You had one job.
This week, Cartoon Network and Turner Broadcasting posted a short clip of interviews with Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar and the show’s former supervising direction Ian Jones-Quartey as part of a commercial for Drawn, a new podcast about the history of animation. While the things Sugar and Jones-Quartey said were perfectly innocuous musings about their art and creative processes, the interviews were overlaid with footage from a number of late-stage Steven Universe episodes that have yet to air.
Leaks have always been a major problem for the show, but the new information included in the Drawn video wasn’t just stuff that’s yet to air, it included details from what appeared to be the series finale that, obviously, nobody but the production team knew before. The video was pulled not long after it was posted and replaced with another, but by then, the cat was out of the bag.
Not long after the spoilers began to spread across the internet, Jones-Quartey took to his personal Twitter account to vent his more than understandable dismay at what happened. In a series of now-deleted tweets, he said that no one on Steven Universe’s production team gave the approval for the spoiler footage to be included in the promotional video. He also thanked the fans for being supportive.
Jones-Quartey later added that this single incident isn’t reflective of anything going on at Cartoon Network and that the flub didn’t reveal all of the surprises the show still has in store.
While it’s great to see that the Crewniverse isn’t letting the leaks get them down, it’s incredibly bad form on Cartoon Network’s part to let a fumble like this slip by so close to the finish line. Steven Universe is drawing to a close and everyone would just like a chance to see the show air the way the people who worked so hard on it intended us to.
We’ve reached out to Cartoon Network for comment about the posted clips and will update if and when we hear back. Also, 0ut of respect for your fellow fans, please do not post the spoilers themselves in the comments.