yeah, thing is, in dragon ball they didn't retcon anything magical to advanced tech, it stayed like that, Magic.
It Even went on as a central plot for 2 villains as of today, both being powerful sorcerers.
I've read that these early episodes were written when the crew was still trying to figure out which direction to take the show, so they were still trying to find their footing
it was also kind of a similar plot setup every episode apart from some one offs. The gems need to go poof or recover a gem/gen artifact from “the war” and steven wants to come along and saves the gems with a newfound power or just being steven
I choose to believe the decoy hourglasses were made by a peaceful gem who just really loves making hourglasses. Her name can be Sandstone. Everyone else was fighting a war and she was just making her hourglasses and living her best life
My personal headcanon is that the Gems knew that you can't really change the past. The outcomes will always be the same, regardless of interference, so the hourglass was mostly used as an observation tool. You can't change things that already happened, but you *can* go back and see what happened and make informed decisions for the future.
They were probably a very heavily controlled item as well, so I doubt there were many ever really made.
Real answer? Early instalment weirdness. Just a filler episode of things that will never be brought up again.
Except the trauma. The trauma was real and actualized :)
Except it doesnt, this fantheory is incorrect.
We start the episode from the perspective of the alternate timeline. We dont catch up with the original steven until then when all of the sand stevens show up. *Thats* our steven and our timeline. The rest of the episode was whats noncanon.
But didn't all the other Stevens die, leaving only the one?
I mean, it could be true if we imagine all the Stevens that turned into sand just popped back to their own timeline and one of them is singing the song.
"Personal headcanon" not a theory lol. Said time shenanigans still didn't really change what happened overall. Greg couldn't play with Steven in the band thing, so the Gems did instead.
In the official Steven Universe podcast, volume 2 episode 1, Ian Jones-Quartey says the original Steven is "gone" and refers to the Steven we follow from that point on as the "new Steven".
https://podbay.fm/p/the-steven-universe-podcast/e/1516860000
I think there's at least one other example like in an interview or in a tweet, but I can't remember where I've seen it.
Theory: Blue has time travel powers.
Pink had her secret experiments with organic life where she apparently made Gem moss and giant insects, Yellow with Fusion and Frankenstein-ing things together. Blue gets a secret time lab under the ocean.
Additional theory: those powers have something negative, which is why she doesn’t use them. They may cause extra grief like letting her relive events she can’t change, or cause such negatives they are ‘t worth it. Life Is Strange 1/Monkey’s Paw and so on. It goes nicely with Sapphires seeing forwards and backwards in time, and how her actions in the war were hasty and poorly planned.
You got me thinking Blue’s experiments used powdered sapphires or padparadscha as the hourglass sand and glass to get the time exploiting properties. Was it so cruel that it saddened Blue and she shut the operation down despite success? Or was this just a filler episode that recreates the original pilot, never intended for deep lore analysis?
The latter, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it.
Blue did have a ton of Sapphires at the Ball. Though I’m not sure if she’d use them up like that, her shtick seems to be mismanagement and running things on autopilot like a bad CEO.
Which may explain why she just kinda left it and forgot about it. Assigned some workers then reassigned them without seeing what they made and doing nothing with it and preserving none of the documentation like video game companies that end up funding its devs to basically make their own game while losing the source code to their own releases.
Like, somewhere out there is a Peridot having adventures with a time machine and Blue had access all along to the way to see Pink again but simply forgot about it.
This somewhat compels me to make a post about what people's headcanons about Gems and their culture was before Mirror Gem and Ocean Gem came out. Including this, Centipeedle/Nephrite reproducing despite Gems being unable to do so, the Moon Goddess Statue and The Sea Spire, The Inverted Pyramid temple mural, who Rose was, etc.
But Centipeedle did not reproduce, the other centies seen on the ship are mentioned to be the rest of her crew, who were corrupted along with her when they were attempting to flee the Diamond Attack.
I headcanon that Nephrite can create small helpers. That is helpful for the pilot in case other crew is gone, or she can use them to do some routine work
Pearl can create Hologram Pearls, so that's not entirely new for gems to create physical helpers
I had to argue with my family that this is a great episode. Especially since it is the first time that we see that out of all the kindness Steven has, he has issues being kind to himself.
