The Most Interesting Scene In Steven Universe

stephen now starlight it's time to come out pink [Music] if you'd never seen steven universe before you'd have no idea what this means but if you have seen it and since you're watching this video i'm assuming you have you'll know all about steven and the crystal gems about the villainous diamonds and the war against the gem homeworld you'd have seen everything up to this the culminating moment of five seasons worth of build and you'd also have no idea what it means [Music] uncertainty is an unusual emotion to strike at the climax of a story uncertainty is created by withholding information but simply by the way setup and payoff works the audience should have a pretty good idea where things are headed when we're this close to the end like maybe you don't know exactly how luke is going to defeat the emperor but you do know that's what he needs to do before the story ends and maybe you don't know darth vader will end up sacrificing himself to save luke but you'd probably sense this about to happen shortly before it does because the story has already laid the groundwork to justify it i know there is good in you you can't plant the setup without implying some notion of what the payoff will be that's what makes the payoff satisfying otherwise the audience wouldn't recognize the payoff when it happens steven universe's ending works the same way of course it pays off years of setup and reaffirms the core message of the show but in this scene only moments before the show delivers its biggest payoff it's genuinely uncertain what will happen next somehow it manages to convince you that maybe just maybe the very opposite might be true [Music] change your mind is the finale for steven universe's fifth and final season though it would be followed by steven universe the movie as well as the limited epilogue series steven universe future as far as the crew knew when change your mind went into production it was to be the last ever episode after a long and difficult struggle with the network creator rebecca sugar had succeeded in featuring a same-sex wedding in the show as a result steven universe was pulled in international markets and cartoon network decided not to renew i had been told this would be the final pick up for us and i campaigned for an additional six episodes on the end of the season in order to wrap up the story there are some who say the finale feels rushed and knowing what we know about its production there's probably some truth in that but i will gladly accept a rushed ending for the sake of this kind of representation if every pork chop were perfect we wouldn't have hot dogs after the wedding episode aired steven universe won the 2019 glaad media award for outstanding kids and family program lgbtq plus representation is still often an uphill struggle in children's entertainment but steven universe has broken barriers for other shows to follow in its footsteps we know now this wasn't to be the end of steven universe and personally i don't think the story is complete without the movie and future nevertheless despite its troubled production change your mind still serves as a satisfying and definitive conclusion particularly due to the final confrontation between stephen and white diamond you know you're like well of course steven's gonna win the day right but there was just enough there that like i feel like when that that happens and there's that commercial break i feel like there is a genuine tension of like you don't know what's gonna happen we've given you enough that it could go either way is stephen really stephen it's a question that should have an obvious answer stephen as a character has always championed the show's core message of self-acceptance and freedom of expression the idea that his own identity is a lie should be laughable and yet white diamond makes a very convincing case to the point steven and we begin to believe her white diamond is going to break the entire show this moment of uncertainty works because the show has withheld crucial information from us however it's also a payoff because the show has been building the case against steven's identity for a long time without us necessarily realizing that's what it's been doing [Music] steven universe has always had a subtle approach to communicating information there are no for the episodes good wealth building takes time what may seem like a frivolous story might actually be a smokescreen for imparting crucial information for instance back to the barn is mostly a fun story about building robots but it also teaches us a lot about homeworld culture it is the first time we learn that gems are not one of a kind she's a pearl she's a made-to-order servant just like the hundreds of other pearls being flaunted around back on homeworld there's hundreds of pearls without drawing our attention to it the show has equipped us with the knowledge we need to understand what's coming next is that another pearl who is she not all pearls know each other steven and this is how we've written the whole show it's like we find a way to introduce one concept in one episode and then another seemingly unrelated concept in another episode and then another and then another and another and then later it's like you need you need all of those to understand that this thing means this what's more the show buries crucial information into the background details in the environments stray lines and actions even flash frames in the animation give hints to things we haven't been told yet some of the show's biggest reveals were deciphered ahead of time by observant fans and that's by design i knew it it's always better than i didn't see that coming it's a much more rewarding experience to be right even the notion that pearl is not unique has been hinted at before pearl's name has on occasion been used as a common noun my pearl some lost defective pearl i'm just a pearl i'm useless on my own as if she's an object rather than an individual back to the barn doesn't reveal this fact to us so much as put into words something that was always there the moment we hear it it makes sense because it connects to things we've already been shown whether we notice them or not in change your mind white diamond does the same thing what makes