Promo Analysis: SDCC 2017

(Image) Source: YouTube

I’d like to start of with saying this post is based on the clips that the Crewniverse released during San Diego Comic Con. Since the two clips were released by the Crewniverse in a publicly staged panel, I think it’s more than safe to assume these don’t fall under leaks.

With that, I was really excited when I saw the promos for the new episodes. They seem very action-filled and fast-paced. It appears we get to see a lot of the new characters, and revisit older ones.

I don’t want to draw out the introduction any longer, so let’s do this!

One of the two clips focuses on a particular scene from an episode that is currently being referred to as “Lars of the Stars.” In it, Steven and Connie emerge from Earth to Lars’s head, in a ship piloted by the Off Colours. In the weeks they’ve been in space, it seems they and Lars have sabotaged, destroyed, and stolen from Homeworld.

Lars and the Off Colours have earned the ire of a seemingly high-ranking Emerald gem. I say this because Emerald has her own ship, the Sun Incinerator the latter speaks of so fondly.

Something I’d like to note is the amount of time Lars and the Off Colours have been on their own. It not only is evidenced by the number of heists they were able to pull, until Emerald nursed such an aggressive vendetta against them, but also by the context of the Off Colours when Steven meets them again.

1. Steven didn’t (and couldn’t) immediately go back for Lars

The other clip is much more episodic, and appears to be a collection of short clips from several episodes. From this clip, I would place the series of events in this manner.

First, upon Steven’s return, his first concern was likely to inform the CGs (Greg and Connie included) what had transpired on Homeworld. The others would then be up to speed. I doubt much else would have happened that day because it was rather dark out when Steven returned. He and Lars had been missing for days at this point, evidenced by his telling Lars in Lars’ Head that the latter hadn’t eaten in days.

Everyone would have been tired at this point, and in no condition to fight off Homeworld forces in an attempt to bring Lars and the Off Colours home.

After preparations were made, Steven was ready to return to Homeworld, but I think an episode focuses on his being unable to find Lion.

I feel that the tension would build in this episode, as Steven’s search for Lion continued to reveal no Lion, and he had to face the other citizens of Beach City who were very worried for Lars.

In the promo, we cut to several reaction clips of Sadie and Lars’s parents. We get the sense that in the first few episodes, Steven is going to struggle with the guilt of wanting to save everyone, but being unable to.

But I feel that the focus on the humans of Beach City is intended, especially since we feel a confrontation happening on Earth coming soon. This could mean a greater involvement of human beings in the defence of their planet as the series develops, and their greater knowledge of the alien and magical things that go on around them.

This is further affirmed by the opening sequence of the Lars of the Stars clip. Steven and Connie note that the care package they’re bringing on their interplanetary trip was put together by Lars’s parents.

I’d like to think that Lion disappeared in order to find something for Steven that Rose or someone else had intended for him to find when the time was right. He would have to have been missing for some time for Steven to put up Missing posters of him.

But Lion is found eventually, and things are back in order for the beginning of the Lars of the Stars episode. This is what makes me believe such an episode will happen somewhere in between the new releases, as it seems to have drawn attention to Earth as where the two fugitives had hidden.



2. Lars wasn’t fighting Homeworld for fun

On Lars’s end, the Off Colours were able to do several things of no easy feat during their wait time. They were able to “steal [Emerald’s] personal shuttle and crashed it on Upsilon 9,” they “impersonated imperial officers during a public jubilee,” and now they stole the Sun Incinerator from “the Heart of Homeworld.”

Anonymous said:

I want to believe that Lars has been causing troubles to Emerald for a long time to the point that she has become obsessed with killing/capturing him .I mean Lars has probably humiliated her publicly (by stealing her ship during a hight class party) and imagine how embarashing it would be for an elite HW gem to be outsmarted by a human a being that its supposed to be inferior to her .She probably has developed some issues and I personaly would really want to see a rivalry between the two

And I think it’s because their main goal was the acquisition of a ship powerful enough to get everyone back to Earth. From the way all of their exploits were described, Homeworld’s empire is very vast, but the most powerful ships are found at military centres. It seems as though after the failure to colonise Earth, Homeworld went in the opposite direction as quickly as they could, requiring more power to get to Earth.

After all, all the ships we’ve seen come to Earth so far are from the Diamonds themselves. Even in the Return, Peridot and the others were sent as working for the Diamonds’ pet project, the Cluster. Everything about Earth exudes ancientness, history, and secrecy. It would make sense that gems don’t frequent the area unless specifically assigned.

The Off Colours weren’t undertaking all of these difficult operations just to stick it to Homeworld. They were strategically getting closer to a very fast and powerful ship. The reason he feels confident enough to engage in banter with Emerald is in his own words. They can’t really pursue him now that he has their fastest ship.

But the Off Colours are also aware that upon taking something that valuable, they’d be exposed for certain, so a lot of risk was involved.

I feel that when Steven and Connie entered the picture, the Off Colours had just taken the Sun Incinerator, likely after doing some damage to it and luring the original crew off the ship. That’s why Lars was running a systems check.

It speaks of how big and stable an empire Homeworld is, that a handful of trouble-makers were deemed as only a nuisance until personally taking a leading officer’s ship.

3. Homeworld is now actively targeting Earth

Also in the second clip are fast-transition scenes in which a large green ship has opened fire on the Sun Incinerator, which we know Lars is using at the moment.