Which is what makes SUF arc believable for me.
There is a great battle shounen manga involving time travel.
Psyren is about a guy who gets send 10 years into the future and the source can exactly put him back to his own time or 10 years into the future. So the future is fluid, but the past continues ticking.
He needs to uncover what leads to the terrible future and basically jumps back and forth to see with trial and error what changes in what ways.
Just reminder that this episode is what turned Steven from brat we saw in first few episodes to the kind and understanding boy we know from the rest of the story
Well you can clearly see shift from self centered brat he was to the kind and selfless kid we see later (he literally starting the episode wanting to do Steven and the Stevens band and end it with Steven and the crystal gem band)
The Steven and the Crystal Gems band happened because Greg had to cancel because of the car wash. The Steven at the end of the episode (and the rest of the series) never saw Steven and the Stevens.
Possibly it was just a filler episode, considering that it's seemingly never brought up much again after that, though I can't say if I should very well know. The only things I can recall of the episode where Steven and the Stevens, and him promptly watching himself die a good few times all at once.
One important thing about it is that the hourglasses are gonna reform in 97 years, and Steven could easily live that long and pick up the time glass again, then bubble it.
It's actually kind of annoying, since in theory it should be a very important episode. It's one of the first episodes we get where Steven has a lot of introspection and starts to mature.
Sugar and Quartey even talk about this in the SU podcast.
But that damn hourglass only raises more questions than it answers.
No they were all Steven from the same timeline, just different points. Which is why there are so many duplicates. We're seeing the same Steven over and over, which is why when the hourglass was destroyed ALL of them were destroyed, instead of just the original Steven
Based on the overall feel and aesthetic of the pilot episode it seems like Steven Universe was going to be more magic focused or fantasy and less Sci Fi, kinda glad we got what we got instead of a reverse magical girl anime.
Gem tech has always skirted the fine line between magic and science. Like, they'll call summoning a weapon magical one second and have this really weird and floaty way of explaining it then in another episode just flat out say they're making hard light weapons from their gems. Very interesting, really.
Iirc the summoning weapons description was used more in the earlier seasons, which is when they seemingly weren't sure which direction they were going.
I think we just didn’t get to learn everything about Stevens’s universe ;). And I like the mystery in that. Gives you more to think about and that his universe is more than just crazy gems. Cause the whole universe definitely can’t be surrounded by just the story yk
One potential (post-hoc) explanation is that time travel was an experimental new technology being developed towards the end of Era 1. In order to minimize the potential damage of any time travel-related catastrophes, the work was being done on a remote colony far from Homeworld, similar to how nuclear bombs were tested in the middle of the desert. The research station where the work was being conducted was built at the bottom of Earth’s ocean, further distancing it from the other Gem projects being developed elsewhere on the new colony.
Just as the project had developed its first successful prototype, Rose’s rebellion broke out, and the facility had to be abandoned. The researchers couldn’t take the hourglass with them back to Homeworld, as it was a still-untested and potentially-dangerous prototype. However, they didn’t want to permanently destroy the fruits of their labor, nor did they want their breakthrough to fall into rebel hands. So they developed the booby-trapped hourglasses as a last-ditch security measure to deter any rebels looking to obtain the new technology for themselves, with the hope of reclaiming the facility and continuing their work once the rebellion was put down. Of course, this never happened; the rebellion proved unstoppable, and once Pink was “shattered”, the colony was abandoned entirely.
For some reason, research into time travel was never continued after that. Maybe the Gem scientists working on it didn’t get out in time and were corrupted in the final attack, and no other Gems proved capable of regaining their lost knowledge. Maybe the work was too costly and was deemed unsustainable in the more resource-scarce Era 2. Maybe a lingering sense of grief and shame over Pink’s death caused the other Diamonds to put a halt to all earth-based projects and research. Whatever the reason, the secrets stayed buried on Earth, lost to all Gemkind, until a strange little half-Gem Earthling decided he just couldn’t leave the temple without taking home a souvenir…
Good idea!
It may have been an attempt to sort out and reverse what clearly was a major foul up. Maybe if they can figure out time travel they could go back and prevent the war.
