An image shows Pearl standing in front of Garnet as they complete their fusion dance.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Fusion: Mysterious Unity in Steven Universe


Steven Universe fol­lows Steven and his care­tak­ers Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl as they chill in Beach City, sav­ing the world from mon­sters and aliens who want to destroy Earth. Steven’s guardians are “gems,” an all-female alien race from a plan­et called Homeworld, who not only wield their own mag­i­cal weapons, but can also com­bine them­selves through a process called fusion. Each new pre­sen­ta­tion of fusion in Steven Universe reveals yet anoth­er layer of this com­plex, inti­mate phe­nom­e­non that not even the gems who expe­ri­ence it seem to fully under­stand. Whatever lan­guage audi­ences or char­ac­ters in the show use to explain fusion, a com­plete def­i­n­i­tion never quite mate­ri­al­izes. We become much like Meno–giv­ing exam­ples of fusion (call­ing it love, inti­ma­cy, or power), but not fully grasp­ing what fusion is in its entire­ty. Fusion can be con­sen­su­al or forced, sta­ble or unsta­ble, beau­ti­ful or ter­ri­fy­ing. Some fusions, like Stevonnie (a fusion between Steven and his friend Connie) and Garnet, break the per­ceived bar­ri­ers of fusion. The for­mer shows that fusion with organ­ic mate­r­i­al (humans) is pos­si­ble and the lat­ter intro­duced the notion of fusion between two dif­fer­ent kinds of gems. Once it seems like fusion is com­plete­ly under­stood, some new form of it appears as a reminder that it exists just beyond the bounds of logic.

On the sur­face, it’s easy to explain what hap­pens when gems fuse. They dance to get in sync with each other and that ener­gy lets them com­bine to form a new gem. Garnet and Pearl cre­ate Sardonyx. Pearl and Amethyst cre­ate Opal. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl cre­ate Alexandrite (which they can’t keep sta­ble for very long). There are five dif­fer­ent fusion pos­si­bil­i­ties just with­in the main char­ac­ters.

A diagram shows some possible fusions of the Crystal Gems. Ruby and Sapphire are on top. They fuse into Garnet. Beneath Ruby and Sapphire is a triangular formation of how Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl can fuse. Garnet and Amethyst fuse into Sugilite. Amethyst and Pearl fuse into Opal. Pearl and Garnet fuse into Sardonyx. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl fuse into Alexandrite.

How many gems could go into a sin­gle fusion?

Fusions are more pow­er­ful than the indi­vid­ual gems them­selves. This makes fus­ing ideal for bat­tles or accom­plish­ing great feats of strength. In this sense, fus­ing is prac­ti­cal and tac­ti­cal. It’s done to achieve spe­cif­ic goals and noth­ing more. At least, that’s what some gems believe fusion should be.

The Homeworld gems — refer­ring to the antag­o­nists hail­ing from the plan­et where gems come from — have strict, well-defined class­es among them and equal­ly rigid ideas about fusion.

  1. It can only occur between two or more of the same gem (e.g., Rubies can only fuse with other Rubies).
  2. It should be done for the sake of excelling in bat­tle.
  3. It should be tem­po­rary.
  4. It’s just a cheap tac­tic to make weak gems stronger (sorry not sorry).

These rules are so fun­da­men­tal to Homeworld’s social struc­ture that any deviance from them is con­sid­ered offen­sive or even dis­gust­ing. In fact, until Ruby and Sapphire acci­den­tal­ly fused, most gems did­n’t con­sid­er fusion between two dif­fer­ent kinds of gems to be pos­si­ble. This, among many other rea­sons, caused Ruby and Sapphire to defect from Homeworld. In the present, how­ev­er, any judge­ment that Garnet expe­ri­ences isn’t from the fact that she is two dif­fer­ent gems that fused, but that she stays fused all the time. That first rule, how­ev­er per­ma­nent it seemed in the past, has become obso­lete. It’s the same with that memet­ic fourth rule. Jasper spouts it off as a solid fact and then coerces Lapis Lazuli into fus­ing just a few min­utes later. Homeworld gems thought they knew every­thing there was to know about fusion, but it remains par­tial­ly in this unknow­able realm and that mys­tery about it occa­sion­al­ly breaks these notions that seem so strong.

