Yeah, they do plan these things quite a bit ahead.
Bismuth was a genocidal zealot, and Rose basically put her in prison. (5300 years is not a long prison sentence for a gem – Steven was punished with no dinner^H^H^H^H^H^HTV for 1000 years). Rose recognized that just because Bismuth was on her side didn’t make her “good”. The lying about it could have been just so that Bismuth’s friends didn’t think ill of her (it also could have been to avoid criticism, so morally ambiguous there).
So opinions on Smokey Quartz and other new developments?
One weakness of the show is the abandoning of characters and plots for a while and then picking them up again. I get why Lapis wasn’t living with the rest of the Gems–I think genuinely doesn’t like the Gems, and only really likes Steven… but why was Peridot living at the barn? Although I did really like Lapis and Peridot as arty roommates.
I predict Connie does NOT like Steven and Amethyst fusing.
Well, Season 3 ended this week with “Bubbled” and the showed moved right into Season 4, and will hopefully continue with weekly episodes rather than the bomb-followed-by-long -hiatus that Cartoon Network has saddled Steven Universe with.
Despite all the character growth, new powers, and healed relationships that Season 3 brought to Steven, the Gems, and the citizens of Beach City, “Bubbled” ends the season on a melancholy note. He finds out that Rose Quartz, in opposition to her and Steven’s ideals, shattered Pink Diamond. Also, Steven’s previously tried-and-true method of turning enemies into friends with his empathy and openness failed him three times at the end of the season: with Bismuth, with Jasper, and then with Eyeball. Eyeball’s turn was especially disconcerting, as the Ruby Squad had basically been presented as semi-friendly comic relief. I especially found Eyeball’s tone and expression when she was talking about getting her very own Pearl creepy.
-Peridot stated she was going to stay at the barn to repair the damage she did with her robot. She was also not keen on moving back into Steven’s bathroom, now that she has figured out what goes on in there.
-Lapis and Peridot as art-school roommates is great and probably full of creator in-jokes, as many of them went to art school.
-Smoky Quartz seems like the perfect union of Amethyst and Steven’s personality traits. No extra eyes and only one extra arm seem to confirm this.
-I think Greg would mind Steven and Amethyst fusing more than Connie.
-Amethyst had her mind on other stuff, but I don’t think she was thrilled to see how close Lapis and Peridot have gotten in her absence.
-I noted the Bismuth gem bubble inside Lion earlier in this thread.
-It wasn’t 5300 years for Bismuth. When gems are released from bubbles, they “wake up” pretty much on the instant they were poofed.
-As for why Rose didn’t tell anyone: 1) She probably worried that a significant number of Crystal Gems would have agreed with her 2) She didn’t want Bismuth’s friends having to remember her as a genocidal maniac who tried to kill Rose. 3) She was too ashamed/guilty to tell Garnet and Pearl.
-That being said, Rose took a big risk putting Bismuth’s bubble inside Lion for Steven to find. She probably thought that with the war long over and no contact with Homeworld for 5000 years, and with her being gone, Steven could let Bismuth out of the bubble and she could rejoin the Crystal Gems and be at peace. Rose didn’t figure that most gems don’t believe Steven is his own person and not Rose in a new form and couldn’t know that Homeworld gems would return to Earth.
I completely forgot to come back to this. My observations and favorite bits from the bunch of Beach City episodes listed above.
-Onion is the only person who actually likes the Guacola
-Onion is the only person (besides Sadie) who doesn’t like the new Lars.
-Cool Kids have Steven’s back, just the same as in “Joyride”
-Sadie’s quite the horror fan.
-“I’m full…OF SADNESS!”
-Poor Ronaldo. No one, not even Peedee, believes he as a girlfriend and then she shows up at the worst possible time.
-Jane actually appeared way back in “Lion 2: Straight to Video”. She was the ticket booth attendant at the movie theater.
-Kofi took the idea of branding his restaurant a little too literary.
-“Restaurant Wars”, especially the dinner at Steven’s, is drawing pretty heavily from cooking anime.
-“Beach City Drift” is basically a tribute to racing anime, specifically Initial D.
-Not only can Stevonnie drive like a champ without ever driving before, s/he can drive stick!
-Kevin really is a total jackass, isn’t he?
-Looking at the view from the drive, Beach City looks bigger than I supposed.
-Who wants to go to a rave in the cheese cave?
-The giant pizza slices standing up offshore are a tribute to Evangelion.
-Getting stuff past the radar: Lars sleeps in the nude, and had what appeared to be porn mag on his face when he/Steven woke up.