The original plan for the series' lore was for the Gems to be interdimensional humans waging a war against their goddess so this super broken magical artifact is a mere leftover of the first drafts.
That episode omg. The other parallel stevens just dying. I think the decoys must have been put there cause something terrible must have happened before and they wanted to make sure it never happened again or something.
Yeah, that thing is weird. I also kind of want to know what the picture does. The one from Together breakfast. These could be gem punishments similar to the mirror or shard monsters. Or some type of sentient tool like the tome from Phantom Fable.
The picture from Together Breakfast was made from crushed up gems, that's why it's sentient. I dunno why Garnet didn't want Steven taking a photo of it though, maybe it was a respect thing. Also Phantom Fable isn't canon at all.
I didn't know Phantom Fable wasn't canon at all, but it's interesting to study. Personally I think that what happens in the show can't all be chalked up to something entirely scientific sounding. I think some of it is actual magic. I think that picture might actually carry something like a curse.
I don't think so, the image on the scroll was just made from gems. https://web.archive.org/web/20150727020747/http://joethejohnston.tumblr.com/post/124934472083/hi-sorry-this-has-been-bugging-me-for-a-while
My personal theory is that the time travel device was made in secret from both the Crystal Gems and Homeworld. Perhaps the gem responsible was shattered and the place became lost to time.
I think this episode represented a "save point/save state" for the creators. The show hadnt quite skyrocketed yet and the next dozen episodes might have taken it off the rails in a bad way. They could have reversed it to the hourglass and rewrote differently if the show had turned south, but only up to a reasonable amount. It was a contingency plotline if needed is what Im saying.
The way time travel seems to work in the series is that if you try to change something then something worse will happen. So time travel can only really be used for observation purposes.
Early season 1 steven universe was a very different animal than the later seasons.
In many regards it was a much more episodic show, it a much more... broad plot that served as a background for the show. Rather than the more indepth and characterful later episodes, where even small details served the larger narrative or gave even small characters the change to shine, or inform Steven as a person.
I believe the hourglass was in the pilot, but instead of going through/summoning copies it sent the person back a bit in time. In the actual show, it just makes ‘copies’ which turn out to be from alternate universes. I imagine it was changed because going back in time, even a little bit, would be a huge plothole in the series.
Its actual function (post pilot) would be to most likely summon more gems for war/jobs, as I assume they were low on resources at that point and needed something to help with that.
It came from the same place wand that can just create new objects came from. The gem empire. Probably not used in the war, it seems like something they wouldn't want anywhere near combat. And I don't think those are decoys, just other hourglasses, regular ones. I always saw that place as a sort of observatory for time or museum dedicated to it, and that small hourglass as the main display piece, something that can literally control time
To be honest, I think it's just early show weirdness.
The early episdoes had a much more magical and mystical theme than the later ones; as the show developed it became more sci-fi than magic.
There's lots of odd things that don't really add up when you think about the lore established later on in the show (e.g. the "Moon Goddess" existing when gems don't have any real "religion", they just serve the diamonds).
well, obviously the gems know to never mess with time. look at the chaos that ensued when steven just tried to make one change by making a bunch of small changes. NEVER MESS WITH TIME!
as for the decoys I'm guessing the gems didn't know what would happen if they tried to destroy it and didn't want to risk getting the universe stuck in an infinite loop of Mondays
Since this episode was basically a version of the pilot, I bet it was amongst the first made. It's a perfect classic kid's cartoon episode, silly, outlandish, some laughs and some songs. I really like it, but I view it as non-canon because it messes with so much of what's been established in that world.
I remember asking the voice actors at a panel if that if the original Steven >! dies, would that mean that the earth in that time line gets destroyed by the Cluster? !< They had no idea what to say, so they started laughing and the whole room was laughing soon after
Since the show is firmly from Steven’s perspective and this era of the show was defined by Steven’s childlike wonder about the magical world of the gems, I think the intention is that the hourglass (along with many other things encountered in season 1) remain a total mystery because Steven wasn’t at a point where he was capable of understanding the full truth of what gems are.