her argument so convincing is that she's not telling us anything new simply putting into words things that have been there for a very long time i know why pink you like surrounding yourself with inferior gems what you enable their terrible behavior so you can be the best of the worst that's not true and even if it is even if it was you're talking about my mom you're not talking about me [Laughter] your mom [Laughter] [Music] stephen is the first and only half human half gem in the entire universe there has never been anyone like him before and nobody is quite sure what this means the details of how stephen was conceived are left vague this is a family show after all but we do know one consequence his mother rose no longer exists in order to pass her gemstone down to stephen she knowingly sacrificed herself steven we can't both exist i'm going to become half of you why would rose choose to stop existing did she love her unborn son so much she was prepared to sacrifice herself so he could live or did she want to become him because she no longer wanted to be herself every moment you love being yourself that's me loving you and loving being you because you're going to be something extraordinary you're going to be a human being what rose is doing is outrageously selfless and outrageously selfish at the same time and you can really read it both ways and neither is untrue whatever rose intended she is gone and stephen is here instead nevertheless there's enough ambiguity here for the show to play with rose it's me it's pearl are you in there glow twice for yes all of stephen's powers super strength defensive bubbles healing abilities the power to float and plant powers are abilities his mother had before him his shield is even emblazoned with her emblem that shield that symbol you have the power of rose quartz we can presume stephen inherited his powers along with the gemstone but can we be sure rosa's powers are all that's left of her stephen has a lot in common with his mother they're both empathetic free-spirited and able to see beauty in things others might not these traits could be hereditary after all stephen takes after his father as well even so there are moments when stephen behaves so much like rose people who knew her struggle with the distinction sometimes you even sound like her do you remember this place do you have any of her memories that's exactly what she said it is you isn't it rose why won't you just let me do this for you rose and when gems from homeworld see steven has rose's gemstone they assume he is her rose why do you look like that is that rose quartz we should shatter her just for looking like that since steven can't convince them otherwise he often encourages the misconception if it might work to his advantage i'm someone the diamonds will want more than any of these humans i'm rose quartz i need you to know who i am look tell me you don't see the resemblance [Music] are steven and rose one and the same the show repeatedly reassures us the answer is no by championing the qualities that make steven uniquely himself and revealing details about rose that make her a less admirable character nevertheless by always returning to this comparison the show keeps the idea fresh in the back of our minds without directly confronting it you became rose quartz to deceive your pathetic friends and now you've improved on that because you're even deceiving yourself no you're wrong i'm not my mom but don't you know things about her that you couldn't possibly know i've just been connecting with her my powers they they help me connect to others i'm not her i'm just feeling her feelings stephen has been dreaming about his mother except they're not just dreams we've seen this sort of thing before the time he helped kiki with her pizza themed nightmares the times he's telepathically connected with the cluster the time he possessed a watermelon so when he starts dreaming of pink diamond it doesn't seem unusual the only difference is in the past the people he's connected with have always been still alive when this first happens we don't yet know pink diamond and rose quartz are the same person by the time we learn this there are more pressing things to focus on so we probably won't realize right away the gem he connected with through these dreams was actually the gem that's part of him but if we did focus on this we might wonder if these dreams really were psychic visions or actually memories the fact steven doesn't remember being rose has so far been the best evidence he is not her rose passed her gemstone and some of her powers onto me but that's all i i don't have any of pink or rose's memories yet these dreams whilst couched in surreal elements clearly depict events from the past one of the dreams even put stephen whilst fused estebany in the place of pink diamond acting out a conversation she had as if they are her i'm just as important as you then why don't you act like it pink with each dream stephen learns things that turn out to be true upon waking whether it's a security code for a computer or the culprit of a murder well a fake murder that information must be coming from somewhere the show is very quick to contextualize these dreams in terms we already understand when steven dreamed of blue diamond it was because she was nearby so they suggest when he dreams of pink diamond it's because he falls asleep in places she's been i'm having diamond dreams again but why now why here what if they're close why else would you see them steven even though pink is not literally nearby it makes enough sense that we accept it stephen is experiencing some sort of clairvoyance triggered by his environment not something he's done before but not a huge leap either however if we re-examine these dreams having learned pink's true identity we realize pink was literally nearby these visions may still have been prompted by steven's environment but it's a shorter leap if they're coming from stephen's gemstone and if the memories are in there it might mean rose is in there too isn't it obvious even though you've embedded yourself in that human child your light can't help shining through you know you're in there you've known it all along stop cowering inside your gym you can hide from yourself but you can't hide from me