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Yet, Blue reminds Yellow that their “perfect empire” is causing the two of them just as much pain as it caused Pink (and yes, the rest of the subjugated gems beneath them). There’s already a lot of emotional tension to their relationship – it’s been established before and is brought up again that Yellow was the only one there for Blue after she fell into a deep depression upon Pink’s supposed “shattering,” and Blue suddenly taking up arms to fight her creates a strong sense of betrayal. Then comes a tense standoff between Blue and Yellow. She begins to make up for it by helping Connie and Steven find the bubbled Crystal Gems. The show strikes this wonderful balance of acknowledging every side’s pain, but making it clear that Blue could have stopped the pain at any time. Instead, she apologizes for what she has done and admits that if Homeworld didn’t make Pink happy, then perhaps it was Homeworld, not Pink, that was the problem. What I love about this – for all the bellyaching people have done about the way the show makes the Diamonds into sympathetic and round characters, Blue is not let “off the hook” for what she has done. Here’s where we begin to see that perhaps the suffering caused by the Diamonds was affecting them as well, as Blue’s emotion overtakes her and she realizes all the ways she mistreated Pink in the past. And Steven realizes that Pink’s familial situation on Homeworld was incredibly damaging… and definitely not healthy.
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What follows is a surprisingly touching scene, as the inner conflict in Blue starts to seem less like simple disapproval of his behavior and more like frustration for all the ways he is not like her long-lost Pink. She has such a unique presence, threatening yet graceful and emotional and mystical… it’s compelling. Then, once he’s awoken, Blue Diamond comes in to confront him about fusing with Connie during the ball. Overall though, this was a good way to open the episode because Steven’s mental connection to Pink Diamond, as his past self, becomes rather important later in the episode. Connie’s sudden disappearance, though called attention to, tipped me off that something was hinky. We begin with a bit of a dream sequence, which I applaud partly for how it at first sort-of fooled me but also sort-of didn’t. Okay, let’s be real, I love Steven’s Pink Diamond getup. With that said, let’s peek through this dense episode and break down just what made this such an incredible finale. So yeah… there’s enough going on here that I thought it might be fun to break down the episode scene-by-scene and give my thoughts. I watched this episode fighting a 24-hour headcold and it had me lying on my bed sniffling and crying at the end. So how do we finally wrap up such a monumental conflict? Well, not to spoil the end of this review, but it’s incredibly emotional. (Uh, yeah, this is a weird show.) But White Diamond’s terrifying lack of empathy to his plight has hung over him and the rest of his allies. “Change Your Mind,” the final episode of Season 5, wraps up perhaps the largest conflict that’s been facing the characters up to this point – how is Steven going to stop White Diamond from continuing her reign of terror across the galaxy? Up to this point, he’s convinced her right and left-hand diamonds Blue and Yellow to be sympathetic to him, aided quite a bit by the fact that he is actually their long-lost thought-to-be-shattered daughter-like figure, Pink Diamond. I mean… I was right the whole time to keep up with this show because the end of its most recent season was so great.
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And not to be all like “I was right the whole time to keep up with this show because the end of its most recent season was so great” but…. I still really love “Steven Universe,” despite the fact that it seemed like everyone else had left it in the dust. At the end of the summer, I revealed my deep, dark secret.