“Things start and things end, and isn’t it lovely in theory…”

The first nine episodes of Season 4 are a period of transition. Season 3 (and Act II of the series) ends with a major revelation about Steven’s mother, and Season 4 (and Act III) eases us into this new reality by giving him time to process his new emotions about the Gem half of his family and the lies he’s been told. Sometimes this is subtle (Buddy’s Book, Gem Harvest), sometimes it’s terrific (Mindful Education, Last One Out of Beach City), and sometimes the show seems to ignore this element entirely (Future Boy Zoltron, Onion Gang), but once we hit Steven’s Dream, it’s full steam ahead for Steven’s Act III arc.

So it’s fitting that Three Gems and a Baby feels so conclusive. After a whole season basking in summer, we leap from a Halloween and Thanksgiving episode all the way to Christmas. We get a capper on the Steven’s Birthday Trilogy, and a finale for Greg’s flashback adventures. This is the last time Steven will be angst-free and safe for an entire episode until The Big Show, which is nearly forty episodes away. Between kidnapped family and friends, space hijinks, a big fight with Connie, and a few melancholic or frustrating side stories sprinkled in for flavor, he’s about to have a really bad time. He deserves an episode of taking it easy and telling stories.

Not that this is a great time for Greg or the Gems. Everyone’s happy in the present, but we still need conflict to fuel the plot, and like Greg in all his other flashbacks, we gain an appreciation for the Gems today by comparing them to their past selves. We not only remember what these three were like earlier in the series, but get context for their behavior prior to their growth.



Flashback Amethyst is the most similar to her modern self, in that she’s pretty chill and understands humans best. Her gift shows that she more or less knows how babies work (unlike razors and dictionaries, babies do need diapers) and our shapeshifter only errs by forgetting that Steven’s size is fixed.

Flashback Garnet is also similar to her modern self, which we shouldn’t take for granted; this story takes place right after the leadership role was thrust upon her by Rose’s departure, so it would’ve been understandable if her confidence and wisdom were impacted by grief and shock. Instead, we get a story about how Steven’s reaction to her openness creates the distant Garnet we knew at the start of the series: he’s startled by Ruby and Sapphire, and is someone Garnet can’t understand, so she hides her status as a fusion and quietly assesses him throughout his childhood.

This leaves the most obvious evolution for Pearl. I love the early shot of her modern iteration putting a kettle on while Greg prefaces the story, showing an ability to be calm and present in a way her past self never could; it’s even subtly referenced by Flashback Pearl’s aggressive rejection of tea. After the triumph of Last One Out of Beach City, it’s a punch to the gut to see Pearl back at the other end of her arc. And it’s worse than ever this close to Rose’s death; her pain is so raw that despite her open bitterness to Greg and what she almost does to Steven and the whole kidnapping thing, it’s hard to see her as an outright villain in the past.



A neat method of characterization is each of the Crystal Gems seeing reflections of themselves in Steven. Amethyst assumes he’s Rose shapeshifting, and tries shifting herself (into the baby form from Too Many Birthdays) to encourage him; this makes him laugh, and she’ll continue to shapeshift around him as he grows up. Garnet assumes Steven is a fusion, and tries splitting up; this makes him upset, and as I said, she doesn’t unfuse around him until much later in his life. And Pearl thinks it’s just Rose trapped with a human, which is how she’s seen Rose’s relationship with Greg, so she tries to set her free.

Like Gem Harvest before it, Three Gems and a Baby gets a lot more interesting after Change Your Mind. Gems in general have been shown throughout the series to be stubborn, with Rose as an exception strong enough that her son also inspires the ability to change. Jasper and Bismuth and Eyeball have set the stage for antagonists thinking Steven is Rose (and Bismuth stops being an antagonist when she realizes he isn’t), and the Diamonds will go in hard on Steven being Pink Diamond. Here, we see that even our own Crystal Gems thought the same thing once, and Pearl is tempted to pluck out his gem in a shot that gets a haunting counterpart once White Diamond is in play.

The difference is that Pearl can’t do it, and it’s critical that she decides this on her own. She’s not being talked down when she holds back, and that would make this a fully different scene: this isn’t a pearl following orders, it’s our Pearl realizing that Steven is something entirely new.

