So, as most people who interact with me know, I love the Cartoon Network show by Rebecca Sugar, Steven Universe. I think it’s a great show and is so eloquent at normalizing unconventional families in more ways than just the main characters and tackling and addressing serious issues of assault, grief, panic attacks, trauma, the after-effects of war, manipulation and the importance of being kind and believing in people.

But as a kid’s show, there are a lot of episodes that get really dark really fast (“Chille Tid” and “Keeping It Together” anyone?). The fandom is constantly making jokes following the format of

Episode one: Steven thinks he can learn to control his super powers by eating ice cream

Episode 103: Steven, having been hurled into the vacuum of space, crosses paths with a war veteran seeking to take revenge for his mother’s war crimes and isn’t hesitating to pull out her weapon to achieve glory.

And even jokingly renamed the show:

Even I would joke about the show to other people, casually laughing about how the count for Steven almost dying in space had happened three separate times. But then I had to sit and think about it. He almost dies in space specifically five times, and he doesn’t just almost die in space. Throughout the span of the show so far, he is close to death six times, and has very close run-ins about 35 times.

Rereading the episode synopsis’ and remembering what happens in each has asked me to categorize the degree of severity of “Steven Death,” leading me to make three separate categories:

A Technical Near-Death Experience, in which the show did not heighten the stakes and, upon looking back and thinking critically about it, had a pretty high likelihood of death,

Almost Deaths/Casual Deaths, in which the show was very nonchalant about how close Steven was to death, or just doesn’t fully emphasize the risks enough for viewers to think there’s any legitimate way Steven could possibly not make it out alive, and

Very Much An Almost Death, in which I feel the definition, based off of the pre-existing terms, is unnecessary.

Keep in mind, please, that Steven Universe is an excellent show and that this article should not discourage anyone from watching it. There are plenty of shows with cartoon violence and death, but I haven’t seen as many shows that employ death and loss as a device simultaneously handle it in such an important and mature way that Steven Universe has. If you haven’t watched the show, you should seriously consider it. Also consider there are serious spoilers in this article, and if you are in the middle of watching the show to save this for later.

A Technical Near-Death Experience

Episode 1: Gem Glow

Yup, we start right off with episode one. Steven, with his belief he can summon his shield only by eating ice cream, charges into battle confidently munching on a Cookie Cat (an ice cream sandwich that’s “super-duper yummy!”). When the huge monster Centipeedle rounds on him and he is unable to produce his shield, for a few moments he’s in a position where she could have very well ended him. That would have been a short span of a great show, though, and Steven ends up figuring out how to stop the monster without his powers.

Episode 7: Bubble Buddies

he first time we officially meet Connie, Steven’s best friend, the two are trapped inside a bubble Steven accidentally made with his powers. They are stuck in the bubble for most the episode, attempting to get out. Among the attempts are asking his friend Onion to shoot a harpoon, jumping onto a roller coaster in hopes the collision will knock them free, falling to the bottom of the ocean, and then eventually being chased by a monster enamored by a glow in the dark bracelet. Although the two eventually get away completely unscathed, Connie had an entire monologue about how she was going to die and only her parents would notice because she didn’t have any friends. Yikes.

Episode 8: Serious Steven

This is one of Steven’s early missions with the Gems, and though the expedition is successful thanks to Steven’s puzzle-solving abilities, he also nearly falls into a giant pit of lava and has to be saved by Crystal Gem Garnet. He laughs it off immediately after, but still.

Episode 10: Steven’s Lion

Steven, with his accident-prone self, ends up being followed by a pink lion (who is harmless and who we still don’t really have any idea where he came from or who he is) and, in the midst of battling a sandcastle creating gem, saves Steven from being impaled by a floor of sand spikes. Yup. That happens.

Episode 14: Lars and the Cool Kids

Lars is the jerk of the show. A rude young adult who is oftentimes very cruel to Steven and Sadie, his co-worker and presumed love interest, Steven sees Lars trying to be cool to impress the “Cool Kids” which is a group of characters Buck Dewey, Jenny Pizza, and Sour Cream, who are all non-intimidating, non-exclusive and enjoy Steven’s company. So, everything Lars isn’t. Steven tries to help Lars hang out with these kids, which ends up turning into a disaster when they decide to swim in a swamp full of moss Steven’s mom (Rose Quartz) had been growing. The moss begins to completely cover their bodies and although Lars and Steven manage to get themselves and everyone else up to the top of the cliff where they’re released from its hold, it’s very ambiguous as to what would have happened had they not made it. Would it have completely consumed them? Would it suddenly animate to have an epidemic of moss-walking creatures? These are the questions that haunt me at night.