Ruby and Sapphire’s deci­sion to stay per­ma­nent­ly fused is a metaphor for a com­mit­ted and inti­mate rela­tion­ship. They’re queer in both the lit­er­al and aca­d­e­m­ic sense (the lat­ter of which I have mixed feel­ings about given the ten­den­cy of some to claim any sort of minor “dif­fer­ent­ness” as “queer­ing”). Gems are a female alien race, so there prob­a­bly isn’t any con­cept of het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty or homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, but from a reader-response per­spec­tive, Ruby and Sapphire are one of many exam­ples in Steven Universe of trans­gress­ing bound­aries we find in the real world. Fusion overt­ly speaks to the audi­ence as exam­ples of healthy rela­tion­ships (Garnet) and abu­sive ones (coerced fusions such as Jasper and Lapis Lazuli), allow­ing the series as a whole to safe­ly explore multi-faceted, dif­fi­cult, and taboo top­ics.

Analyzing Ruby and Sapphire just with­in their own uni­verse, we see their rela­tion­ship breaks a seem­ing­ly immutable law of fusion; how­ev­er, they fur­ther dis­turb the sta­tus quo by remain­ing fused even when they’re not doing any­thing of per­ceived value. Peridot, who begins as an enemy and becomes an ally, makes this objec­tion, as Garnet’s exis­tence chal­lenges her Homeworld-based under­stand­ing of fusion:

Two screenshots stacked on top of each other show a frustrated Peridot speaking to Garnet. She says, “Explain it to me, fusion. I can at least make sense of your existence if it's for a functional purpose.” Two screenshots stacked on top of each other show Peridot speaking to Garnet. Peridot says, “But you? You're not using your combined size and strength to do anything!” Garnet rests her hands behind her head and says, “I'm doing something. Two screenshots stacked on top of each other show Peridot speaking to Garnet. Peridot says, “And what's that?” Garnet replies, “Stargazing.” Two screenshots stacked on top of each other show Peridot speaking to Garnet. Peridot says, “Ugh, you can do that alone.” Garnet replies, “Don't want to.”

Garnet’s delib­er­ate refusal to fit her­self back into com­fort­able notions of fusion is a stark reminder that fusion stretch­es beyond any imposed lim­i­ta­tions or under­stand­ings of what it’s sup­posed to be. For Peridot specif­i­cal­ly, fusion is unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry, and beneath her dis­gust for Garnet is a fear of the incom­pre­hen­si­ble. What real­ly hap­pens when two gems fuse? Are Ruby and Sapphire still con­scious, still present as Garnet, or do they cease to exist in some way? Will Peridot still be Peridot if she fuses with anoth­er gem?

Even Garnet, for as long as she’s been per­ma­nent­ly fused, can only describe her state using fig­u­ra­tive lan­guage that would make sense to Peridot or Steven or who­ev­er she’s explain­ing her­self to. Peridot only begins to under­stand Garnet when Garnet says that she’s “like Percy and Pierre,” Peridot’s #1 ship from a TV show she watch­es obses­sive­ly. But to get a lit­tle Socratic for a moment, Garnet is still only say­ing what she — what fusion — is like, not what it actu­al­ly is. No metaphor can per­fect­ly or com­plete­ly cap­ture the nature of fusion rela­tion­ships.

Similarly, metaphors can­not per­fect­ly or com­plete­ly cap­ture mys­ter­ies of faith. So far, Steven Universe has not been par­tic­u­lar­ly reli­gious or spir­i­tu­al. Perhaps the clos­est it comes to this is in Rose’s “death” and trans­for­ma­tion into Steven. Fusion is not quite rep­re­sen­ta­tive of any Western under­stand­ings of the Trinity. Fusion itself, or the mix­ing of two natures, actu­al­ly goes against typ­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of the hypo­sta­t­ic union (the under­stand­ing of Christ’s nature as both fully God and fully human). However, what fusion and the Trinity do have in com­mon is that they’re both mys­te­ri­ous uni­ties.

