Creator of STEVEN UNIVERSE Recalls its Innovative Series on Reaching the End

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Your approach follows a fight as a*ction-packed as any you'll find on Cartoon Network.

And creator Rebecca Sugar had to fight like hell for it.

"I received these notes that he should destroy it and rid the universe of its evil," says Sugar. “This is not really what our program is about. But that's what is expected of children's programming - that if there is a bad person, you kill him, and everything will be fine. I just think there should be an alternative. "

It was this kind of alternative thinking from the pioneering showrunner that created a boy hero created by three non-binary space aliens, superpowered and coded by women - opening new paths in children's programming.

Sugar is sitting in a windowless room at Burbank's Cartoon Network Studios, where she is finishing post-production on the final episodes of “Steven Universe: Future” - the coda to the series of events from her former Steven Universe. An animated epic that ran over 174 episodes and a movie on the Cartoon Network, "Steven Universe" featured a wedding between two female characters before gay marriage was legal in the United States. He won an Emmy, a Peabody and a GLAAD Media Award. And he was acclaimed for his breadth, for breaking gender norms and for Steven's uniqueness - a protagonist defined not by his powers (which are impressive), but by his emotional intelligence.

Steven also has the goofy sense of humor that appeals to the Cartoon Network's main audience of 6-11 year olds and is often involved in the hectic adventures they desire. Now, the "Steven Universe" saga is ending with a four-part ending set for March 27, having accomplished a magic trick - connecting with the target audience of your network and, at the same time, gathering a dedicated b*ase and inclusive of needy fans who might not find their way to the network.

“'Steven Universe' can really be watched, enjoyed and loved by a very young audience that follows a wonderful adventure and a set of funny characters and everything that makes a great series,” says Rob Sorcher, executive vice president and chief of Cartoon Network's official content. “But it also has something for people who want to dive into it later in life. It is also clearly exploring other themes that resonate with people. "

Sugar's relationship with Cartoon Network began in 2010 when she worked on Pendleton Ward's "Adventure Time." She created the character Steven Universe - the son of a human and a powerful alien from a race known as Gems - for a animated short program that Sorcher launched in 2009 partly as a talent development mechanism.

Sorcher had doubts at the time about whether Sugar's vision could translate into a successful series. "We were always the boys' channel," he says. Steven, with his three surrogate mothers and their defensive superpowers emanating from a large pink jewel in the stomach, was an unconventional protagonist of a boy channel. But Sorcher gave a serial order anyway.



"I was excited about the context of creating something within the Cartoon Network, and excited about doing something that was a quote that should be among 6 to 11 year olds," says Rebecca Sugar. “When I was young, these were the programs that I liked, and I really had no interest in programs that were for girls. I wanted to do the program that I would have liked when I was younger as a child. But I also wanted to make sure that I was doing that program without any of the signifiers that I understood meant that I shouldn't be watching those programs. "

"If you watch the original short, you will see an ordinary, strange and hilarious child, and you will see the dominance and humor of the scenes," he says. “It's just a good show. It's hard to watch even the original short and not be forced to move on, even if it doesn't exactly fit the rest of what came before and around. "

Sugar knew she would face barriers. As a child of the millennium, she and her brother, Steven Sugar (the inspiration for the character and himself an artist who worked for several seasons on "Steven Universe"), grew up devouring entertainment designed and marketed for boys. They played Nintendo games like "Zelda: Ocarina of Time" and watched anime as "One Piece".

Sugar identifies herself as a bi**ual woman and not