“I’ll take it from here.”

Like The Answer, watching this episode makes me think back to my immediate “maybe I should write about this show” reaction when it first aired. This was during my bookstore years, where I was allowed to go full-blown nerd at work because I wasn’t an authority figure for kids who might get scared of my fervor, and I basically gushed to my unconverted colleagues with my brand-new pitch for Steven Universe. See, before Message Received, the way I described the show was along the lines of:

“So there’s these four ancient magical warrior women, but then the leader falls in love with a guy from Delaware and has a kid, and now the three other warriors are raising the kid.”

Short, sweet, conveys the blend of magical and mundane by using a real-world state instead of the Delmarva region, it was a sound pitch. But after Message Received, the way I described the show was along the lines of:

“So there’s these four ancient magical warrior women, but then the leader falls in love with a guy from Delaware and has a kid, and now the three other warriors are raising the kid, and the villain is voiced by PATTI F***ING LUPONE.”

It’s awesome that the likes of Aimee Mann and Nikki Minaj are guest voices on this show. But it’s incredible that Patti LuPone voices a recurring character. Mann and Minaj are stars, but LuPone is a legend. There are plenty of great voice actors that could’ve nailed Yellow Diamond, but not many of them have won multiple Tony and Grammy Awards. This is like Meryl Streep showing up on Adventure Time.

Yellow Diamond might not end up the villain of Steven Universe, but she’s a long-term antagonist and will continue to be a major factor in the Homeworld element of the show. She’s been foreshadowed since fellow penultimate-episode-of-the-season The Return, and we got a hint of Blue Diamond in The Answer, so given the general slow burn of lore reveals it’s shocking to meet her this soon. And we will! But in an embarrassment of riches, this episode is special for reasons beyond featuring a stage icon, so let’s detour to the beginning.

It Could’ve Been Great and Message Received cast genuine doubt on the future in a way that few other episodes can, and a big part of that is that even Peridot doesn’t know what she’ll do next. Peridot doesn’t have the same depth as the rest of the main cast yet, but that ironically allows the stakes to rise higher than any other point in the first two seasons, because there’s not enough status quo to know how this will play out. Jasper may destabilize Garnet in The Return, but we know she’ll come back. Garnet and Pearl may not be speaking after Cry for Help, but they’ll make up. But Peridot began as a villain, has shown nothing but fealty to her Diamond, and hasn’t even been on great terms with the Crystal Gems for their brief period of partnership. There was a very real chance that she was going to turn here.



(Unless you got spoiled by Cartoon Network leaking a promo of Peridot talking with Lapis at the barn during the week this episode aired, which also, y’know, spoiled that Lapis was gonna come back. Good thing the channel learned its lesson and never leaked anything ever again after this!!!)

Peridot is loyal to Homeworld through and through, but she’s also loyal to life on Earth now, and truly believes that “the most perfect, the most reasonable, rational, efficient decider ever to exist in the universe” will listen to her logical plan for using Earth’s resources without destroying it. And it makes sense that she doesn’t just tell the Crystal Gems her plan: she tries, but she’s terrible at communicating and thinks they’re too dumb to grasp how she’s going to save their planet for them. It’s an excellent use of her character’s lingering ambiguity, and has her finally making a choice based not on logic or pragmatism, but emotion.

Still, despite her moment in the sun, Steven gets plenty to do here. This is the first time his intuition has been this wrong, that his positive outlook and willingness to befriend his enemies has backfired this badly. Things might work out in the end, but I love how much time is taken to show how much Peridot’s betrayal still hurts in the moment. He’s grown so much since Gem Glow, and it really stings to be made to feel like a naive child again.

The Gems all have their own flawed means of comforting Steven: Amethyst just gets mad, and Pearl “helpfully” tells him that he can feel awful about himself after they’ve sorted out the situation, but Garnet’s speech about the value of patience is the trickiest response, because one could argue that she’s not wrong. In the real world, you’re gonna get let down if you always try to see the best in everyone, because the real world has folks that will take advantage of you unless you’re savvy.

But considering the outcome of the episode, I’m not sure that’s the takeaway here. Yes, it’ll do you good to not have blind faith in everyone, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to have faith in as many people as you can. It’s hard, and you’ve gotta steel yourself for disappointment, but every now and then a Peridot will surprise you.