-Lars’ real name is Laramie.
-Why is Steven so mad at Kevin? Its because he is connected to Connie’s feelings when they fuse and she was seriously creeped out by Kevin’s skeevy come-ons.
I was really fond of the Peridot as Wile E Coyote tribute. I swear they made the setting for the beta kindergarten just so they could do that.
So now that the “Summer of Steven” has ended, I feel like sharing my thoughts:
Wow, that was great. It was everything I wanted. More “low stakes slice of life spend time in Beach City” episodes, more “action oriented move the plot forward” episodes, and more “slow reveal of gem history” episodes.
–I don’t think Rose actually shattered Pink Diamond, there is more there than we know. Note that Bismuth says that Rose’s sword was designed for a fair fight, capable of destroying a Gem’s physical form in an instant But never the gem.
–Bismuth and Jasper both get a chance to expound on their philosophies, and they are almost exactly the opposite of each other, yet they both are equally dangerous fanatics. A good lesson for Steven.
–It is more explicitly shown that the war was about a Gem’s right to change and leave their predetermined place in the homeworld hierarchy. What does the Diamond’s corruption do? It changes gems. Coincidence, or a deliberately ironic punishment for the rebels?
–Steven fuses with amethyst. I was kind of hoping that Steven could only fuse with humans, to emphasize his unique hybrid nature, but it was very well done and I can’t complain.
–Just a idle thought- Does tvtropes have a name for that trope where a character goes from being snooty and superior to fawning and obsequious instantly when cash is flashed? (like the hotel clerk in Mr. Greg)
And last, what are the major questions still remaining to be answered?
-The nature and purpose of corruption, and how it can be fixed
-How the rebellion started and Rose Quartz’s relationship with Pink Diamond
-What is Lion?
Anything else?
And discomfort about her shattering Pink Diamond was the same thing in logic as Bismuth’s.
Steven is hitting the phase of growing up where he is having to deal with the disappointment that the universe and his mother do not live up to his ideals.
Um. I think Steven was seriously creeped out by Kevin’s skeevy come-ons. Kevin also soured their first fusion experience.
Prediction: Lion is a corrupted Pink Diamond. You heard it here first! 
I’ve honestly thought that too.
Except that Pink Diamond was already shattered by Rose by the time the other Diamonds unleashed the corruption wave.
After seeing “Buddy’s Book”, I would say that Rose imbued an actual Lion with one of Pink Diamond’s shard to create Lion.
So? Rose would have had other options to crack open a gem, especially if she used the sword to destroy Pink Diamond’s body first. Jasper was all set to crush Amethyst’s gem with her bare hand. We’ve got multiple confirmations, including eyewitnesses, and for any of the “Rose Didn’t Really Kill Pink Diamond” theories out there to work, it would mean that Garnet willingly and purposely lied to Steven at a time when he really needed an honest answer.
Corruption is the equivalent of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse that degrades and corrupts the information stored and encoded on gems (i.e. the mind, intelligence, personality, etc of the the gem). The corruption event unleashed by the Diamonds was described as a three-colored (white, blue, and yellow) flash of light accompanied by a tone or song. Go listen to Yellow Diamond again. There is a musical undercurrent when she talks. Steven’s shield will be part of the solution, since Rose’s shield protected her, Garnet, and Pearl from the corruption event, but I think the Crystal Gems will need someone with audio expertise to reverse-engineer the corruption signal. Too bad they don’t know anyone like that. 
It’s pretty natural that a Gem with affinity for plant and animal life would develop empathy for a planet’s lifeforms and act to protect them. Pearl, or rather her treatment at the hands of Gem society, could have been a another catalyst for Rose. Rose was a high-ranking, possibly unique quartz under Pink Diamond. I suspect she was in charge of the Prime Kindergarten, which is why she feels guilty about the herm Gems did to the Earth.
See above.
Gradually catching up with with my season three overview, this time I’ll look at the more Gem-and-lore-centered episodes from the earlier part of the season: Steven Floats, Mr. Greg, Too Short To Ride, Monster Reunion, Alone At Sea, Greg The Babysitter, Gem Hunt, Crack the Whip, and Steven vs Amethyst.
Cartoon Network could have called this The Summer of Steven Power-Ups, as Steven has seriously upped his Crystal Gem game. This season, we’ve seen Steven; superleap and float, use his shield as a projectile, make multiple shields, expand his shield, expand and manipulate his bubble, form spikes on his bubble, fuse with another Gem, fuse without dancing, and demonstrate superhuman strength and durability. (Did I miss any?)
