There’s always something strange going on in Beach City. Whether that’s because of the three not-so-human women living on the beach with their foster son or the many extra-terrestrial encounters they have is up to you.
Though the story of Steven Universe starts out as a slice of life with a touch of sci-fi, the plot quickly takes a turn for the mysterious, taking us to other worlds and alternate dimensions filled with ruins of a long-gone civilization. The first glimpse of the conspiracy that we see is in the eighth episode of Steven Universe, ‘Serious Steven‘.
The episode takes us to the Gem Battlefield, now a lush field of strawberries, where Steven goes on his first real mission with the Crystal Gems. Aside from strawberries, the former battlefield is filled with the remains of weapons – and the remains of dead gems.
As the series goes on, we hear only one name on the lips of every new character we meet: Rose Quartz. But to unravel what she has to do with all this, let’s first pin down who Steven Universe‘s Rose Quartz is.
Warning: There are spoilers ahead.
Who Is Rose Quartz?
Some viewers like spoilers so if you’re one of the types who want to know if a show’s going to be good before watching it, let’s talk about Rose.
Steven Universe’s Rose Quartz was the leader and founder of the Crystal Gems, a group of gem warriors sworn to protect Earth from the colonization efforts of Homeworld, a planet ruled by the Great Diamond Authority.
After realizing that the Diamonds of Homeworld were pillaging the stars for resources and subjugating local humans, Rose Quartz decided to gather her fellow gems to fight in a rebellion that became known as the Gem War.
Aside from Rose Quartz’s involvement in the war, there’s little that we know about her. We get an idea of what kind of person, or rather, gem, that she was through the eyes of Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl.
Garnet has a deep respect for Rose Quartz which tells us that she was a capable leader. She must be considering that she successfully won a war against a larger, better-supplied army. She was also very motherly, ensuring that Garnet and Amethyst had someone to talk to as they grew more comfortable with who they are. For Garnet, that’s being a forbidden fusion between Ruby and Sapphire; while for Amethyst, it’s her insecurities about being a defective gem as a result of her being ‘undercooked‘.
Rose Quartz was deeply curious. Though she’s an infamous criminal on Homeworld, what her gems remember her for is her free spirit and deep empathy for other creatures, even the ones that gems typically considered beneath them.
While she’s remembered as a generally good person, there’s one thing that the gems of Earth and Homeworld agree on: Steven Universe’s Rose Quartz was a ruthless warrior who etched her name into gem history by shattering a Diamond.
The Four Diamonds of the Great Diamond Authority
Steven Universe’s Homeworld planet is run by a central government know as the Great Diamond Authority. As the name suggests, all of the members of the group are Diamonds who, like in the real world, are set apart from other gems due to their hardness and brilliance. These qualities make the Diamonds perfect and are what their rule is based on. It’s sort of like an aesthetics-based Mandate of Heaven, the divine right of kings and emperors to rule.
The eldest and most powerful is the purest of the three, White Diamond. Towering over even her fellow Diamonds, White Diamond leads the group as an elder sister figure who has the authority to bring the other Diamonds in line.
Her second in command, Yellow Diamond, serves as the Authority’s general and is known to be a brilliant tactician. Last but not least is Blue Diamond who is often melancholic and withdrawn, making her the most benign of the three Diamonds.
Which begs the question: Who’s the pink figure in the mural we see in the episode ‘It Could Have Been Great‘? Even the symbols on the floor show four colored tiles, each corresponding to a Diamond, except there’s a pink tile and no Pink Diamond in sight.
That is, until we realize that Steven Universe’s Rose Quartz shattered Pink Diamond thousands of years before the events of the show.
To Shatter a Gem: A Guide by Steven Universe’s Rose Quartz
We go back to where it all started in ‘Steven’s Dream‘, the eleventh episode of season four. In the episode, Steven and his dad, Greg, go to see Pink Diamond’s palanquin which Steven has been having dreams about.
Once he sees Blue Diamond crying in front of Pink’s palanquin, Steven realizes that he hasn’t been dreaming but was instead seeing through Blue Diamond’s eyes thanks to his empathic abilities.
According to gem legends, Pink Diamond had only taken a few steps out of her palanquin when Rose Quartz appeared and thrust her sword into the Diamond’s gemstone, shattering her.
The crowd present saw Steven Universe‘s Rose Quartz shatter the youngest Diamond which led to the many tales of how the valiant (or evil, depending on what side you’re on) Quartz killed a Diamond.
For many fans, this was all the confirmation they needed. It finally proved that there was a Pink Diamond and that she was killed by Rose Quartz, much to Steven’s horror. But there was more to the mystery being woven by Rebecca Sugar, Steven Universe’s creator, than fans initially believed.
On May 7, 2018, Steven Universe fans had the rug pulled from under them with the release of ‘A Single Pale Rose‘, the show’s 164th episode.
Throughout the episode, Steven, who has a sinking feeling about what really happened during the Rebellion, constantly confronts Pearl about whether she shattered Pink Diamond. After a failed attempt to get Pearl to spill the beans, Steven receives a text message from Pearl saying that she’s sorry but that she can’t tell him. When Steven personally approaches her again, she insists she hasn’t used her phone at all as a way to make him enter her gem.