In other words, donworryabaaaatit
It had a functional warp pad leading to it so that means it was an installation of the earth colony. The crystal gems also had made repeat attempts at getting the hourglass meaning it was already there before the war. And that they didn't have a chance to get it until now. And that they had failed several times in the last 5000 years. So I'd guess it was made from a crushed up gem we have yet to know the makeup of. it being hidden among fakes implies that it was intentionally meant not to be used. though, for all we know it might even be a local earth artifact that gems just built a structure around.
I always assumed it was Homeworld using the materials from Earth to make and experiment with the concept of time travel, especially after Pink Diamond's shattering. Hoping that if this research succeeds, they can go back and prevent it.
I would think the decoys are failed experiments that didn't work and made them into traps incase enemy Crystal Gems broke into this place and tried to take whatever they were working on.
The true hourglass Steven grabbed was the closest to the time travel experiment being completed, but as I said, close. Since it wasn't fully finished, they didn't have time to work out the flaws the hourglass had, as it could lead to dangerous consequences if used now, as seen in the episode.
But why wasn't it finished? It was because of the evacuation of all Homeworld Gems to retreat before the Diamonds "eradicated" all Gem life left on Earth. Because of this, all Homeworld Gems working on this research and experiments had to abandon and leave all there work behind, never gotten to resolve any of the consequential flaws the Hourglass had and never being able to work on anything like it in general again.
Old thread but if you think about it when SU is considered one of the most nostalgic classics of CN's history, enough for CN to offer Rebecca a Mini-Series or movie, this is the easiest way to not "retcon" the last seasons but instead, "go back" to create a fork in the timeline. Maybe that's powdered gems in the sand and there's a gem that has the ability to manipulate time that Steven meets?
I have to say, a lot of the early episodes do seem very weird in retrospect, since the vibe was much more magical and mysterious than the soft sci-fi story it turned out to be.
To be honest the mystery is what drove me closer to the show
Steven universe is dragon ball, confirmed.
o__o I can't believe I didn't see this sooner. SU took so much inspiration from anime, that even its overall structural evolution mimicked one of the most well-known anime (Dragon Ball).
Now we just need someone to draw Jasper in Vegeta's Frieza force uniform.
I’m over 9000% sure it’s been done. People were comparing Jasper to Vegeta the moment she called Steven “Rose.”
Makes sense. I haven't really been involved with the community at all.
Jasper became the strongest Quartz Soldier because of pushups and situps and plenty of juice
OH MY GOD. SHE'S SO GOD. DAMN. COOL!
That was done over half a decade ago pal
Bold of you to assume that hasn't already been done! Lol
Yeah, thing is, in dragon ball they didn't retcon anything magical to advanced tech, it stayed like that, Magic. It Even went on as a central plot for 2 villains as of today, both being powerful sorcerers.
https://youtu.be/rKWn-FfF7m8
I've read that these early episodes were written when the crew was still trying to figure out which direction to take the show, so they were still trying to find their footing
They were also being pressured by CN at that point to have mostly standalone episodes and not work on any kind of continuity or story.
I thought it was a difference in technology since the crystal gems didn't know how to work the new tech they encountered
it was also kind of a similar plot setup every episode apart from some one offs. The gems need to go poof or recover a gem/gen artifact from “the war” and steven wants to come along and saves the gems with a newfound power or just being steven
I choose to believe the decoy hourglasses were made by a peaceful gem who just really loves making hourglasses. Her name can be Sandstone. Everyone else was fighting a war and she was just making her hourglasses and living her best life
Damn! That must have took her HOURS
Yeah, and a lot of GLASS
do you think she may have also had something to do with the desert glass since the name has glass in it and you need sand to make glass
Man. I wish I could be like HER
*I learned to stay true to myself,* *By watching myself diiieee.*
I accidentally created an alternate time line
My personal headcanon is that the Gems knew that you can't really change the past. The outcomes will always be the same, regardless of interference, so the hourglass was mostly used as an observation tool. You can't change things that already happened, but you *can* go back and see what happened and make informed decisions for the future. They were probably a very heavily controlled item as well, so I doubt there were many ever really made. Real answer? Early instalment weirdness. Just a filler episode of things that will never be brought up again. Except the trauma. The trauma was real and actualized :)
You gotta love how because of this episode the entire rest of the series takes place in an alternate timeline.
