Pink Diamond Theories (Steven Universe Roundtable 18) – Overly Animated Podcast #267
By: Dylan Hysen
Dylan Hysen, Delaney Stovall, and Michelle Anderer speculate on what’s to come with Pink Diamond in this week’s Steven Universe roundtable.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS
Dylan Hysen
Dylan is a software developer from the DC area who hosts the Overly Animated podcast discussing everything animation.
15 Comments
I kinda suspect that the flower-moss might house at least some of Pink Diamond’s shards. I mean, we were specifically shown that the flowers had pink gem shards in them. Of course, not *all* the shards have to be in those flowers, Rose could have used some to magicalize Lion, kinda similiarly to how Steven has Rose’s gem. Maybe Rose even used the information gathered from these “experiments” of merging Gems with organic life, to figure out how to have a child…
Gem shards, on their own, seem to sort of be in a state of eternal suffering, so merging them with something else that’s alive could be a way to not have them suffer as much, and still be alive in a way.
Also, you keep making allusions to it being confirmed in Earthlings that Rose was made on Earth. Where did you get this confirmation out of? Which part of the episode? The only time in show where there was any indication of Rose being an Earthling, as far as I can tell, was Bismuth’s comment of her being “just another Quartz soldier made from this dirt” or something. That said, there are plenty of statements by other characters that seem to contradict this. In On The Run, Pearl states that Amethyst was “the one good thing to come out of this mess”, which I don’t think she’d say if Rose were a product of the same Kindergarten (and according to Peridot, there’s only two Kindergartens on Earth, and Rose can’t be from Beta, because Beta was founded in the middle of the rebellion that Rose had started in the first place). There’s also Rose making it sound like she’s from space when talking to Greg in the flashback in We Need To Talk, and the “if we win, we can never go home” speech that we saw in Rose’s Scabbard.
So either there was some small-scale, early Gem production thing on Earth before the Prime Kindergarten, and Rose is from that (and has probably spent some time in Homeworld between her creation and starting the rebellion), or she’s lying about her origins. Which, I mean, Rose has been established as a much better liar than most Gems. Then there’s the question of whether she’s lying to Pearl, Greg, Amethyst, etc., or if she was lying to Bismuth. I’d quess Bismuth, because it’d seem really weird to me, if Bismuth just casually knew the truth, but neither Pearl nor Greg did… and I can see how making Bismuth think that would be exactly the kind of a thing that’d help to sway her to side with the rebellion; claiming to be “just another common Quartz made here” would give Rose more credibility in this case.
I think Rose being from Earth is explicitly said in “Earthlings”? Or was that Jasper and it was Bismuth who said it about Rose? I’m definitely under the impression that it’s been 100% confirmed by the show.
The Gem shard plot coming into play with this potential PD one is interesting and potentially likely yeah.
Jasper was confirmed to be from Earth in Beta. Rose was implied to be from Earth by Bismuth, but she’s also been kinda implied to not be from Earth by herself and Pearl. Not sure if retcon or if it’s meant to be contradicting/confusing.
Again this is completely from memory but I’m almost 100% sure Bismuth was supposed to be a revelation and it’s not meant to be seen as contradictory by anything. Confusing in that it went against our previous perceptions, sure, but it was meant to be definitive.
I’m a simple man. I truly believe PD was shattered and Lion’s just a trained Homeworld pet owned by Rose.
However, if you really want to link the two, I don’t discard the theory that Rose shattered PD although PD was sympathetic to Earth just to get the other Diamonds to get distracted from their colonization, and as a result collected PD’s shards, put them in a chest and did some tearduct magic on Lion to insert the chest inside so Lion would be imbued with some Diamond properties, with the idea that PD would’ve been sympathetic to Steven if she was still conscious.
Yeah it is possible Rose shattered PD and PD is Lion aren’t mutually exclusive. That version would be very interesting too.
Yeah, that’s my idea too. It’s fun taking in other possibilities though!
