17 Homeworld Bound
Air Date: 3/28/20
Official synopsis: Steven heads to the Diamonds for advice on how to control his new powers.
This episode is the first part of the four-episode special that ended the series. Basically, there's no getting off the roller coaster until the end.
The episode begins where “Fragments” ended: Steven's bathroom, right after he brings Jasper back to life. Jasper immediately falls in line, acting like Steven's personal guard and making the diamond hand salute in his presence. You can tell that she has the old cockiness in her again now that she's finally regained her place in the world: she has someone who is stronger than her, who deserves her unquestioning loyalty.
Of course, that's not how Steven sees it. Horrified by what he's done and still unwilling to confide in any of the Gems, Steven now thinks of himself as being apart from them. He runs upstairs to the warp pad in the greenhouse and for the first time deliberately creates a wall of pink energy, blocking everyone from following him. Since his Diamond powers have gotten out of hand, Steven believes he needs to go back to Homeworld, where the only three people in the universe live who might know how to help him control his powers.
The fairy tale theme of this episode becomes apparent when Steven appears on the warp pad in front of the Diamond palace. But like many real-life palaces nowadays, it's mostly a tourist destination rather than an active seat of power. Steven runs into Spinel, who we haven't seen seen since the end of the Movie. She gives him a big cartoony kiss and his immediate reaction is anger, but after catching himself he tries to make small talk with her. He tells her that he's going through something right now, a problem with swelling and glowing pink. Spinel takes him to the Diamonds for help, starting with Yellow. Like a fairy tale or fable, Steven has three encounters with beings from whom he seeks wisdom.
Yellow, Blue, and White Diamond have all transformed their powers since the end of the Movie. Yellow, who would poof or shatter Gems, can now alter or repair their physical forms. Blue, who made all Gems cry, can now make them happy. And White, who could take over a Gem's body and mind with her own, now lets other Gems take over hers. In essence, they're all doing what Pink Diamond did a long time ago when she transformed her destructive powers into healing powers. The first recourse seems to be just to fix things by doing the opposite of what they used to do.
Bless the Diamonds, they're really trying. Yellow, who was the most straightforwardly destructive of the three, is now the most straightforwardly reconstructive. She is taking fragments of all the Gems she shattered and combined into macabre experiments and putting them back together. When she sees Steven, she tells him that she can do the same for the Cluster and for the uncorrupted Gems on Earth who have horns and other disfigurements. It's a nice thought and it makes sense to bring back the Gems she killed the mutilated, but her power only heals at the physical level. When she tries it on Steven, he quickly throws a tantrum.
Concluding that Steven's real problem is emotional, Yellow sends him to Blue. Steven, predictably, also has a hard time with Blue's new power. Whereas she used to make tears appear in other Gems' eyes, Blue's tears have now vaporized into clouds that can make them happy. The ability to magically make people happy doesn't seem very reparative on its own and Steven resists it outright. Even when Blue's power makes him feel “happy,” you can still see his frowning eyebrows, just like he was able to smile when she made him cry in the original series. I will give Blue some credit in that she really desires everyone around her to be happy. Not a perfect response to having caused vast amounts of harm, but a step in the right direction. Steven's issue, she concludes, isn't with not being able to feel happy, but in not believing he deserves to be happy, and so she sends him to White.
White Diamond's new power is the most baffling to me. She tells Steven that she's just gotten back from another “charitable” mission, “giving voice to the little Gem.” While I'm sure some Gems might feel good about being able to take over the body and mind of their former dictator, this new power keeps the focus on White. Presumably the only reason why anyone would want to do this in the first place is that she formerly controlled the Gem empire (Gempire?) It will be clear in “I Am My Monster” that White is still focused on herself—feeling White guilt and with a White savior complex, if you know what I mean. But I think she is also slowly learning the value of empathy (Gempathy? I'll stop.)
Steven's stint as White Diamond goes disastrously. After he has control of her, he realizes that he came to the Diamonds for advice, but the last thing he wants to be is like a Diamond. Feeling how much rage he still has toward White Diamond, Steven attempts to shatter the Gem in her forehead by banging his own head against a stone pillar. Aghast at what he's done, he runs away. The fairy tale theme really kicks into high gear at this point. (Just listen to the background music.) Steven flees the palace, with one last-ditch effort to get advice from Spinel. Asking what she did to get rid of her vengeful thoughts, Steven becomes angry when she tells him that she did it because Steven himself told her she could change.
Running away from the palace, Steven loses one of his flipflops on the staircase. As he gets to the warp pad, he asks the Diamonds, who run after him telling him they want to help, not to follow. And so he returns to Earth, now feeling like there's no one in the universe who can help him.
There's only one place to go from here: denial.
★
Notes on this episode:
One of my favorite things about the Steven Universe series as a whole is how it grapples with the problem of accountability for harm done. Steven in the original series wanted to create a world where enemies could become friends and neighbors. We see that most clearly with both Peridot and Bismuth, who went from trying to kill Steven to loving him. It gets trickier with the Diamonds and Spinel, though. At the end of the Movie, Steven isn’t trying to make them his friends; he just wants them to stop hurting everyone and go away. In this episode, we see that their attempts to make amends are deeply unsatisfying to Steven, even if their hearts are in the right place. But now it will be Steven’s turn to struggle with what accountability looks like.
I just love that the show acknowledges that This Shit Is Hard. Figuring out how to make amends for the harm we do to others is so difficult, because usually when we do harm in the first place, we don’t see it as such. It takes so much to overcome biases, self-deceptions, and guilt, even when we want to do the right thing. Everyone looks to Steven as the person who has this all figured out, but as Steven grows up, he realizes that the child-like simplicity that he used to bring to conflict and repair no longer works.
At a more mundane level, I appreciate a glimpse into life on Homeworld in this episode now that the Diamonds have ended their reign. When Steven first comes to the Diamond Palace in “Familiar” in Season 5 of the original series, we learn along with him that there are many Gems who were brought to life just to be objects: walls, combs, statues. Like, fully sentient beings whose job is just to be in one place without agency for their entire (endless) lives. That’s why I loved seeing one of the wall panels (!!!) from near Yellow Diamond’s sauna walking around in this episode! She is now free to do what she wants. We also see that the Zircons at Steven’s trial in Season 4 are now opposing candidates for democratic office.
(As a side note, at first glance this looks like a hopeful transition from authoritarianism to democracy, but I wonder if it isn’t a satire of the American political system instead. A Gem compares the two candidates, and says that one looks trustworthy and the other doesn’t, but they look identical except for their colors. I think this echoes a critique of the American political system that says that candidates on the left and right have more commonalities than differences, and their aim is just to protect the rich, the status quo, etc.)
I think that one of the reasons why Steven’s dismantling of the Diamond Authority worked so well is that countless Gems were already living in misery, just waiting to be liberated. “Suffering in silence,” as Blue Diamond said, from the top of the hierarchy downward. Of course, we see several Gems who don’t think this way: Jasper, “Eyeball” Ruby, Aquamarine, Holly Blue Agate, the Lapis Lazulis. But overall many Gems were more than ready to give up their way of life for something different.
Lastly, I just want to make a note of appreciation for Spinel. I don’t know if I could stand to watch her in every episode because being annoying is a feature of her personality, but I loved her in this episode. I’m glad we got to see how she’s doing after the events of the Movie. Like Pink Pearl, the damage to Spinel’s form caused by psychological distress has not gone away: her Gem is still upside down, and she still has tear stained cheeks and blood-shot eyes. But she’s also growing and changing and living a good life. As someone who grew up on a steady diet of old-timey cartoons, it warms my heart to see her.