The first two episodes of Season 3 have major pacing problems, both as individual episodes and within the context of the series. It’s all the more obvious when compared to Message Received, which pulls a Steven Universe classic by flying through the first two acts without losing track of the episode’s core concept (in this case, that Peridot thinks the Crystal Gems are too emotional and that she can fix things with logic) to extend the third act. We need to take our time with Yellow Diamond, and I’m as impressed as ever by the show’s ability to draw out important scenes like this within the confines of eleven minute chunks.

Everything about Yellow Diamond’s introduction is incredible. And I mean everything: before the communicator even shows a full image, Aivi and Surasshu set the stage with a frantic rush of the four-note Diamond Motif that slows into a variant of the unearthly sensation that we heard just three episodes ago while meeting Blue Diamond. Both pieces of music drone on a bit when you listen to them on their own, but seriously, take a few minutes to hear Yellow’s all the way through. It’s drowned out by Patti LuPone in the scene, but it does amazing work ramping up the tension as the meandering groove we settle into veers off-course.

Anyway, after the image finally clears up, we see…a pearl. Our second new pearl of the week. And where Blue Pearl was eerie and quiet, Yellow Pearl is straight-up Lucy Van Pelt as an alien, an irritable fussbudget with delusions of self-importance. Her first impression is so strong that seeing her immediately deflate into deference when addressed by Yellow Diamond tells us everything we need to know about the bigger fish.

Yellow Diamond is intimidating without the slightest bit of effort. She doesn’t even bother to look away from her work until she realizes what planet our Peridot is on. For all of Peri’s praise, she means absolutely nothing to her beloved leader (and, as seen in Reunited, will continue meaning nothing after the conversation ends).

I already talked up Patti LuPone, but seriously, I’m not sure who else could imbue half as much disdain in the word “organic.” Even before she loses her temper, Yellow Diamond’s cold disgust shows that what her subordinates might see as perfection is actually imperiousness. When Peridot questions her objectivity, Yellow assumes she’s questioning her authority. She can handle the gnat-like annoyance of a peridot interrupting her work, but the instant a subordinate tries to think for herself is the instant Yellow Diamond gets out of her chair.

An interview with Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey reveals that Peridot’s use of the term “clod” originated from Jones-Quartey parodying conceited intellectuals like Richard Dawkins trying to convince people to listen to them while simultaneously insulting them (“Evolution is real, you clod!”). The explanation struck a chord with me: I don’t care what the message is or how right you are, you’re not gonna change an enemy’s mind by being a jerk. Peridot, for has long as we’ve known her, has been that jerk.



Through that lens, Peridot calling Yellow Diamond a clod is even greater than simply redirecting a catchphrase against an unexpected target. The word is always used when Peridot is asserting her intelligence over someone she sees as inferior, and after seeing how much she admired Yellow Diamond, it’s downright empowering to see her use the word to reject her leader’s intellectual authority.

This scene gets even better after Too Short to Ride, where we learn that the peridots of Peridot’s generation are small and powerless (or so she thinks) because of dwindling resources. She’s not just arguing on behalf of Earth for the sake of organic life, she’s making the case for using potential resources to help her own kind, and Yellow Diamond explicitly says that she doesn’t care.

This isn’t the end of Peridot’s character development, but the beginning of a new stage. She’s officially done with Homeworld, and while that might cause her to groan so loud that you can hear it from space, Steven is happy enough for both of them. It might be a while before she gets her star, but from this point onward, she’s a Crystal Gem.

Future Vision!

How the heck does someone like Peridot have such easy access to a Diamond? Because, as we’ll learn as we find out more about the moon base, she’s probably using the same communicator Pink did to talk to her sisters.

Not every pearl knows each other, but Pearl does know Yellow Pearl.

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

A terrific pseudo-finale, even if cooldown episode Log Date 7 15 2 slips in to take that spot (although some sources display The Answer as the finale and Ian Jones-Quartey sees Message Received as a midseason finale, which is actually more in line with my view of Steven Universe working as a show with three 50-odd episode acts, so who even knows).

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