Episode 17: Lion 2: The Movie

Connie and Steven want to go watch the newest instilment of “Dog-Copter” in theatres but can’t find a ride. They decide to employ Lion to give them a ride there, but instead, Lion runs over the ocean, releases a warp portal and takes them to a hidden armory. This is where a giant robot begins to attack them, and it isn’t until Lion magically produces Steven a sword from his forehead and Connie’s knowledge of tennis for them to redirect a giant fireball back at the hunk of metal. I am still not entirely sure what the robot was- is he supposed to attack intruders? Who knows? Lion having a sword literally inside his forehead for disposal is because apparently, Steven, as seen in later episodes, can go inside Lion and his mom had used Lion as some sort of storage space because her old things are there, including a character I will mention later. But yeah, context is everything, and this show gets confusing to explain without the background.

Episode 19: Rose’s Room

A frustrated Steven finds the power to activate his mother’s room, that can create whatever he wants. Eventually feeling badly about yelling at the other Crystal Gems, he tries to leave but realizes he accidentally created the entirety of his city and its inhabitants inside of the room. It is unable to handle a request that big and begins to crash and break around him, something that very well could have also severely hurt him but left him unscathed somehow?

Episode 23: Monster Buddies

The very beginning of this episode features the Crystal Gems exploring a cavern that begins to cave in on them. Garnet transports Steven back to their home and not a second later rocks slam down on them, leaving the screen black. Steven would have probably died.

Episode 67: Friend Ship

We take a long jump here because everything in-between deserves to go into the other categories. Comparatively, the scene in this episode in which an enemy gem Peridot shoots a series of laser beams means nothing when considering the rest of the show or even the rest of this list. But the ambiguity of what the lasers could have done specifically to the Gems and to Steven, half-human half-gem, still raises concern for this attack.

Episode 77: Message Received

We take another gap (a lot happens, trust me) to see Peridot, who Steven was just thinking was going to turn sides in appreciation of the Earth, contact one of the leaders of Homeworld, the intimidating Yellow Diamond. Instead she ends up insulting her out of frustration, and YD remotely detonates the device Peridot used to call her. Garnet eventually punches it into the sky and it explodes from there, but, yeah, Yellow Diamond was hoping Peridot would be killed after her treachery.

Episode 93: Alone at Sea

Lapis, one of Steven’s friends and another gem met in season one, begrudgingly joins Steven on a boat his dad, Greg, rented out. Lapis is traumatized from an unhealthy and long-lasting fusion with another gem met in season one, Jasper, and the ocean reminds her of it. (Fusion is when two gems morph together to create an entirely new gem, and is a metaphor for relationships of any kind. Essentially Malachite, Lapis and Jasper’s fusion, was an extended metaphor for an abusive relationship). Who better to show up than the ruthless Jasper herself, who begs Lapis to fuse again. When Lapis refuses to, Jasper begins to show signs of violence and makes efforts to advance on Steven, to which Lapis uses her water-controlling powers to super punch Jasper to a faraway tundra. The boat also ends up sinking, so, two near-deaths in this episode.

Episode 95: Gem Hunt

Connie’s first mission results in Pearl, one of the Crystal Gems, separating from Steven and herself, when they are cornered by two monsters charging at them. Jasper appears and begins to attack the monsters, and it becomes clear the monsters were running from Jasper. Pearl shows up, and though Jasper had no plans to attack the two, she also had no idea they were all going to run into each other. The episode could have taken a completely different turn had anything been different.

Episode 101: Earthlings

This episode does not center around a Steven death and, in fact, many people didn’t immediately pick up on it in this one. Jasper, at the end of the episode, is becoming corrupted (losing herself and control of her form to morph into one of the several monsters the Crystal Gems are finding and retrieving in hopes of eventually reviving). Steven with his healing powers, reaches over to try and stop it, but Jasper lashes out, scratching him through his shirt. His first instinct is to put his hand where she slashed at him- implying he used his healing powers on himself because her attack was that painful, or because she had spread her corruption to him. Wow.