pink we've seen how gem physiology is different to humans we've seen that when they're fatally wounded their bodies vanish into their gemstones to heal and we've seen how a gem can be prevented from reforming by placing their gemstone inside a bubble or embedding it inside an object and in that second case we've seen how the object in question will sort of become the gem's body when you were stuck in the wall was the house like your body we've seen many objects that appear to use gemstones as a power source imbuing them with supernatural properties we saw it in the pyramid temple when its gemstone is removed the entire temple vanishes just like a gems body would okay that's great anyway i fixed the mirror you didn't tell me it's like a person wait what we saw it with lapis lazuli who was embedded inside a mirror for thousands of years you three knew i was in there and you didn't do anything did you even wonder who i used to be lapis as a character is mainly used to explore themes of overcoming trauma in ways that are both healthy and unhealthy nevertheless she also serves to remind us of this idea that a gem can be trapped inside an object whilst remaining self-aware the mirror is when we actually introduced that concept that a gem could be trapped inside of an object and then later we're saying well steven could also be that object and stephen pulling lapis out of the mirror i mean in the earliest earliest days it was just sort of like how can we start to get people to ask this question is this character trapped inside our lead we thought about creating a way for him to tap into her inside of him to be able to get that connection we all argued about that pretty explosively because any shred of her being there would make his body like lapis's mirror it would mean that he's a prison that's trapping her inside of him we only ever see gems embedded in inanimate objects thus we don't immediately make the connection that the same logic might apply to living creatures and might apply to stephen but it's a short road to walk and once it's pointed out it's a very compelling theory because we've been told a lot more about how embedding works we know how it happens we know the harm it causes and we know there's only one way to fix it [Music] so with all three of these ideas the show gives us all the information that forms white diamond's argument without focusing our attention on the crucial implications and the final story arc the battle of heart and mind repeats these three ideas with greater intensity once again stephen impersonates his mother this time traveling to her home planet literally dressing up as her and taking her place in gem society subsequently he is subjected to what sugar calls the princess gauntlet a series of princess-themed tropes all of which dehumanizes steven further we organised it to have each princess story chip away at his integrity until he's almost ready to believe it when white diamond says that he never really existed at all stephen has more pink diamond dreams which are more intense more surreal and more frequent they start to bleed with reality so that stephen can't always tell when he's dreaming again these dreams place him in the role of pink diamond sometimes even transforming him into her it still fits the theory that it's triggered by location when he's in pink's room he dreams of her room when he's in the tower he dreams of the tower but it's mixed up with visual metaphors about stephen's crisis of identity suggesting a connection and instead of gems being trapped inside objects we see gems that are objects the walls talk the statues blink the bridges and buildings have faces a comb sings as it combs sugar drew inspiration from the films of busby berkeley and the artwork of boris artsy bashev the idea of people as props is so disturbing to me being part of the furniture and that being attractive or lovely is just so fascinating to me and so i wanted homeworld to be representative of that the whole mentality as well as representing the dehumanizing culture of homeworld it's also evocative of gems embedded in objects a more sinister version of lapis and her mirror so by the time steven faces white diamond all these ideas are very fresh in their most ghoulish forms we don't need much convincing because we're already some way towards joining the dots for ourselves [Music] now starlight this has gone on long enough but ultimately it all boils down to one question what happens when stephen is separated from his gemstone [Music] it's similar to the question of what would happen if he were mortally wounded we know gems can't die but stephen is flesh and blood he bruises he bleeds and he ages presumably he can die his family certainly believe he can it's possible he might be able to regenerate like a gem but the only way to know for sure would be to kill him and see what happens which suggests it's a question that will never be answered removing a gem's gemstone produces the same effect as wounding them so we might assume this would also kill steven and therefore isn't worth thinking about except on two occasions the show invites us to do just that i'm gonna take your gem and bring it back what no please don't take my gem wait that even happened to me the first time it's just a joke it doesn't imply an answer nor does it raise the expectation there will be an answer but it puts the question in the viewer's mind and it points out what it is we don't know so when the question is raised again we're fully aware of the ambiguity the second time is a little more involved three gems and a baby is a flashback episode exploring how the crystal gems came to understand that rose is now steven to begin with each has a different theory amethyst a skilled shapeshifter herself believes rose has shape-shifted into steven garnet a permanent fusion of ruby and sapphire believes steven is a form of fusion between greg and rose and pearl who was infatuated with rose clings to the belief that rose is still alive inside her gemstone look we can all see her she's right there she just can't reform because she has this baby around her they all make good points and we needed to set up all these possibilities in order to eventually reveal how he truly works though we still learn nothing about what would