“Stranded” Recap – Steven Universe
By: Dylan Hysen
Dylan Hysen, Michelle Anderer, Justin Cummings, & Alex Bonilla recap the Jan 5th “Stranded” event of Steven Universe consisting of episodes “Lars of the Stars” and “Jungle Moon”.
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Dylan Hysen
Dylan is a software developer from the DC area who hosts the Overly Animated podcast discussing everything animation.
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Ever since Rebecca Sugar revealed that there are single gem versions of all fusions I’ve had a theory that Rose Quartz was actually a fusion between Pink Diamond and someone else which is why she was so OP compared to other Quartzes, and after seeing Pink’s size and appearance, I’m now convinced that she was a fusion between Pink Diamond and Mystery Girl.
Pink Diamond could have decided to Choosen herself with one of the Zoomans out of curiosity and chosen Mystery Girl, eventually fusing with her in secret. Some time later she realized she disliked Homeworld’s system, and through fusing with a human she decided she wanted to preserve the Earth’s ecosystem, so she decided to rebel as Rose. At the time of Pink’s supposed ‘shattering’ Yellow Diamond discovered them fusing outside her palanquin and realized what she’s been doing, and so disowns her and blames her death on Rose.
This could explain why Steven was able to dream about Pink’s memories, why Rose is more human-like in appearance, why she was able to give birth, why she didn’t want to shatter the Diamonds despite supposedly shattering Pink, why Greg wasn’t so afraid when he saw another Diamond, why no one saw Rose approaching Pink until it was ‘too late’, why Yellow seems eager to get rid of everything associated with Pink, and give purpose to both Mystery Girl and the allusions to Nora in Lion 4 since it would mean she might actually exist.
So, while we are digging in this murder mystery drama, I think the show is wisely placing its cards for the larger resolution of the grand finale. To me, all of this is a like a magic trick: we are drawn to resolve the mystery of pink’s shattering meanwhile we are being hinted pieces of solution for the broader enigma of the show. On one hand, all eyes are on pink diamond and her shattering, which is to me a forced tension between two characters we haven’t even met, but on the other hand, we meet emerald, a whole alien kind near a destroyed colony/cluster (?), an invasion of said colony (?), the citrine involved in this invasion, a code to open the diamond control-pads, a new dream-ish connection between steven and a diamond… And needless to talk about Lars being this leader of a new rebellion?
The pink diamond scene is to me when the show is finding back its original unity; the fact that pink diamond wanted to have a colony very badly, being this rebellious teenager, and then out of anger punches this glass which fractures the image of herself (a foreshadowing for both corruption and her shattering?)… But I also noticed the similitude between pink diamond’s anger and Jasper’s corruption, the framing and the intensity. I am led to think that Pink’s shattering, corruption, the cluster, the rebellion, all of that is now tightly linked within the ending of Stranded. I think it is very exciting for the season’s finale!
We seemed to get the dream via how Connie tried to make sense of the information being fed to her i.e. interpreting it through the prism of familiar experiences (e.g.Yellow Diamond initially appeared as her mother): so – in effect – we had an unreliable narrator. We don’t know how closely what we saw matches what actually happened.