Episode 105: Know Your Fusion

The 101 episode introduced Steven and Amethyst’s, the third member of the Crystal Gems, fusion Smoky Quartz, and fused again in this episode to show Garnet and Pearl. Their response? Go into their fusion of Sardonyx, who proceeds to interview them in her room. Upon realizing that she had made it about herself when Steven and Amethyst had wanted to show them Smoky, Sardonyx unfuses while still in her room, which, similarly to Rose’s Room, begins to crumble around them. Smoky manages to get Garnet and Pearl out safely…but there’s still the fact they were in a room that ceased to exist after Sardonyx’s presence is gone.

Episode 111-112: Gem Harvest

This episode special introduced an aviating relative of Greg’s, something we had never had before. An allusion to prejudiced family members, Andy DeMayo is immediately weary and intolerant of the Gems, though he eventually accustoms to them. When he feels excluded from the group, however, he takes off in his plane, leaving Steven in distress and insists on following him. Lapis (who can fly), follows and tosses Steven onto the plane, and he nearly falls off. Thanks to Andy’s flying skills, Steven manages to get into the passenger seat and Andy scolds him, saying that he could have been killed. Thank you, Andy, for being a responsible family member to Steven- everyone else in Steven’s family has been to desensitized to Steven’s frequent deaths to even bother scolding or punishing him anymore.

If you thought these deaths were bad, this was just the beginning.

Almost Deaths/Casual Deaths

Episode 2: Laser Light Cannon

Yup, starting right off the bat again! This episode features a “Red Eye” that starts to seriously interfere with the gravity of Earth. It isn’t until the very end of the episode that the Crystal Gems and Greg manage to activate Rose’s light cannon, making it pretty clear that the inhabitants of Beach City could have very likely perished. The later episodes of the show also reveal that the eye was to detect Gems, and that if the Crystal Gems hadn’t destroyed it, Homeworld would have likely recolonized Earth to hollow it out and turn it into a floating hunk of rock while using its crust to make as many Gems as possible. Either way, they could have died.

Episode 6: Cat Fingers

Early episodes of Steven Universe featured animate mascots coming to life and attacking civilians and, in general, creepy stuff that doesn’t happen anymore. One of the most disturbing episodes in Steven Universe, Steven tries to practice shape-shifting into a cat, resulting in his finger getting a cat’s face on it. The cute does not last long, as Steven’s entire body breaks out into cat-face hives, all moving and struggling to break free from his skin. It’s so unsettling, and it’s clear Steven is in deep distress. His cries of fear are mixed in with the horrific meows of the cats that plague his body. I don’t care what people say about this episode, it’s damn creepy, and Steven very well could have been killed.

Episode 12: Giant Woman

The first introduction to fusion was in this episode, in which Amethyst, Pearl and Steven are sent on a mission to find the “Heaven Beetle.” A bickering Amethyst and Pearl are annoyed by Steven, who is ecstatic at the chance to see the two fuse (as seen in the catchiest song of the show, “Giant Woman”). The beetle, it turns out, has been devoured by a giant bird, who then, amid another argument between Amethyst and Pearl, eats Steven! He survives thanks to Amethyst and Pearl putting aside their fight (rightfully so) to fuse into the Gem Opal and save him and his goat-son Steven Junior. But, again, Steven was eaten by a giant bird. I don’t care that he wasn’t digested, or that he wasn’t chewed up. He was still eaten by a giant bird.

Episode 16: Steven the Sword Fighter

Another episode introducing a new concept: “poofing.” When Gems are badly injured, they retreat into their gem to regenerate (or, re-gem-erate). Of course, this information would have been a lot more settling to know before we see Pearl stabbed through the chest with a sword by a hologram version of herself. Steven, after being reassured Pearl will be fine, tries to fill the void of waiting for her with her hologram who is in sword-training mode and tries to legitimately sword fight a defenseless Steven. He manages to stop her but was chased around his room helplessly for a good few minutes.

