Review: Steven Universe “Your Mother and Mine”

“Let me tell you of the days of high-adventure!”

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

The episode begins at the “Sun Incinerator” ship Lars stole during the events of Stranded as it starts to experience trouble with the engine leaving them drifting. Out of nowhere Steven shows up and asks to bring Garnet with him, but at least he’s considerate enough to ask permission first. As Garnet meets him and his off-color crew, her approach seems well-intentioned, but it’s kinda sad that they none of the off-colors even understand the concept of compliments as the fascist mentality of Gem Homeworld never acknowledges nor accepts any kind of Imperfections. When Garnet questions the crew about their knowledge of Rose Quartz, the stories they’ve heard are pretty all over the place as to them, she’s often depicted as their equivalent of the boogie man or a myth of sorts in their homeworld. In response to this, Garnet decides to inform them of her version of the story in regards Rose Quartz’s rise to heroism and the revolution she started thousands of years ago.

A good portion of the episode spends it’s running time on Garnet’s version of the Pink Diamond story, being told through her narration and visual storytleling with some great call-backs to other flashback episodes thrown in, And gets the point across about how terrible Diamond’s Regime was, what made Rose question the authority of her own superior, and the major turning point that leads up to her supposedly starting the “Gem Rebellion” where she encouraged the Gems who served Pink Diamond to think for themselves rather than a restrained predetermined existence. It even acknowledges that Bismuth was once an architect before she became a blacksmith for the Rebel Gems which further expands her character despite only being in the 100th episode special. Of course like any historic battle, it wasn’t without casualties as according to Garnet’s version of the story, Pink Diamond was killed by Rose, and in retaliation, White, Blue & Yellow Diamond unleashed a giant death beam destroying every Gem on earth, but those who survived which turned out to be Rose, Garnet & Pearl which makes sense given that Amethyst wasn’t born yet.

When we cut back to the present, the off-colors don’t seem very happy about Garnet’s version of the story as it comes off as hopelessly bleak, but Garnet empowers them explaining that with or without Rose, Her ideals of individuality and freedom didn’t die with her, and as long as the off-colors live as themselves, they’ll prove living a life without the fear of fitting in is possible. While the speech does empower Lars and his crew enough to figure out whats wrong with the ship, the episode ends on an uncertain note, as Steven is left troubled by the trippy visions of Pink Diamond that he and Connie had during the events of “Stranded” along with a contradicting story he heard about his mother in The Trial.

Our Take

While past episodes may have revealed details about Rose’s past that can be deemed questionable, I think this episode truly shined the most with Garnet’s narration in combination with the colorful visuals that compelled me enough to keep me watching. It also excelled in terms of character interactions as the off-color Gems turned out to be sympathetic characters in the process of meeting Garnet. You know it’s a lonely existence for them when they’ve grown up without any kind of positive acknowledgment just for being born different.

Overall, It had some interesting character interactions, but I hope to see the Off-Color Gems interact with other characters within Steven’s circle in future episodes.