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Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He’s credited over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years.
it’s already been two weeks since we were bombarded by the Stevenbomb, and we’re still sifting through all the loads and loads of new developments, information, clues, and hints there are to glean!
one of the scenes that’s received quite a bit of attention is the somewhat cryptic conversation Greg has with Steven about the gems’ history, particularly because of the way he feels the need to disclaim that he wasn’t there, thousands of years ago, during the conflict between the crystal gems and the Homeworld gems. and with good reason! that line does stand out as particularly shifty.
what I found most interesting about this scene, however, lies in the first gif. it’s the wording Greg uses, “…the first time they…” right before he catches himself about to say something he knows he shouldn’t and cuts himself off.granted, he goes on to tell Steven that the gems invaded and harmed the Earth thousands of years ago, which was what prompted Rose to turn against Homeworld. he could very well have been about to say, “They didn’t the first time they invaded Earth,” and that line could be as innocuous as it seems. I could be jumping at shadows here, but…
remember: Greg and Steven are talking about what Peridot will do when she arrives on Earth. Peridot’s arrival signals Homeworld gems’ return to Earth for the first time in thousands of years. that’s what this episode is titled for, “The Return.”
so with that in mind, what if Greg had been about to say, “…the first time they came back…?” after all, a great deal of gems did care about the people and life on Earth during and in the aftermath of the invasion—not just Rose Quartz, Garnet, and Pearl, but the entire crystal gem army that followed Rose into open rebellion.
even if Greg was referring to gemkind’s original invasion and colonization of Earth, that “first time” connotes that there have been other times since then. of course, he could be counting Peridot’s impending arrival as “the second time,” and if this were the only piece of evidence pointing to a second crisis the crystal gems dealt with between the First Gem War for Earth and Peridot’s mission to reactivate the Kindergarten, then this argument wouldn’t have much to stand on.
but it isn’t the only piece of evidence, so I will posit: there was a second crisis tat the crystal gems confronted at some point after the first war. as for what kind of crisis it was or when this crisis happened, that’s part of what I’ll attempt to uncover!
before we go any further, let’s use only those events we are absolutely certain happened in an order relative to one another to establish a tentative timeline.
—
“over 5000 years” pre-series:
1. shortly before the war breaks out, Rose and Pearl affirm their devotion and loyalty to one another and to their decision to fight for Earth (“Rose’s Scabbard”)
2. Rose, Pearl, Garnet, and their crystal gem comrades make their stand against—and claim victory over—Homeworld gem forces on the Strawberry Battlefield (“Rose’s Scabbard”)
3. Rose, Pearl, and Garnet find Amethyst alone at the abandoned Kindergarten; Rose takes Amethyst under her wing as a crystal gem (“On the Run”)
[When Steven asks Amethyst how long she lived in the Kindergarten, she responds…]
—
note that we cannot definitively place the abandonment of Earth’s Kindergarten or the end of the First Gem War for Earth on the timeline yet.
while Pearl confirms that the crystal gems won the historic Battle of the Strawberry Battlefield, we still don’t know if that battle decided the entire war, or if the crystal gems and Homeworld gems fought more battles until Homeworld finally withdrew its occupation forces from Earth. similarly, we also don’t know if the incident where Rose could only use her shield to save a handful of her closest friends happened during or after the Battle of the Strawberry Battlefield…or if this incident took place before Amethyst joined the crystal gems or after she was already one of them.
the only reason we can determine that the crystal gems found and took in Amethyst after the Battle of the Strawberry Battlefield is because she confirms as much when Pearl tells Steven that she, Rose, and Garnet fought there:
we can’t be certain at this point, but it does seem likely that the crystal gems found Amethyst once the Kindergarten had already been abandoned. it’s also likely that Amethyst emerged from her hole in the canyon wall after the gems running it left, especially given the fact that Amethyst talks about and points out the rocks she played on and with to Steven, but makes no mention of other gems. the fact that the position of Amethyst’s hole is so low to the ground and separated from the other gems’ holes in the canyon wall also supports the idea that she emerged much later than the other gems that were incubated there.
it’s also important to notice that Amethyst doesn’t specify who was with Rose when the two of them met. by “the others” she could have meant Garnet and Pearl, but Rose had a whole army at one point, and “the handful of her closest friends that she saved with her shield” that Greg mentions is also vague with respect to who these friends were, or how many of them she managed to save. both Amethyst’s and Greg’s comments leave room for enough ambiguity that we can’t say for sure whether there were still other crystal gems around when Amethyst joined them, or whether it was before or after the incident where Rose saved her closest friends.
…so now that we have the limitations of our knowledge and the imperfections of this timeline noted, let’s move on to the main argument of this post.