We see similar scenes in which I’m assuming the same ship is firing missiles. Until the Sun Incinerator spirals towards into a planet that looks like Earth.

I say “looks like” because we’ve seen Earth from space in the past. In Adventures in Light Distortion, Earth looks much more blue and green while this planet has more browns. I think though, that the planet is Earth, because in the image below, we appear to be on the dark side of the planet, while in the image above, we get to see both hemispheres.

If in the past, the Diamonds merely associated Earth with what they had lost and were distant from any fresh trauma, they could feel more urgency for pursuing Earth, because to their knowledge, Rose Quartz herself was still alive and probably headed there.

I feel like the issue for the Diamonds isn’t really what the Off Colours did, although it will factor into Earth being reclassified as a planet of interest because Steven and Lars were last seen together and Lars seems to be headed to Earth.

I do think that we won’t get to see the Diamonds launch anything Earth-bound in this set of episodes. Sadly, because the show is seen in Steven’s perspective, and we only see events that happen when Steven is around, we might not get to see how they plan to make contact with Earth as well.

4. Prodding Lapis’ old wounds

Close to the beginning of the second clip, Steven exclaims that everyone is back on Earth and safe and “everything’s fine.” He is met with Connie’s pessimism, that things are, in fact, not fine.

I think the climax of this set of episodes won’t be Lars of the Stars. The reason the Lars episode had a clip shown at SDCC, to me, emphasises that it’s not the most the Crew has in store.

The conflict of this set of episodes may lie in the characters’ decision to stand for Earth. We see it most clearly in Lapis, but I think it’s something the human characters are struggling with as well. It’s a lot to ask and a lot to expect, given human beings had no idea these aliens had been using their planet as a battleground for years now.

I haven’t even seen it yet, but I’m already certain one of my favourite scenes from the show will be Greg’s asking the gems for context because he wants to understand, and Pearl saying it wouldn’t be easy to explain everything but she really want to get her message across.

While they don’t seem to happen in the same scene, they do appear to be thematically from the same episode.

Human beings don’t have a lot of context of the war, and I don’t think it will sit well with a lot of them to be told that a lot of planet-shaping events happened because of the Gems.

We’ve been seeing how much gem activity has been intersecting and interrupting human life in the recent episodes. If anything, we’ve reached a point in which human beings now have to decide whether they will stand for their planet, and have a say in its future, or they would continue to be passive because some more powerful actors are already present. I’m hoping it’s the former.

I think it’s especially difficult for Lapis. Lapis has never truly felt herself a Crystal gem. She’s comfortable around Peridot and Steven, but there’s still some tension between her and the gems.

I’ve written before about how Lapis hasn’t just decided to forget about the war. Like Peridot in Too Far, she’s playing nice because she’s got nothing left. She’s not going to question anything or anyone, at least overtly.

She does care about Steven, enough that she’s risked her life for him in the past but there are also times she’s left him be because she couldn’t see another way out of their situation.

This seems to be one of the times she feels there’s nothing left to do. And there really isn’t. Going back to Homeworld is definitely not an option for her, but she doesn’t want to stay on Earth and become collateral damage in another conflict.

I think that Lapis will leave for a while, but not for good. Unlike before, she’s not on Earth as a complete alien anymore. She’s made ties and connections to the planet and those living on it. It’ll be a little more difficult to say goodbye. Her feelings about Earth are a little more ambivalent and less clear-cut now.

It’s not as if she wanted to destroy the Earth in the past. She hated the planet, but she didn’t want to be instrumental in its destruction. She didn’t believe in Earth enough to support its becoming a colony, and when she tried to escape the planet in Ocean Gem, she preserved all of the fish and other aquatic life.

5. Taking the fight to Earth

If any physical confrontation will happen, it will be because of Emerald’s hunting down the Off Colours. We see a lone ship attack the Sun Incinerator, and the only antagonist we’re given a hint of, is Emerald.

I think that in the wake of their arrival, the gems set some sort of trap for them, or at the least make preparations. It would explain why Smoky Quartz is in the promo, because of their unique fan ability.

At the same time, what convinces me of Lapis’ return is her using her abilities as well. It isn’t just a case of her hearing about the Diamonds and leaving. I also don’t think she’d be wasting her time engaging with the gems unless provoked, and I don’t think Steven would be inciting any sort of provocation.

It seems that Lars’ arrival makes it such that all of the Earth events are set into motion. The sunset lighting and the urgency on Sadie’s face makes me consider that this is when things begin moving on Earth.

The promo ends with Peridot convincing someone to stay and stand for Earth. There’s a lot of speculation as to whom she’s addressing, but given the language she uses, “Earth is our home now, isn’t it worth fighting for?” I think she’s talking to Lapis. While there are other Homeworld gems, none have talked about finding a home the way Lapis has. I’m not certain if it is definitively what causes Lapis to change her mind, but I think it will play a part.

To sum this all up, I think that the climax of the new episodes will be in many characters’ deciding how they feel about standing for Earth amid the building conflict. I think that we’ll have a few episodes talking about what life is like in Beach City after Steven returns. We’re likely going to get some backstory on the Diamonds and Homeworld as a result.

We’ll be reintroduced to Lars and the other Off Colours as well as Emerald, who is currently the greatest threat presented to Earth. Lapis in particular will have some development as a character, but I feel a lot of the human beings will as well.

I’m really excited for what’s to come. It doesn’t feel like the big end, so I’m hoping it sets the stage really well for the episodes even further down.