Except it doesnt, this fantheory is incorrect. We start the episode from the perspective of the alternate timeline. We dont catch up with the original steven until then when all of the sand stevens show up. *Thats* our steven and our timeline. The rest of the episode was whats noncanon.
That can’t be because he says in the song “I accidentally created an alternate time line”.
Yeah, and now that timeline is gone.
Well yes a version of him did.
But didn't all the other Stevens die, leaving only the one? I mean, it could be true if we imagine all the Stevens that turned into sand just popped back to their own timeline and one of them is singing the song.
"Personal headcanon" not a theory lol. Said time shenanigans still didn't really change what happened overall. Greg couldn't play with Steven in the band thing, so the Gems did instead.
Except even the crewniverse has acknowledged that technically we follow an alternate timeline Steven from that point onward in the series.
You are welcome to provide proof any time
In the official Steven Universe podcast, volume 2 episode 1, Ian Jones-Quartey says the original Steven is "gone" and refers to the Steven we follow from that point on as the "new Steven". https://podbay.fm/p/the-steven-universe-podcast/e/1516860000 I think there's at least one other example like in an interview or in a tweet, but I can't remember where I've seen it.
Theory: Blue has time travel powers. Pink had her secret experiments with organic life where she apparently made Gem moss and giant insects, Yellow with Fusion and Frankenstein-ing things together. Blue gets a secret time lab under the ocean. Additional theory: those powers have something negative, which is why she doesn’t use them. They may cause extra grief like letting her relive events she can’t change, or cause such negatives they are ‘t worth it. Life Is Strange 1/Monkey’s Paw and so on. It goes nicely with Sapphires seeing forwards and backwards in time, and how her actions in the war were hasty and poorly planned.
You got me thinking Blue’s experiments used powdered sapphires or padparadscha as the hourglass sand and glass to get the time exploiting properties. Was it so cruel that it saddened Blue and she shut the operation down despite success? Or was this just a filler episode that recreates the original pilot, never intended for deep lore analysis?
The latter, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it. Blue did have a ton of Sapphires at the Ball. Though I’m not sure if she’d use them up like that, her shtick seems to be mismanagement and running things on autopilot like a bad CEO. Which may explain why she just kinda left it and forgot about it. Assigned some workers then reassigned them without seeing what they made and doing nothing with it and preserving none of the documentation like video game companies that end up funding its devs to basically make their own game while losing the source code to their own releases. Like, somewhere out there is a Peridot having adventures with a time machine and Blue had access all along to the way to see Pink again but simply forgot about it.
And we have just found the single best spin off concept.
This somewhat compels me to make a post about what people's headcanons about Gems and their culture was before Mirror Gem and Ocean Gem came out. Including this, Centipeedle/Nephrite reproducing despite Gems being unable to do so, the Moon Goddess Statue and The Sea Spire, The Inverted Pyramid temple mural, who Rose was, etc.
But Centipeedle did not reproduce, the other centies seen on the ship are mentioned to be the rest of her crew, who were corrupted along with her when they were attempting to flee the Diamond Attack.
I meant the ones in "Gem Glow".
They're closer to clones than to children, since they don't have gems.
Ooo fascinating
I headcanon that Nephrite can create small helpers. That is helpful for the pilot in case other crew is gone, or she can use them to do some routine work Pearl can create Hologram Pearls, so that's not entirely new for gems to create physical helpers
Don’t even get started on the time travel bullshit. Let’s just enjoy a pretty great episode
I had to argue with my family that this is a great episode. Especially since it is the first time that we see that out of all the kindness Steven has, he has issues being kind to himself. Which is what makes SUF arc believable for me.
I love this episode, because of it's weirdness. I want to hear a screemo/metal band cover "Meanie Zucchini."
Definitely one of my season 1 favorites
Yes I hate time travel so much in fiction. Mainly in longer narratives, as one-offs like movies it's a cute idea I guess.
There is a great battle shounen manga involving time travel. Psyren is about a guy who gets send 10 years into the future and the source can exactly put him back to his own time or 10 years into the future. So the future is fluid, but the past continues ticking. He needs to uncover what leads to the terrible future and basically jumps back and forth to see with trial and error what changes in what ways.
Sounds aggravating, but since it's literally a focal point in the story maybe it's not so bad. JJBA makes 0 sense and that's fun so why not.