As Pearl says, change isn’t as natural for Gems as it is for humans. But this episode shows that it’s possible, and over the course of Steven’s life, he makes these rebels change into the moms and sisters they’ve become by the time they’re telling this story. Rose may have been selfish, wanting change so much that she abandoned her loved ones to do it. But she also might have realized more than anyone that through Steven, change was possible for her friends as well.

While time shenanigans can be a fun way to tell stories, I love that these flashbacks are told in chronological order: Story for Steven is about Greg meeting Rose, We Need to Talk is about Greg and Rose’s relationship truly beginning, Greg the Babysitter is about Greg growing up and the seed of the idea that begat Steven (thanks, Sour Cream!), and Three Gems and a Baby is about what happened when Steven was born but Rose was gone.



As is now enforced by Steven, we begin with a song, and I Could Never Be Ready is Greg at his absolute sweetest. It’s a marked departure from the rocking anthems that began previous flashbacks, and rather than a stage performance or a fun montage with Rose, it’s accompanied by mundane scenes from single fatherhood. It captures the same parental heart of Dear Old Dad without the subterfuge undercutting that sequence, and its heartfelt sincerity never comes across as cloying.

But in an episode about change, it’s so cool to see the flashback structure upended by Steven interrupting in the middle to jolt us back into the present. It’s so fantastic to be reminded that this is still a story for Steven, one that the Gems are present in telling to explain our shift between points of view, and it eases the segue from Vidalia’s house to the kidnapping by drawing attention to how poorly planned this kidnapping was. It also serves as another reminder of how much the Gems have grown to see them in the present between two depictions of their more confused past selves.

Still, we keep Greg’s character train going, as he’s matured greatly compared to his previous three flashbacks but is still more of a flustered mess than he is today. This isn’t a mark of immaturity as much as inexperience, and I appreciate that he’s shown to be a responsible father from the start. His goofiest moment, in which he tries to make an impromptu dogsled off-screen, comes from the sheer panic of people he trusted taking his kid away. Otherwise he’s at pretty sane levels of new parent insanity, and it makes the van ride sequence in Steven’s Birthday all the sweeter.

(It does make me realize that until Steven moved in with the Crystal Gems, he was probably just living in a van. But that’s just another mark in Greg’s favor, as he chooses a better housing situation for his child instead of holding on and keeping the kid in a vehicle his whole life.)

I wasn’t kidding when I mentioned Christmas; as I said in Alone at Sea, I’m hesitant to let my background as the son of two ministers conflate Christian readings of events with the intent of a creative crew from a wider religious background (especially because I’m not a Christian myself), but I mean, look at this picture. Three Gems, who came bearing gifts to a newborn with only one human parent, are gathered around said parent and child while the parent’s wrapped like Mary in a classic nativity scene. No, the Bible never actually says there were three wise men, but the iconography certainly seems purposeful: this is a story about baby that heralds changing times (to the point that different eras are associated with his existence), and I don’t think it’s too sacrilegious to make the connection to a more famous story about this concept.

And like Christmas, this is an episode that celebrates other “traditions” of sorts. References to So Many Birthdays and Steven’s Birthday abound (among the ones I’ve already mentioned we’ve got Pearl’s nose getting grabbed and a box meant to look like it’s been carefully wrapped). We get Li’l Buck and Jenny to round out Baby Cream from last time. We even get a callback to The Message, with Greg gently telling Steven to not shout when he’s so nearby. Again, there’s a sense of finality here, complete with memories of the past in Steven’s life as well as this series, before we plunge into uncharted territory.

The themes of the episode are put into words in the last scene, but Steven’s explicit praise for his family’s growth feels earned after watching it ourselves for over a hundred episodes. And considering what’s coming next for our hero, a moment in a warm room with family during bad weather is just what Steven needs right now. That storm’s about to get a lot worse.

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

Not mentioned in the callbacks above is the carabiner song, because the reference to Winter Forecast only makes it stranger that Steven talks about how he’s never seen so much snow. An entire episode, including my favorite scene in the series, involves a similar snowstorm.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!



As far as snow episodes are concerned, I’m still all about Winter Forecast, but it would’ve taken a lot for me to be down on this episode from the title alone.

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6. Horror Club

5. Fusion Cuisine

4. House Guest

3. Onion Gang

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1. Island Adventure