Many Christian denom­i­na­tions believe in one God in three per­sons who are typ­i­cal­ly labeled “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit.” Of course, they can just as eas­i­ly be labeled “Creator,” “Christ,” and “Spirit” or any sim­i­lar titles because the goal is to express a rela­tion­ship. The Bible itself does­n’t actu­al­ly spell out any doc­trine of the Trinity, but rather this doc­trine was for­mu­lat­ed through the work of early the­olo­gians in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cen­turies. Lesser known Christian denom­i­na­tions are non­trini­tar­i­an and this along with other doc­tri­nal dif­fer­ences caus­es some to say that they aren’t real­ly Christians. I’m not inter­est­ed in delv­ing into those argu­ments, but I will say that grasp­ing the Trinity and artic­u­lat­ing it well with­out describ­ing a heresy (if you’re an ortho­dox Christian) is exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult.

Heresy” is a strong word with neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions of witch hunt­ing and para­noia, but the term at its root basi­cal­ly refers to beliefs about the nature of Jesus, God, and Christian prac­tice that have been reject­ed as false­hoods. For exam­ple, around 318 A.D., two dudes named Alexander and Arius had a huge dis­agree­ment about the role of Christ in rela­tion to God. They both believed that God is per­fect and there­fore can­not change. Arius’s issue was that in order to truly say that God can’t change, then you can’t also say that Christ is divine the same way God is divine because incar­nat­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing human life through Christ would change God’s nature. Since Arius held that God can­not change, he con­clud­ed that Christ isn’t fully divine, but instead is an exalt­ed human. This means that Christ isn’t equal with God and is in fact sub­or­di­nate to God.

Alexander dis­agreed with Arius and main­tained that God and Christ were equal and of the same sub­stance, even though this idea is hard to wrap our heads around and neat­ly fit with­in our human logic. This argu­ment ulti­mate­ly led to the Council of Nicea where all the church lead­ers gath­ered to fig­ure out what they believed. Alexander’s view gained the most sup­port. He ensured that the Nicene Creed –– which became the basis of Christian doc­trine –– includ­ed lan­guage that dis­proved Arius’s views and stat­ed that such views were hereti­cal. In other words, Arianism was reject­ed as incor­rect. The church lead­ers held that God and Christ don’t exist as a hier­ar­chy and are made of the same “stuff,” so to speak, even though this dec­la­ra­tion rais­es more ques­tions than it answers. “The bish­ops gath­ered at Nicea rec­og­nized that they were will­ing to affirm mys­tery rather than allow heresy” (Olson & English, Pocket History of Theology, 32).

That’s exact­ly what the Trinity is: a mys­tery. Any expla­na­tion of it will fall short of fully cap­tur­ing God as one-in-three-persons, just as any expla­na­tion of fusion will fall short of cap­tur­ing every­thing it can mean and be.

To keep things sim­ple, I’m going to present two broad inter­pre­ta­tions of the Trinity: one from the Latin Orthodox Church (which became Catholicism, Protestantism, and most of the other forms of Christianity seen in the West) and one from the Eastern Orthodox Church. I’m draw­ing from a book called Christian Doctrine by Shirley Guthrie.

When Western Christianity talks about the Trinity, what we mean in spir­it is a rela­tion­ship of equals in which the stan­dard descrip­tors — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — are metaphor­i­cal rather than strict indi­ca­tors of gen­der and author­i­ty. So we intend, in our heart of hearts, to depict the Trinity like so:

An image of Peridot's triangular head is labeled, “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” on each side.

Our favorite space Dorito has the per­fect head shape to bor­row for some basic dia­grams.

What’s impor­tant here is that the per­sons of the Trinity are labeled on the lines of the tri­an­gle rather than the points. This depicts an equal­i­ty between them where nei­ther one appears to be above the other two. This is the real­i­ty of how many Christians expe­ri­ence the Trinity, but when we attempt to explain it, we end up pre­sent­ing some­thing like this:

An image of Peridot's triangular head is labeled, “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” on each point.