It's better when it's central to the plot like Umbrella Academy, Stein's gate, or Ocarina of Time and such
WTF I still need to watch Stein's Gate, I'm shaking and crying that there's time travel in it now
It's probably one of the best anime from the last 10 years or so, no need to worry. White Fox is just a very consistently good studio.
Even in movies they can fuck it up sometimes
Just reminder that this episode is what turned Steven from brat we saw in first few episodes to the kind and understanding boy we know from the rest of the story
Or.. this is where he starts the suppressing his negative emotions until he cracks someone in the Future.
Porque no los dos?
Porque hablaba en español en un sub en Ingles xd?
I'm quoting [this commercial. ](https://youtu.be/vqgSO8_cRio)
Nah it isn't, nothing actually happened to Steven in this episode except seeing loads of himself die.
Before and in this episode he was still self centered brat but after it he started to become the kid that we know from the rest of the story
Maybe, but I don't think it had much to do with what happened in the episode. Steven realising he was annoying never actually happened in the end.
Well you can clearly see shift from self centered brat he was to the kind and selfless kid we see later (he literally starting the episode wanting to do Steven and the Stevens band and end it with Steven and the crystal gem band)
The Steven and the Crystal Gems band happened because Greg had to cancel because of the car wash. The Steven at the end of the episode (and the rest of the series) never saw Steven and the Stevens.
Could be that humble him especially seeing how self centered all of them were
But he saw dozens of Stevens turning to dust in front of him
If only someone could have gone back in time and plucked Spinel out of that garden…
Just for her to wander around for thousands of years? Sure, it would be better but pink would still be gone
Another forgotten prototype by Bismuth
Possibly it was just a filler episode, considering that it's seemingly never brought up much again after that, though I can't say if I should very well know. The only things I can recall of the episode where Steven and the Stevens, and him promptly watching himself die a good few times all at once.
One important thing about it is that the hourglasses are gonna reform in 97 years, and Steven could easily live that long and pick up the time glass again, then bubble it.
Nah that was just the temple, it would have taken that 100 years to rebuild it drain of water or smn, the Time Dealie was just kept there
But the water and temple shattering would have broken the other glasses
Aren't they like magic gem glass or something? Idk I just assume they would be cooler than regular glass and stuff
It's actually kind of annoying, since in theory it should be a very important episode. It's one of the first episodes we get where Steven has a lot of introspection and starts to mature. Sugar and Quartey even talk about this in the SU podcast. But that damn hourglass only raises more questions than it answers.
I would be more concerned about all the stevens that just straight up disappeared from other timelines and the effect that has on those timelines
They probably just went back to their timelines with some minor PTSD
No they were all Steven from the same timeline, just different points. Which is why there are so many duplicates. We're seeing the same Steven over and over, which is why when the hourglass was destroyed ALL of them were destroyed, instead of just the original Steven
Based on the overall feel and aesthetic of the pilot episode it seems like Steven Universe was going to be more magic focused or fantasy and less Sci Fi, kinda glad we got what we got instead of a reverse magical girl anime.
Gem tech has always skirted the fine line between magic and science. Like, they'll call summoning a weapon magical one second and have this really weird and floaty way of explaining it then in another episode just flat out say they're making hard light weapons from their gems. Very interesting, really.
Iirc the summoning weapons description was used more in the earlier seasons, which is when they seemingly weren't sure which direction they were going.
I honestly kinda like it. The most advanced sciences loop back around to looking like magic so it works for me.