Episode 22: Steven and the Stevens

Steven decides to partake in time travel to create a band of comprised entirely of himself. It all goes wrong when all the Steven’s get angry at each other and go back in time and start fights with themselves, leading to the scene in which the original episode’s Steven surveys a crowd of furious Steven’s all kicking the crap out of each other. Distraught, he smashes the time travel device, and before this timeline Steven’s eyes (who has no idea what is going on, by the way), all the Steven’s begin to dissipate before him, permanently erased from existence. (Maybe. Who knows what happened in these other new timelines? Not the viewers for sure). The episode ends with a song, performed by the Crystal Gems, the last words being "I learned to stay true to myself/By watching myself die."

Episode 38: The Test

Upon discovery Steven’s first mission was a test and remembering how that mission had failed, he insists the Gems create a new test for him. Boulders and fire and swinging blades confront him, but nothing stops him- until a platform of spikes begins to drop down, taking him by surprise. He discovers that none of the challenges were going to cause him any harm, and that the Gems rigged it so he would win. Despite this, viewers and Steven were holding their breath as Garnet’s programed spikes descended to attack him.

Episode 39: Future Vision

When Steven learns that Garnet has future vision, he becomes wracked with paranoia over what could hurt him, and is especially pressured when Garnet advises him to not go on the roof. The episode ends with Garnet comforting Steven and convincing him that he’s going to be fine without her future vision guiding him all the time…and then sticks out her hand to block the lightning bolt that was going to have attacked Steven had he been on the roof. So, he almost died by lightning. How shocking.

Episode 44: Marble Madness

Our second introduction to Peridot and her first time seeing Steven and the other Crystal Gems, she finds him to be a pest infesting an area she’s working in, and, controlling a giant robotic hand, clenches it into a fist and makes to squash him like a bug.

Episode 45: Rose’s Scabbard

Pearl, upon finding the scabbard to Rose’s sword and learning that Steven knows about Rose’s secret armory and that Lion has the sword stored inside him, gets furious and distraught, running away, Steven in close pursuit. He begs her to tell her what’s going on, and runs to jump onto a floating platform she’s on when she turns and glares at him. Stunned, he begins to fall and nearly plummets to the ground, which is probably miles below where the two are. This is also the episode in which the viewers got a significantly greater confirmation that Pearl had romantic feelings for Steven’s mother and is still very much in grief. Steven still almost died from falling at that height, though.

Episode 51: The Return

A two-part season finale continuing with “Jailbreak,” there are a lot of near-death experiences Steven faces. First, when he realizes he needs to keep the Crystal Gems safe from incoming Homeworld Gems with his shield, punches the dashboard, activates the airbag, and is forcibly ejected out of Greg’s van. (It does work, and Steven is able to return to the Crystal Gems, but STILL). Second, when the Homeworld Gems land and reveal Peridot, Lapis, and our first introduction to Jasper (who is convinced that Steven is Rose, and not a different person entirely), she grabs him and headbutts him, knocking him out and throwing him captive on their ship. That’s how the episode ends- Steven blacking out.

Episode 52: Jailbreak

The second part of the season one finale and the first time Lapis and Jasper fuse to form Malachite, viewers and the Crystal Gems were convinced they were going to have to fight to the death. Malachite’s formation parallels strongly to Ursula the sea witch’s enlargement in the finale of The Little Mermaid, laughing manically as she stands and reaches back to smash water onto the four. Of course, that doesn’t end up happening as Lapis’ control over the fusion pulls Malachite into the ocean where she remains until the beginning of season three. Even before fusing to create Malachite, Jasper’s re-emergence at the end of the episode brings a heavy implication of foreboding death.

Episode 54: Joy Ride

The Cool Kids convince Steven to go out with them and they find the escape pod Peridot used in Jailbreak to escape the crashing Homeworld ship. Although apprehensive, Steven climbs in to take a photo when the pod locks him inside and starts going berserk. The Crystal Gems appear and, believing that Peridot is the one attacking the Cool Kids, begins to attack the pod with intention to “poof” Peridot, which probably would kill Steven. There’s a frame from Garnet’s perspective very briefly where we can see Steven in a fetal position, unmoving with Pearl’s spears surrounding him. It’s a harrowing image that is implicative of near death had the Gems continued to attack.