happen it implies the result would be catastrophic i know you're in there i can let you out we'll be together again [Music] i can't i can't then quickly tells us the answer to this question is not what matters this isn't about rose from now on everything has to be about stephen this episode has revealed nothing about what would actually happen to stephen without his gemstone but it has taught us what we should think about it it's an affront to stephen's identity we've seen what happens to gems without their gemstones we've seen what happens to objects when an embedded gem is removed to even attempt removing steven's gemstone would mean not caring about stephen at all it's time to come out pink [Music] it's not just that white diamond doesn't believe in steven's identity she doesn't believe in anybody's identity she sees all gems as her she sees herself in all gems and judges them as she would judge herself she believes she is everyone which is why she speaks for everyone as for me i'm certain i don't need you after all i'm every color of the light but you're a part of me the part i always have to repress the truth is white diamond doesn't have an identity of her own she's not even a whole person sugar devised the four diamonds to represent parts of a single body or mind with white at the top of the hierarchy pink diamond is the id representing pure impulse and desire yellow and blue are the ego mediating the eid through action or emotion and white is the superego moral judgment that aspires to perfection she's not just a tyrant she believes her very purpose is to decide what is correct and exercise what is not white has the power to replace a gem's identity with her own puppeting them speaking for them and removing all the impurities that give them color there we are i've removed their flaws now there is nothing to hinder my white light from sparkling through them now they are brilliant now they are perfect now they are me sugar drew inspiration for white from a 1940s disney short commissioned by kotex titled the story of menstruation but don't let it get you down after all no matter how you feel you have to live with people you have to live with yourself too and once you stop feeling sorry for yourself and take those days in your stride you'll find it's easier to keep smiling and even tempered it leaves this sobbing person behind and i was so struck by that i wanted white diamond to be that voice that tells you that you can't express yourself it would be unpleasant for you to burden others with whatever is going wrong with you i remember playing this for colin in the earliest days of stephen and just being like this is what homeworld is where stephen represents self-acceptance and self-expression white embodies repression shame and denial but in order to fix it we'd have to admit that it's broken she'll never want to hear it but it's the truth what white doesn't realize is that by punishing her fellow diamonds like this she is harming the body the diamond authority is divided against itself and it's not sustainable this sort of familial dysfunction ought to be the sort of problem stephen is great at solving in the past he has always defeated his adversaries through compassion and understanding but this doesn't work with white white diamond my name is steven universe i'm here my my we've been causing quite a scene haven't we stephen cannot teach her to embrace her flaws because she believes she has none he cannot appease her self-doubt because by her very nature she cannot doubt herself he cannot even encourage her to consider his perspective because she cannot conceive of any perspective outside her own she cannot see stephen as anything but another one of pink's foolish whims that must be corrected stephen cannot appeal to white as if she were a person because she isn't one white diamond isn't like us she isn't even like them at first this works to white's advantage the final confrontation is only her second scene though her presence has been felt for a long time we know her by reputation but have no clue precisely who or what she is white diamond is intentionally designed against the grain of everything else we did on that show we had been avoiding certain markers of femininity for the gems but we gave them all to her we wanted her to have all these hallmarks of an old stifling standard of beauty white's design is evocative of a bygone age inspired by 20th century artists such as windsor mckay and nell brinkley as well as actress hedy lamarr in ziegfeld girl it's another connection to the idea of people as props as well as conjuring dated notions of femininity whilst also making white seem distant and ethereal she's not part of the same world where all the other characters reside she is meant to wrong foot us before we meet her much is made of her short temper we'll be lucky if she ever speaks to us again after this yet she turns out to be saccharine and calm hello starlight you certainly gave everyone a scare they're all just thrilled to see you safe and sound when she meets stephen she's not surprised to see him or rather she doesn't seem to see him at all welcome home pig in sugar's master timeline of the show's history it's noted that white always knew pink diamond survived the gem war she knows about rose quartz and she knows about stephen she even knows about steven's dreams so when her argument starts ringing true it feels like maybe she does know more about this than we do she is so certain she's right while we are full of doubts white diamond is a very simple character but that is precisely why she works so well her limited identity is what makes her so unassailable to steven's empathy but it's also what proves to be her downfall [Music] we've been thrown into uncertainty we cannot predict what will happen next because the information has been deliberately kept from us we've been told we don't know what will happen we've been told whatever does happen will be banned we've been told what white diamond thinks will happen and though we don't want to believe it all the evidence we've been given supports her theory our enemy is certain while we are full of doubts cut to commercial and when we come back the show confronts us with this [Music] and it makes perfect sense steven has been split into