This lay­out depicts a hier­ar­chy like what Arius believed.

Guthrie states, “When we Western monothe­ists say ‘God,’ we do not in prac­tice think of three equal per­sons; we tend to think of one ‘top’ God, the Father, and two sub­or­di­nate and some­how less­er divine beings, the Son and the Spirit.” In other words, we’re used to think­ing about God as a hier­ar­chy — like a boss of a huge cor­po­ra­tion over­see­ing and direct­ing two employ­ees. Father, Son, and Spirit become strict iden­ti­ties (that are often gen­dered) with spe­cif­ic tasks. For exam­ple, we may say that the Father cre­ates, the Son redeems, and the Spirit guides as if they are all com­plete­ly sep­a­rate from each other. However, all the per­sons of the Trinity are on the same level, act­ing as one expressed as three.

Depicting this with a tri­an­gle, as Western Christians tend to do, can make it dif­fi­cult to see that egal­i­tar­i­an unity, and cer­tain­ly some tra­di­tions may posit an all pow­er­ful male Father, a grace­ful and sub­or­di­nate Son, and a guid­ing Holy Spirit (who per­haps is female).

Eastern Orthodoxy gives us anoth­er way to look at the Trinity with a term that imme­di­ate­ly made me pic­ture fusion when I learned it: peri­chore­sis. Guthrie writes, “Peri (as in perime­ter) means ‘around.’ Choresis means lit­er­al­ly ‘danc­ing’ (as in chore­og­ra­phy of a bal­let). Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are like three dancers hold­ing hands, danc­ing around togeth­er in har­mo­nious, joy­ful free­dom.”

An image shows Ruby and Sapphire embracing each other and twirling around.

Ruby and Sapphire reunit­ed.

An image shows Pearl and Rose dancing. Rose holds Pearl's wrist as Pearl strikes a pose.

Pearl danc­ing with Rose in prepa­ra­tion for fusion.

 An image shows Pearl standing in front of Garnet as they complete their fusion dance.

Garnet and Pearl get­ting ready to fuse.

An image shows Pearl and Amethyst completing their fusion dance.

Pearl and Amethyst pre­pare to fuse to lift a giant drill head.

Other than “Peri” also being Amethyst’s cute nick­name for Peridot, this descrip­tion is basi­cal­ly what gems do to fuse. The main dif­fer­ence is that the per­sons of the Trinity aren’t cre­at­ing a brand new enti­ty with their unity. Also, fusion tends to have romantic/sexual/intimate under­tones where­as under­stand­ings of the Trinity don’t.

But at the end of the day, what’s most com­pelling about both fusion and the Trinity is not fig­ur­ing out how, exact­ly, they work, but rather expe­ri­enc­ing them in all their mys­tery. Upon meet­ing Stevonnie for the first time, Garnet says, “You are not two peo­ple. You are not one per­son. You are an expe­ri­ence.”

And near the end of the episode “Log Date 7 15 2,” Peridot reflects on her expe­ri­ence of attempt­ing to fuse with Garnet. “I have attempt­ed a fusion with the fusion Garnet. I had hoped to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of fusion. Instead, I gained a bet­ter under­stand­ing of Garnet.”

The phe­nom­e­na will always be a mys­tery, but the per­sons involved in the phe­nom­e­na are know­able and it’s pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence them. Guthrie says, “The Trinity is a mys­tery to be con­fessed, not a math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lem to be solved.”

For some, that may not be good enough. Why believe in some­thing you can’t fully explain? But for oth­ers, faith and expe­ri­ence aren’t always about explain­ing every facet of a mys­tery. Even when try­ing to explain the mys­tery is our start­ing point, we may find our­selves like Peridot who demands a com­plete expla­na­tion of a mys­tery and instead comes away with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of her fel­low gem.


About Taylor Ramage

Taylor Ramage is a fiction writer and blogger whose interests include anime, theology, intersectionality, and pop culture. She also enjoys memes and bad (read great) puns.