The other thing we see a lot of in this group of episodes is finding the characters have to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves.Pearl has to confront her inability to get over Rose and how it affects her relationships with Greg and Steven. Peridot has to learn she can be someone without her technology. Amethyst has to face the fact that she can’t stand up to Jasper on her own, and then that Steven is catching up to her. Lapis has to admit that, one some level, she liked having Jasper at her mercy. And Flashback Greg realizes that he’s little more than an irresponsible kid and he needs to grow up some.
I was going to write: “And not only about themselves …” in reference to what Steven is learning about his mother - but realized that in a sense that is also about himself …
Memorable bits and notes from the above-named episodes.
-Five songs and two reprises is a lot for an 11-minute episode.
-I’m convinced that the whole purpose of Mr. Greg was so that the show staff could get Pearl into that tuxedo and top hat.
-I hope Greg doesn’t have his fortune frittered away by paying up for damages cause by the Crystal Gems.
-I also hope he at least buys a modest house. He’s getting to an age where his back and knees will thank him for sleeping on a real bed and sitting on real furniture.
-Fresh donuts at the Big Donut. Hopefully without gull droppings and feathers.
-Homeworld is running low on resources, yet Yellow Diamond still wants to destroy the Earth and not colonize it.
-Peridot going “Ow. ow. ow. ow. ow…” as Steven and Amethyst re-align her spine.
-For as much as she wanted that alien doll, Peridot was pretty quick to cannibalize it for the bow-tie.
-It wasn’t too long ago that Amethyst would not have been able to give that speech to Peridot.
-I’ve worked at a place that was seriously “funderstaffed”, so I know how Mr. Smiley feels.
-My name is Jasper and I’m addicted to fusion.
-Bismuth was a case of poor communication almost killing. Garnet and Pearl’s explanation led Bismuth to believe that all her friends had been shattered during the fighting and there were a lot of hostile Homeworld Gems on Earth.
-The Breaking Point wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the war, and wouldn’t be off much use today given the advances in gem technology.
-Rose Quartz: “Climb, little human! Realize your dream!”
-So Homeworld philosophy is basically Social Darwinism, as Jasper is its apotheosis.
And the final episodes of Season3 (Beta, Earthlings, Back to the Moon, Bubbled) actually run together one after the other. I talked about
-Steven’s pep talk to Amethyst at the Beta Kindergarten is his best yet. It certainly got the best results. .
-Garnet needed a long, knock-down, drag-out fight to best Japer. Smoky Quartz made it look easy.
-Peridot and Lapis are adorable as art-school roommates. Perhaps Greg can drive them to Empire City to see the Metropolitan Museum of Meep Morp.
-One of these days, the Crystal Gems will actually plan something out. If Doc hadn’t come back out of the ship to offer them a ride, they would have ended up stranded on the moon.
-It’s sad the Rubies thought that Ame-Jasper was so awesome. Real Jasper would have treated them like garbage.
-Watch Eyeball whenever Ame-Jasper is giving attention to another Ruby. When Doc is sitting on her lap, Eyeball is giving them side-eye from her chair with tears in her eyes.
Wow. Mindful Education is probably one of the best character-based episodes of the entire run of this show. It’s got Stevonnie. It’s got Garnet. It’s got a rare song by Garnet and Stevonnie’s first song. It’s a very simple plot. Steven and Connie are starting to train with Pearl as Stevonnie, but can’t hold the fusion because it turns out Connie is eaten up with regret and guilt for something she did. Garnet shows Stevonnie how to enter a mindscape where all parts of the fusion are present.
There’s a lot of emotional resonance with the advice Garnet gives to Steven and Connie. You can’t just avoid feeling bad about things, even if they are things beyond your control, and you can’t move past these feelings without dealing with them honestly. The lesson was originally for Connie, but it turns out that Steven needed it more, as he’s been swallowing a lot of guilt about his failures at the end of Season 3.
Some notable points:
-A good callback to Beach City Drift. When one part of a fusion is out of sync, the fusion experiences a hallucinatory mindscape.
-When Stevonnie runs through a Holo-Pearl with Rose’s sword, Stevonnie visualizes it as Bismuth (Connie didn’t didn’t know who Bismuth was.) and shifts into a hallucination where they are menaced by Jasper, Eyeball, and then a hostile Rose Quartz.
-As Stevonnie is backing away from this, they step off the edge of the Sky Arena.
-Connie finally gets to meet Ruby and Sapphire, in a way.