Episode 68: Nightmare Hospital

When Connie’s mom discovers that Pearl has been giving Connie fencing lessons with Rose’s sword, she confiscates it and she and Steven follow her to the hospital she works at, where they find out she’s been treating mutant gem fusions (think different human appendages shoved into one blob of horrific terror and you have a mutant gem fusion). They all charge at Steven and Connie, and although the two of them fight the mutants off and show Dr. Maheswaran that Connie can do the things that she does (and promising to pay more attention to her daughter, because she hadn’t been noticing important things, like the fact Connie hasn’t needed glasses in over a year and that her lenses had been popped out for that entire time span), they were still in a lot of danger.

Episode 71: When It Rains

Peridot, in captivity of the Crystal Gems, convinces Steven to go to the prime colonization site so she can show him the monster Homeworld is building in the Earth’s crust. They are attacked by more mutants, and are trapped until the Crystal Gems find and save them. Peridot doesn’t have a weapon and Steven didn’t have his sword to fight them off, and unless his protective bubble faded away (which it was starting to do), it was the only thing keeping them safe from the mutants.

Episode 79: Super Watermelon Island

Astral projection, which is yet another one of Steven’s powers, land him in the body of a Watermelon Steven (a species of animate watermelon all resembling Steven he created in season one). Malachite has been attacking the village, and they’ve been sacrificing a Watermelon Steven each time she appears by playing the Nose Game, to which Steven is unaware of, and so they place him on a cliff, put a lei on him, tell him to expand his arms outward and sacrifice him to Malachite. Thankfully, he wakes up before she attacks him but his own people nearly sacrificed him. Later in the episode when he reappears on the island as another Watermelon Steven, Malachite nearly smashes him along with the other Watermelon Steven casualties (they turn into cut up slices of watermelon, which is cute except for the fact that they’re inanimate and implied to be dead).

Episode 96: Crack the Whip

Immediately following the tundra appearance of Jasper, Pearl and Garnet go to search for her, leaving Connie and Steven in the care of Amethyst. She encourages the self-esteem in Connie by telling her and Steven that when they need to fight, their instincts will kick in and everything will be fine. And then lo and behold, Jasper appears with the two monsters she had just gotten in “Gem Hunt” and poofs Amethyst, leaving Connie and Steven no choice but to fuse and partake in an incredible fight scene. It was three gems against one fusion, and thankfully Stevonnie (Steven and Connie’s fusion) were able to fight off Jasper along with Lion’s help. There was still a strong chance of serious repercussions had the two failed, however.

Episode 89: Beach City Drift

To one-up Kevin, an obnoxiously rude teenager who had harassed Stevonnie in her debut appearance, Connie and Steven decide to enter a drag race from the top of a hill down a scenic drive to the edge of town. In doing so, Stevonnie nearly flies off the road, blacking out and returning to the show with just Steven and Connie, implying that Stevonnie’s loss of control of the car was so severe it knocked the two of them out of fusion. While we don’t know what happened in their blackout, we can all probably assume there was a near-death experience for Stevonnie.

And, now finally, all of the times the show and Steven himself implied he was going to die.

Very Much An Almost Death

Episode 13: So Many Birthdays

Steven is half-human and half-gem, which leaves a lot of questions about his mortality up in the air. Gems cannot die unless their gems are shattered, so they can’t die of old age, but humans can- which is an issue in this episode. When he learns that the Crystal Gems don’t celebrate birthdays, he throws a party for them but becomes self-aware that the things he did at birthday parties were for little kids and that he needed to grow up. Thanks to his Gem powers, he starts aging rapidly, nearly reaching death from old age. The Gem’s distraught bickering as to what to do causes him to revert in age and go back to normal, but the fact all three gems broke down over the uncertainty of Steven’s survival was ominous. This episode raised a lot of questions as well: What happens if Steven gets poofed? Does he revert to his gem to reform like the others, or does he die? Is he capable of withstanding the amount of pain Gems can withstand, or is it half of that? Looking into the mechanics of the show’s basic premise leads to a lot of scary unclear ideas of what could possibly happen to Steven.