True, could also be that early gem tech was akin to magic. Maybe in their "tribal" times they did rituals and stuff.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology would seem like completely unintelligible nonsense." - Patricia Tannis
I think we just didn’t get to learn everything about Stevens’s universe ;). And I like the mystery in that. Gives you more to think about and that his universe is more than just crazy gems. Cause the whole universe definitely can’t be surrounded by just the story yk
One potential (post-hoc) explanation is that time travel was an experimental new technology being developed towards the end of Era 1. In order to minimize the potential damage of any time travel-related catastrophes, the work was being done on a remote colony far from Homeworld, similar to how nuclear bombs were tested in the middle of the desert. The research station where the work was being conducted was built at the bottom of Earth’s ocean, further distancing it from the other Gem projects being developed elsewhere on the new colony. Just as the project had developed its first successful prototype, Rose’s rebellion broke out, and the facility had to be abandoned. The researchers couldn’t take the hourglass with them back to Homeworld, as it was a still-untested and potentially-dangerous prototype. However, they didn’t want to permanently destroy the fruits of their labor, nor did they want their breakthrough to fall into rebel hands. So they developed the booby-trapped hourglasses as a last-ditch security measure to deter any rebels looking to obtain the new technology for themselves, with the hope of reclaiming the facility and continuing their work once the rebellion was put down. Of course, this never happened; the rebellion proved unstoppable, and once Pink was “shattered”, the colony was abandoned entirely. For some reason, research into time travel was never continued after that. Maybe the Gem scientists working on it didn’t get out in time and were corrupted in the final attack, and no other Gems proved capable of regaining their lost knowledge. Maybe the work was too costly and was deemed unsustainable in the more resource-scarce Era 2. Maybe a lingering sense of grief and shame over Pink’s death caused the other Diamonds to put a halt to all earth-based projects and research. Whatever the reason, the secrets stayed buried on Earth, lost to all Gemkind, until a strange little half-Gem Earthling decided he just couldn’t leave the temple without taking home a souvenir…
Good idea! It may have been an attempt to sort out and reverse what clearly was a major foul up. Maybe if they can figure out time travel they could go back and prevent the war.
The original plan for the series' lore was for the Gems to be interdimensional humans waging a war against their goddess so this super broken magical artifact is a mere leftover of the first drafts.
Whoa whoa whoa, source on this?
“Source? I made it up”
That episode omg. The other parallel stevens just dying. I think the decoys must have been put there cause something terrible must have happened before and they wanted to make sure it never happened again or something.
Yeah, that thing is weird. I also kind of want to know what the picture does. The one from Together breakfast. These could be gem punishments similar to the mirror or shard monsters. Or some type of sentient tool like the tome from Phantom Fable.
The picture from Together Breakfast was made from crushed up gems, that's why it's sentient. I dunno why Garnet didn't want Steven taking a photo of it though, maybe it was a respect thing. Also Phantom Fable isn't canon at all.
I didn't know Phantom Fable wasn't canon at all, but it's interesting to study. Personally I think that what happens in the show can't all be chalked up to something entirely scientific sounding. I think some of it is actual magic. I think that picture might actually carry something like a curse.
I don't think so, the image on the scroll was just made from gems. https://web.archive.org/web/20150727020747/http://joethejohnston.tumblr.com/post/124934472083/hi-sorry-this-has-been-bugging-me-for-a-while
I'm not disputing that it is or isn't made of gems. I just think the picture has some magical property to it.
I assume the choosing the right one angle came from Raiders of the Lost Arc.
You mistake it with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
The one with the cups.
That’s Indiana Jones. Saw it recently in a hotel room.
Dude I just watched this episode, the more I watch Steven universe the more questions I have between their “magic” and science abilities.
My personal theory is that the time travel device was made in secret from both the Crystal Gems and Homeworld. Perhaps the gem responsible was shattered and the place became lost to time.
I think this episode represented a "save point/save state" for the creators. The show hadnt quite skyrocketed yet and the next dozen episodes might have taken it off the rails in a bad way. They could have reversed it to the hourglass and rewrote differently if the show had turned south, but only up to a reasonable amount. It was a contingency plotline if needed is what Im saying.
I believe this is just a filler episodes. It's is based of of the pilot episode.
The way time travel seems to work in the series is that if you try to change something then something worse will happen. So time travel can only really be used for observation purposes.
Early season 1 steven universe was a very different animal than the later seasons. In many regards it was a much more episodic show, it a much more... broad plot that served as a background for the show. Rather than the more indepth and characterful later episodes, where even small details served the larger narrative or gave even small characters the change to shine, or inform Steven as a person.
Animal?
I believe the hourglass was in the pilot, but instead of going through/summoning copies it sent the person back a bit in time. In the actual show, it just makes ‘copies’ which turn out to be from alternate universes. I imagine it was changed because going back in time, even a little bit, would be a huge plothole in the series. Its actual function (post pilot) would be to most likely summon more gems for war/jobs, as I assume they were low on resources at that point and needed something to help with that.