two hearts one his human half frail and weak without the power of his gemstone the other his gem heart pure power without emotion compassion or empathy what is this where is pink she's gone what did you say answer me she's gone [Applause] we didn't have the information we needed to predict this but it feels completely correct because the idea of it has been informing the show since the very first season my original picture giant woman had ideas in it that we ended up bringing back for change your mind in its oldest version he fuses with one of the gems and then at the end when he unfuses it separates out his gem and human halves and that was the original perfect or pink steven story we were calling it perfect steven mode at this writer's meeting we got into a heated argument over this we all ultimately agreed that we could never do perfect stephen because stephen is perfect the way he is the crew realized a concept that provoked such strong reactions amongst themselves was likely to do the same for their audience they had inadvertently tapped into the core of the show and decided this was the perfect idea to structure their story around this was when they began feeding in ideas that played with this ambiguity to feed the doubts that would eventually form white diamond's attack on steven's identity knowing how viscerally wrong that suggestion felt part of what we ended up doing was plotting everything out so we were introducing one concept at a time instead of putting them all in one place and this was just the biggest one but it was it's very true to that original idea which is that steven wants the human part of himself even if it would slow him down or even i mean because this is what makes him hip it's what makes him him are you back together are you you yeah yeah i'm me i've always been me no you are pink diamond that is pink diamonds gem there are some who say white diamond's defeat happens too quickly and for reasons we've discussed maybe there's some truth to that but i've also seen people call this a redemption and i don't think that's what change your mind is going for white diamond doesn't join forces with stephen in the way peridot lapis and bismuth do she just changes her mind you do not look like this you do not sound like this you are not half human you're just acting like a child i am a child what's your excuse because she's such a simple character with no real identity of her own her concept of reality is shattered when faced with undeniable irrevocable proof that she is wrong she cannot understand how somebody like stephen can exist yet here he is i can't have a flaw i'm supposed to be flawless if i'm not perfect then who am i if you're not pink then who are you who is anyone she is everyone and everyone is her and her wrongness about him is her wrongs about herself and everyone and everything ultimately her identity is so fragile and she's so poorly differentiated that stephen is able to defeat her by existing after five seasons of stephen failing to convince his enemies to simply recognize him as who he truly is to the point he himself begins to doubt it he finally triumphs through the very thing white diamond believed would utterly undo him in a story about self-acceptance how apt that the finale should push us right to the brink of believing that stephen was never stephen only to pull us straight back to stephen being so undeniably himself that the proof of it topples an empire if you're a kid in steven's position and you need to speak that truth to power i can't think of a better story to tell than one where the kid in that position has the power to to tell their authority figure who they are and mean it and have them understand it to me that's just really special about the scene uncertainty is a difficult emotion to strike at the culmination of your story it relies on withholding information the very opposite of what makes a satisfying payoff steven universe manages this through very precise communication planting ideas in your head that are related to a crucial detail without actually saying what that crucial detail is this is put simply genius plotting i'm glad this wasn't the end of steven universe but if it had been i think i would have been okay with that even though fate conspired to change sugar and the crooner versus plans they knew exactly what they wanted to say and how to say it the show succeeds because from the very beginning it has been completely confident in its own identity that is what makes it a real gem thanks for watching if you enjoyed the video please like share and subscribe and if you're interested in how it was made there's an exclusive video on my patreon about how i edit to music lots of people asked me about this so i recorded myself doing it with this video taking you through the choices i'm making as i'm making them you can see this and get early access to future videos at patreon.com jameswoodall you can also support the channel by donating to my kofi kofi.com jameswoodle and you can get updates by following me on twitter at james b woodall all of these links are in the description i also have to give a shout out to the steven universe art books which were extremely informative in writing this video they're a great insight into how the show was made if you're a fan i cannot recommend them enough i'm not sponsored or anything i genuinely love these books there's links to those too thank you to my patrons to everyone who lent their voices and once again thank you for watching you

Channel: James Woodall

Views: 796,499

Keywords: Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones Quartey, Matt Burnett, White Diamond, Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Change Your Mind, Video Essay

Id: TLLABUPdPug

Length: 36min 6sec (2166 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/retrospace4]

Came across this great video essay on the finale of SU, which really helps contextualize that confrontation between White Diamond and Steven.

Although I still feel like the overall ending of the show was rushed, the suspense and everything from this scene was great, and this video really showcases that well!

All credit to James Woodall (I am very much not he, just wanted to share it!)

[u/arthurity]

This was a great video. Very thoughtful.