Episode 28: Space Race

With the help of Greg, Steven tries to build a rocket for Pearl to go to space again, but when she finds out, she gets carried away and takes Steven out for, as she tells Greg, a quick spin which will take fifty years. Steven convinces her to hit eject when the ship begins to fall apart around them, and as soon as they do, the ship explodes, giving Greg a huge scare before he sees them floating down safely.

Episode 36: Warp Tour

Our first introduction to Peridot was postponed by the Crystal Gems insisting that Steven had not seen anything floating around in the warp streams they use to get to different locations around the globe. Around the end of the episode, he sees one of Peridot’s “robonoids” walking around and follows it into the stream. More appear and overcrowd him, eventually knocking him out of the stream into the cold, low oxygenated dimension around him. Here’s the video of the scene: Words don’t do it justice. It begins at 6:53 and ends at 7:49

Episode 51: The Return

If you thought that was all for death experiences in this episode, think again. Jasper is disgusted upon first seeing the Gems and commands Peridot to just wipe them out, to which Steven rushes in front of the Crystal Gems to intercept the beam. He uses his shield to block them, but like, he ran in front of a high-power laser beam.

Episode 52: Jailbreak

Yeah okay, we didn’t manage to cover all the almost-death experiences in the last category for this episode either. Upon the end of Jailbreak, the ship everyone is on crashes into the side of Beach City, and explodes. We don’t find out for a full ten seconds if the Crystal Gems are okay as Lion runs through falling debris and in between wreckage of the ship.

Episode 80: Gem Drill

The part two to Episode 79 and the opening to season three, Peridot and Steven journey to the center of the Earth to stop the cluster that was beginning to fuse together, a force that would wipe out all life on earth. When down there, Peridot began to drill into the cluster, giving Steven an anxiety attack as he felt like he could hear the cluster screaming out in pain. He blacks out, and astral projects inside of the cluster, beginning to talk to them and learning that they couldn’t stop from fusing no matter how hard they tried. Thankfully Steven was able to keep them encased in a bubble preventing them from fusion and destruction of the Earth, but this was an intense episode for him and for the rest of humanity.

Episode 100: Bismuth

In a celebration of episode 100, Steven finds Gem Bismuth (special guest Uzo Aduba) inside Lion, where he eventually learns Rose poofed her and hid her inside of Lion for thousands of years. Bismuth becomes convinced Steven is actually Rose, and proceeds to attack and fight him with a machine that can shatter gems.

Episode 103: Bubbled

The finale to season 3 begins with Steven floating around space after having been pulled out of the Homeworld moon base and coming across one of the five Ruby gems from previous episode “Hit the Diamond” and the episode prior to this. He tries to explain to this Ruby that he has his mother’s gem, and when she finally believes him, she pulls out a knife and tries to kill him. Steven eventually pops his bubble to get away from her, throwing her off into orbit separated from her group, and he begins to slowly lose oxygen until saved by the Crystal Gems.

Episode 107: Mindful Education

This episode discusses the problem that arises when Stevonnie is unable to function due to panic attacks from the two kids that form them. The concept is first introduced with Connie after having accidentally flipped a kid at school and broken his arm. The second time it happens, though, all of Steven’s recent traumas from the previous episodes (Jasper’s corruption, poofing Bismuth, sending the Ruby soldier into the expanse of space) come flooding at him, overwhelming Stevonnie to the point where they step off the edge of the sky arena they’re in. They unfuse, and Connie and Steven fall to what is certain death, until Connie can calm Steven down enough to re-fuse.

This list took my entire Thursday free period before work, so I hope you enjoyed realizing just how many times a single character comes close to death in this show!

Hours after thinking I had finished this article had proved me otherwise. Here is the final near-death experience of Steven Universe’s title character.

Episode 113: Three Gems and a Baby

This episode aired the day before this article was due- hours after I thought I had finished writing this piece! But nope, of course there had to be a moment in which infant Steven nearly dies. To be fair, this moment was ambiguous- Pearl reaches down to grab Steven/Rose’s gem, but then stops. But the music intensifies, the background fades to black, time slows down- Pearl was going to rip the gem out and probably kill Steven.

It’s fine.

Of course this was going to happen hours before deadline. This show ruins me.