In his quest to find out whether Rose Quartz really did shatter Pink Diamond, Steven accepts Pearl’s request to find her phone in the dimension inside her gem. As Steven walks through this mini-world, he passes through Pearl’s memories, eventually finding her at the top of a hill.
Pearl finally shows Steven the truth behind Rose Quartz: she isn’t even a Rose Quartz.
Inside a memory of Pink Diamond’s palanquin, Steven watches in terror as he sees Pink Diamond coerce Pearl into ‘shattering’ her. Because the gems are beings of light, they’re able to shapeshift by changing the light that constitutes their bodies. This lets Pearl shapeshift into Rose Quartz and the two co-conspirators stage a scene where Pink Diamond feigns being shattered using pink gem shards she made out of sand.
It’s a hell of a plot twist but eagle-eyed fans weren’t fooled.
Rose Quartz Is…Pink Diamond?!
The big reveal that Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond all along stunned fans who initially dismissed theories by Steven Universe YouTubers. The idea that Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond had been floating around for months before the release of ‘A Single Pale Rose’, supported by clues that fans had gathered using the murals, flashbacks to the war, and even Steven’s own powers and weapons.
Talk about sleuths.
So, what were these clues, and do they actually hold water, or was the confirmation of the conspiracy theory just a stroke of luck?
Rose Quartz’s Shield and Sword
We see Steven summon his mother’s shield from his own gemstone several times throughout the show. Each time the shield faces the camera, we get a glimpse of its rose thorn motifs. Pretty normal for a shield that once belonged to ‘Rose’ Quartz, right?
Except, if you take a closer look at the shield, you’ll notice a triangular pink symbol at the center of its rose. No matter what shape they come in, colors in Steven Universe are never just colors as Rebecca Sugar associates each shade to gems and the Diamonds that rule them.
An even bigger hint is Rose Quartz’s flag which she used as her personal symbol and as a symbol for the rebellion. The first thing you’ll notice is the rose-like symbol with a pink triangle that we see on Rose Quartz’s shield and her signature rose thorns.
But look past the foreground and you’ll notice that the fabric on which the flag’s other design elements are embroidered contains the same pink diamonds we see on the logo of the Great Diamond Authority: the one that symbolizes Pink Diamond.
Rose Quartz Had a Pearl
Rose Quartz may have been a liberator but she wasn’t able to free Pearl from her own mental constraints right off the bat. In the world of Steven Universe, pearls are the lowest gems due to the fact that they aren’t real gemstones.
While nonetheless valuable, real pearls are made when an irritant, like dirt or garbage, enters an oyster which then covers it in nacre, creating the smooth surface which pearls are valued for.
Due to their status, pearls are often assigned as servants to other gems and, according to Jasper, are treated as little more than slaves. But pearls typically don’t mind this seeing as the gems of Homeworld are designed to fully believe in their role in society, no matter how demeaning.
So, why would Pearl follow Rose Quartz if she herself admits that she “wasn’t built for fighting“? Because in her own words, “When you love for someone, you’re prepared to die.”
For our Pearl, that someone was Rose Quartz because Rose was her Diamond for whom she was created to serve. Years after Rose Quartz’s death, she remains loyal to her and to her son, even going so far as to brainwash Connie into thinking the way a Pearl thinks about their Diamond.
Rose Quartz Could Heal Other Gems
Every gem’s favorite rebellion hero to be angsty about left more to her friends and son than her old battle gear and trauma. When Rose Quartz passed her gem to Steven, essentially killing herself in the process, she also gave him her healing powers.
As the series progresses, Steven thinks of a way to help the cluster gems, shattered gems that desperately tried to fuse into one being, return to their original form and undo the corruption done to gem monsters. The show later reveals that corrupting gems is a power that only Diamonds have which suggests that to un-corrupt a gem, you’d need a Diamond to heal them.
Yet Steven himself manages to heal several gems throughout the show without having to call down the Great Diamond Authority from space. He heals Lapis Lazuli after millennia of being trapped in a hand mirror, restoring her ability to fly with a pair of water wings. Later in the series, he also heals a Ruby nicknamed ‘Eyeball’ after a meteor smashes into her gem, cracking it.
How could a mere half-human, half-Quartz perform miracles that only Diamonds should be able to wield? Because Steven was half-Pink Diamond!
So, Steven Universe’s Rose Quartz Is a Hero…Right?
Err, not really.
Rose Quartz undergoes a series of transformations throughout the show. She may be gone but our perception of her continues to shift and change with every new bit of information we find out about her. Despite being generally well-intentioned, Rose Quartz (or shall we say Pink Diamond) had unwittingly hurt many gems on her journey to becoming Rose Quartz.
Not only is she responsible for locking Bismuth away for thousands of years, but Rose also left an innocent gem on a desolate planet just because she found her annoying.
So, is Steven Universe‘s Rose Quartz as good or as bad as the fandom thinks she is? Maybe the gray morality around her is part of her charm. Let us know your thoughts through the comments!