Volleyball
Air Date: 12/8/2019
Official Synopsis: Steven is determined to help Pink Diamond’s original Pearl heal the scar on her face.
One of the things I admire about the Steven Universe universe is that once something or someone is damaged, things don't magically go back to normal. People and landscapes carry scars. We see that with the lighthouse cliff, with the corrupted Gems, and with a lot of emotional wounds that people carry. Healing is possible, but healing doesn't mean that it's as if the hurt never happened. We'll talk more about Pink Diamond/Rose's healing ability, and how Steven uses it, as we go further in the series. But suffice to say for now, Steven may be a healer but he doesn't yet understand how healing works.
★
This episode is perhaps my favorite in the entire series, and it accomplishes so much. It wraps up the mystery of Pink/”White” Pearl, which was unexplained in the original series, highlights the toxic thought patterns that contribute to Steven's growing distress, and shows some important, if imperfect, healing for Pearl and Pink Pearl. In some ways, Steven Universe Future has its strongest moments when we see characters other than Steven grow and change.
The episode begins with Steven playing doctor for damaged Gems. Already we're returning to the theme of Steven helping and fixing people. He's clearly in his element until Pink Pearl arrives. We've known that she has a crack in her face and a missing eye since we first saw her in “Legs from Here to Homeworld.” Steven tries healing it and is baffled when he fails. He asks her about the crack's origins, assuming it was damage that White Diamond did. However, she corrects his misunderstanding and says that Pink did the damage. Steven begins to flare up pink, realizing this was yet another terrible thing his mother did to someone. That revelation causes him to go into fixer mode, which we saw in “Guidance” and we'll continue to see again and again in the series. Pink Pearl senses that something is upsetting Steven, but he chooses to steamroll over his own feelings in order to fix her problem.
Steven takes Pink Pearl to Pearl for advice. The tension between Pink Pearl and Pearl is immediate—with Pink Pearl point out that she has known Pink Diamond for longer than Pearl, and Pearl dismissively treating Pink Pearl as being a deluded, fawning servant. They're both in effect projecting their delusions onto each other. Pink Pearl, who is carrying physical damage due to Pink Diamond's treatment of her, is trying to prove that Pink cared more about her. Pearl, who as we know is still heartbroken about Pink Diamond's disappearance, mocks Pink Pearl for feeling the kind of devotion she pretends to no longer have.
The three of them go to the Reef, the place where all Pearls are made. It feels more like a wedding dress boutique or luxury car dealership than a Kindergarten, obviously made to cater to the elites. Pink Pearl revels in the experience, reminiscing about a ribbon wand that Pink Diamond had given to her as a gift, while Pearl is dismissive of the objects that remind her of the time when she was also considered an object.
The Reef is unable to heal the crack in Pink Pearl's face. It states that Pink Pearl's gem is healed, but the trauma she received was so impactful it continues to manifest in her physical form. Steven begins to understand that what he's looking at isn't simply physical damage caused by his mother, but deep-seated psychological trauma. Pearl blames White Diamond, as Steven did at first, but Pink Pearl tells her that the damage was caused by Pink Diamond. This both surprises Pearl and makes her angry—a subtext here being that Pink Diamond kept the story of Pink Pearl a secret from Pearl. The two of them begin to argue about who the real Pink was: a volatile Gem who threw tantrums, did enormous amounts of damage, and couldn't keep a secret, or a quiet, secretive healer who kept her feelings to herself.
Their argument enrages Steven, who begins to display some of the destructive powers that Pink Diamond had been known for. The Reef, itself a quasi-sentient being, sides with Steven the Diamond and captures the two Pearls in order to rejuvenate them. (This is the only time that rejuvenation shows up in Steven Universe Future. I'm glad they did it in a plausible way, as it felt a bit like a gimmick that had been made up solely for the purpose of the movie.)
Now that the two Pearls are trapped together and under the threat of having all of their memories wiped, Pearl apologizes to Pink Pearl. She realizes that she's been making excuses for Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz. Pink Pearl asks if that's what she has been doing, too. She says that Pink Diamond didn't mean to hurt her, but Pearl points out that Pink Pearl was badly hurt anyway. “I was badly hurt,” Pink Pearl says. “How did you stop hurting?” Pearl hugs her and says, “I didn't.”
The two of them fuse together into Mega Pearl, break out of the rejuvenation chamber with the ribbon wand that Pink Diamond had given to Pink Pearl transformed into a weapon. In an exquisite action sequence in the style of Sailor Moon, she escapes the Reef with Steven.
When they return home to Beach City that evening, Steven apologizes, saying that the whole trip was for nothing. Mega Pearl knows otherwise. She tells Steven that the two Pearls didn't understand each other, but now they both get to see the whole picture. Pink Pearl gets to see the person that Pink Diamond was trying to become, while Pearl gets to see the reason why Pink Diamond was trying to change. Having both loved and devoted themselves to Pink Diamond in different ways, they now have a better understanding of why each of their experiences with Pink Diamond was so painful.
★
The biggest theme of this episode is truth vs denial. Pink Pearl denies that she is in pain because she believes that Pink Diamond didn't mean to hurt her. The crack in her face, which has destroyed one of her eyes, symbolizes her blindness in the face of the obvious. She has sustained damage to her physical form because a part of her needs to show others that she's been hurt, even if she won't admit to it herself.
Pearl, on the other hand, is in denial about her continued heartbreak over Pink/Rose. By being condescending toward Pink Pearl, she tries to have it both ways: to pretend that she is a liberated Pearl who doesn't have any devotional feelings toward her former master while simultaneously trying to prove that she was Pink Diamond's favorite.
I think the moment that changes things for Pearl is when she sees Steven's destructive outburst—so obviously like the ones that Pink Pearl had described Pink Diamond having—and sees Pink Pearl cower in fear as a trauma response. She realizes that Steven has his own denial about the way his mother hurt people, which causes him and others pain. Pearl now understands that she has been making excuses for Pink Diamond and tries to get Pink Pearl to stop denying her own pain.
The healing moment comes when Pink Pearl, who has been acting like she is supposed to get over pain that happened so long ago, asks Pearl how she healed. Pearl has to admit, simply, that she hasn't. The way Dee Dee Magno-Hall delivers Pearl's line, “I didn't” is so powerful because Pearl says it, not as if she has failed, but as if she is finally realizing the power of not trying to get over her feelings. The realization that they have found healing within their shared pain is what allows them to fuse.
Steven watches their transformation, but he doesn't understand what happened. He will continue to carry his denial of both the pain he's feeling and the pain he has caused until he finally breaks down at the end of “Everything's Fine.”
At the very end of the episode, Mega Pearl, who continued to have Pink Pearl's crack on her face, unfuses. Pearl and Pink Pearl lean against each other while looking out at the ocean. They don't show the side of Pink Pearl's face with the crack, so it's hard to tell if the crack remains. This is deliberate. The only two other appearances of Pink Pearl in the series are very small blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos. The first is in “Everything's Fine” when pink Steven interrupts Peridot's horticulture class. Pink Pearl holds a potted flower in front of her face, obscuring the eye with the crack. The terra cotta flower pot does, however, have a crack in it. The second cameo is at the very end of “The Future” as Steven is driving out of Beach City. In the background, Pink Pearl is on one knee taking a picture of the two Gems that Yellow Diamond repaired in “Homeworld Bound.” She is facing away from us and it's hard to tell which eye she is holding the camera viewfinder to. I believe that the creators left it vague as to whether the crack is gone. My personal interpretation is that it's still there, but it no longer defines who Pink Pearl is. The trauma she endured is part of her story, but she gets to decide what her life will look like going forward.