Review: Steven Universe “Can’t Go Back; A Single Pale Rose”

A single episode of Cartoon Network’s biggest franchise for this month.

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

“Can’t Go Back”

Ronaldo with the duties of using a Space Telescope within Beach City after the events of Letters to Lars, spots something on the moon and Steven goes to investigate, We do have one brief scene that reminds the audience Peridot is still living with them, along with Pumpkin. Upon researching Ronaldo’s discovery, Steven uses Lion to travel to the moon and with his Bubble Gem-powers, discovers Lapis is there who he hasn’t seen since Raising the Barn and attempts to find out what happened to her, but comes across an underground temple under the Moon that the Gems apparently left behind. Lapis reveals a device within the temple that’s designed to observe humanity without actually interacting with anyone, but Steven tries his best to comfort Lapis who fears coming back will have negative repercussions.

We do get a decent musical number of Lapis expressing loneliness in tandem with the anxieties she’s going through, while part of her has already gotten homesick for Earth with the excuse of having “overreacted”. Out of nowhere, Steven gets shadowy visions of Pink Diamond’s past showing how she was being verbally belittled by her superiors during the Gem rebellion, and a shadowy vision of Pearl holding Pink Diamonds sword. But given the incoherent vagueness of Steven’s visions when he tries to say them out loud, it only makes Lapis agitated to the point that she ends up opening the space-door and straight up leaves stating that she can’t forget her PTSD-addled bullshit, and the episode ends on a compelling cliffhanger when Steven asks Lion to take him directly to Pearl.

“A Single Pale Rose”

As a direct continuation from “Can’t Go Back”, Steven confronts Pearl about the visions he saw during his time with Lapis, and given that the entire series has danced around this thing Pearl is compelled to talk about but could never explain, It’s revealed that her gem functions as a pocket-dimension, and after putting her phone inside it, It somehow keeps sending texts to Steven while the phone is Stuck within said dimension and asks Steven to retrieve it.

This is where things get interesting as it spends most of the running time, showing the infinite vastness within Pearl’s mind and her head trying it’s best at comparmentalizing the randomness of it, but given that there’s multiple Pearl’s with her consciousness, each one sends Steven visions of events from Pearl’s past, (Including the gruesome aftermath of the Gem War), and it’s here where we get to the real meat of the story of what really went down regarding the Death of Pink Diamond, and after 5 seasons and 146 episodes, it’s a precision mind-fuck of a reveal. After finally getting his hands on Pearl’s Smartphone and returning, the episode ends on a monumental cliffhanger as Steven says out loud what Pearl could never say out loud, much to the shock of Garnet & Amethyst who just happen to walk in seconds after Steven’s discovery…

Our Take

Holy Fuck! While it sucks that Lapis consistently behaves like an angry, emo-cunt who tends to run away from her problems rather than face them, You do see that part of her at some level still wants to return but is fully aware that in her mind “things can’t be as they were before” and would rather be alone. At first, I assumed from the episode’s title that this episode could’ve been about Lars, but It’s also quite interesting that the Moon even had a Gem base at all, but I guess Gem Homeworld felt the need to put their technology in nearly every planet to make themselves known throughout the cosmos.

As for the big twist in “A Single Pale Rose” a lot of secrets were revealed that will either dick with the expectations of fan theorists or prove theories right depending on what they can comprehend what Steven has discovered. Even I didn’t expect it, but given the established mythos of the show itself, as the promotional material has stated, “This will change everything!”

The credits even previewed the next wave episodes showing the different reactions of how everyone is responding to this reveal with the promise of continuing this storyline later in the Summer. And after what has just unraveled before Steven and by extension the audience, I can’t wait to see what happens next!