Exclusive sneak peek at ‘Steven Universe’ Season 3 starts with the gemstone apocalypse

It looks like Steven Universe is in for a bit of a shake-up.

Cartoon Network’s special four-week “Steven Universe” event, “In Too Deep,” kicks off Thursday, and Hero Complex has the exclusive first look at at what’s happening with the gemstones.

Turns out, the previously mentioned threat of the Cluster is very real. In this clip, Steven and the recently inducted Crystal Gem Peridot are preparing to drill to the center of the Earth in order to stop the world from ending. And they’ll have to do it together because Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst are nowhere in sight.

“Am I the only one who understands the meaning of teamwork?” yells the frustrated Peridot after learning the remaining Crystal Gems are stuck on an island.

The Cluster, fans will remember, is the Gem geo-weapon comprised of millions of artificially fused Gem shards that has been incubating in the Earth’s core for thousands of years. In its final state, the Cluster will manifest a physical form that would be larger than the Earth, meaning it will destroy the planet from the inside out when it emerges.

And if the clip is anything to go by, the Cluster’s emergence is imminent.

For those in need of a refresher (it has been a long hiatus after all), the Crystal Gems have been preparing to stop the Cluster ever since Peridot revealed its existence following her capture, resulting in the temporary truce between Peridot and the Gems. Of course, that temporary truce has transformed into something more permanent as Peridot’s relationships with each of the Gems evolved. And because she openly defied and insulted her former master (Yellow Diamond) due to her new due to these new friendships.

The five-part “In Too Deep” arc kicks off with back-to-back episodes Thursday at 7 p.m. on Cartoon Network. The remaining episodes will air one per week for the following three weeks.

And for those interested in revisiting select episodes from Seasons 1 and 2, a DVD featuring 12 of these episodes called “Steven Universe: The Return” is set to be released June 7.

tracy.brown@latimes.com

Twitter: @tracycbrown