I’ve basically been on that second theory you’ve listed since it was revealed Rose shattered Pink Diamond. I’m 99% on board with Lion being Pink Diamond or some part of her essence.
But I think the biggest evidence anyone has in favor of Rose not shattering Pink Diamond is that she’s just inherently a good person so logically she wouldn’t shatter a gem. But these things can exist inside the same person. People are multifaceted(ha ha) and so are the gems. She participated in an open rebellion, and she was a smart and resourceful leader, she knew war was coming. She had to have known where it was going and she made a desperate decision that she probably greatly regretted after Bismuth planted the idea in her head. That’s entirely possible. And she then could’ve spent a lot of her life trying to fix that, and Lion is probably a product of her trying to fix this mistake she made.
I think the show is more focused on Steven being his own person and making better choices than Rose and being his own person. Rose was a loving person, but she frequently lied to the people around her, and she’s caused hurt because of it. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. And I think the show wants him to be better by not lying to the people he loves. By not withholding information. By trusting them and their judgement. That’s where I’ve been coming from. And I’ve been taking this all as a facet of that. He’s gonna be faced with the decision and the desperation Rose was and he’s gonna say no. He’s gonna be faced with the ‘we do what we have to do’ mentality the gems have been presenting him ever since the beginning of the show and now that he knows what Rose did he’s still going to say no. I think that’s where the show is leading us.
Not to say that if it’s revealed that any of this is true that I’d be shocked. It’s a valid theory and still lines up with what I said. Having your closest friends and allies think you’re a murderer and think that it’s justified and having that color everything they do (the gems have a very ends justify the means mentality and Rose has enabled that) is NOT a good thing. She could just easily tell them about her plan, if she had it, but she wouldn’t have trusted them enough and didn’t trust their ability to help. And Steven can be a better person by, again, not following in her footsteps. Finding out about the plan and immediately telling the gems and moving forward.
I just think that a lot of the rationale for it isn’t really there in terms of her morals. At this point anyway. The biggest reason I’m fine with the theory is because of PD, it’s very difficult to shatter a diamond, and this colony seems to have been her only one. It’s easy to believe that she fell in love with the planet and was willing to do whatever she could to help so Rose wouldn’t have to shatter her. But then that brings up:where was PD during the entire war? She’s never brought up as a fighter or really anything during the war, and that’s important in how the other diamonds would react to her ‘dying’. Was she on Earth or did she leave from homeworld to try and manage her planet? And if she was cahoots why would she not know that the other Diamonds would retaliate with a superweapon so they could protect more of the CG army?
‘Rose makes PD shards into Lion to make up for her moral transgression’ works too for sure. You lose a lot of the evidence that Rose wouldn’t have shattered her, but like you say, there’s other ways to see things and maybe this other way would work better with Steven’s arc. I think a lot of the lack of PD visibility in the war can easily be explained by us not having seen much of the war. It’s just what we’ve heard from Steven’s perceptive which has been curated to him as to not mention anything with PD cause Rose shattered her.
That’s very true. I keep forgetting Steven still doesn’t know a lot about that time specifically because the CG’s have been keeping quiet about it. Centipeetle showed us more than we knew, so I was wondering why PD wasn’t pictured in that, but that still wasn’t super detailed. We just have to wait and see what new information we get on the war in the future.
If Pink Diamond is Lion, more reason for Jasper to feel crappy, giving what happened in “Crack The Whip”
Tru. But if PD isn’t self aware as Lion I don’t think you can ascribe meaning to her actions in that form.
I know this is super irrelevant and I’m sorry if this is ignorant but is Mel on another podcast?I remember loving her rants
Mel hasn’t been on one of our podcasts in a while (she doesn’t watch any of the shows we’re currently covering), but I’ll try to get her back on one soon! She’s been on our Archer and Pixar ones in the past. Oh and she started a horror movie podcast with her friend which you can check out here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/splatter-chatter/id1146293567
Ah thanks so much!