OKAY SO. People are looking at this and assuming Rose made Lion out of one of these lions.

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THAT’S PROBABLY NOT QUITE TRUE?

Because there is one extremely key point emphasized repeatedly throughout the episode, even ending on calling extra attention to it yet again:

Steven and Connie are not imagining it accurately.

They assume there are seven regular lions. (They also assume a 3:4 gender ratio which could also be wrong but I digress.)

With that in mind, I propose that one of them WAS Lion. Not “the lion our Lion was made from”, but ALREADY Lion as we know him.

What if-

For that matter, what if:

What if Rose had a full rainbow of Lions?? An Amethyst lion and a Carnelian lion and a Jade lion and so-on?

Of course then that begs the question… Why? Do all these lions have similar abilities to our Lion or was each unique? Were lions just conductive to Rose’s gem-organic-hybrid research, or was there a more specific reason for working with them? Were they just her test subjects / pets, or was she trying to build an alternative-to-full-Gems army, or was she using their powers for something else altogether, or….?

I mean this still doesn’t answer anything but it changes the questions we really should be asking.