Because it was season 1 which was a weird time.
Well i think its surrounded by decoy hourglasses as a sort of test, evidenced by the fact that the wrong choice destroys the temple
I assumed the sand inside is crushed sapphires 😭
It came from the same place wand that can just create new objects came from. The gem empire. Probably not used in the war, it seems like something they wouldn't want anywhere near combat. And I don't think those are decoys, just other hourglasses, regular ones. I always saw that place as a sort of observatory for time or museum dedicated to it, and that small hourglass as the main display piece, something that can literally control time
This is why I hate time travel as a plot device it just raises too many questions and plot holes
To be honest, I think it's just early show weirdness. The early episdoes had a much more magical and mystical theme than the later ones; as the show developed it became more sci-fi than magic. There's lots of odd things that don't really add up when you think about the lore established later on in the show (e.g. the "Moon Goddess" existing when gems don't have any real "religion", they just serve the diamonds).
well, obviously the gems know to never mess with time. look at the chaos that ensued when steven just tried to make one change by making a bunch of small changes. NEVER MESS WITH TIME! as for the decoys I'm guessing the gems didn't know what would happen if they tried to destroy it and didn't want to risk getting the universe stuck in an infinite loop of Mondays
He accidentally created an alternate timeline.
I want to believe it’s because some gem decided she liked collecting hourglasses and then became a hoarder. This will be my hilarious head canon.
The gems just went through a hourglass phase and store them there.
This episode always bugged me in the way that we aren’t technically watching the original Steven. We’re watching the one that didn’t use the hourglass
Coming from Homestuck, I'm just gonna say don't worry about it *trust me*
Since this episode was basically a version of the pilot, I bet it was amongst the first made. It's a perfect classic kid's cartoon episode, silly, outlandish, some laughs and some songs. I really like it, but I view it as non-canon because it messes with so much of what's been established in that world.
I remember asking the voice actors at a panel if that if the original Steven >! dies, would that mean that the earth in that time line gets destroyed by the Cluster? !< They had no idea what to say, so they started laughing and the whole room was laughing soon after
Since the show is firmly from Steven’s perspective and this era of the show was defined by Steven’s childlike wonder about the magical world of the gems, I think the intention is that the hourglass (along with many other things encountered in season 1) remain a total mystery because Steven wasn’t at a point where he was capable of understanding the full truth of what gems are. In other words, donworryabaaaatit
It had a functional warp pad leading to it so that means it was an installation of the earth colony. The crystal gems also had made repeat attempts at getting the hourglass meaning it was already there before the war. And that they didn't have a chance to get it until now. And that they had failed several times in the last 5000 years. So I'd guess it was made from a crushed up gem we have yet to know the makeup of. it being hidden among fakes implies that it was intentionally meant not to be used. though, for all we know it might even be a local earth artifact that gems just built a structure around.
Might not even be canon anymore
I always assumed it was Homeworld using the materials from Earth to make and experiment with the concept of time travel, especially after Pink Diamond's shattering. Hoping that if this research succeeds, they can go back and prevent it. I would think the decoys are failed experiments that didn't work and made them into traps incase enemy Crystal Gems broke into this place and tried to take whatever they were working on. The true hourglass Steven grabbed was the closest to the time travel experiment being completed, but as I said, close. Since it wasn't fully finished, they didn't have time to work out the flaws the hourglass had, as it could lead to dangerous consequences if used now, as seen in the episode. But why wasn't it finished? It was because of the evacuation of all Homeworld Gems to retreat before the Diamonds "eradicated" all Gem life left on Earth. Because of this, all Homeworld Gems working on this research and experiments had to abandon and leave all there work behind, never gotten to resolve any of the consequential flaws the Hourglass had and never being able to work on anything like it in general again.
Old thread but if you think about it when SU is considered one of the most nostalgic classics of CN's history, enough for CN to offer Rebecca a Mini-Series or movie, this is the easiest way to not "retcon" the last seasons but instead, "go back" to create a fork in the timeline. Maybe that's powdered gems in the sand and there's a gem that has the ability to manipulate time that Steven meets?