What we learned from Too Far

Too Far was a good episode to leave us hanging with. It really finished what Back to the Barn started as far as lore is concerned, but still left us with plenty more to learn.

Huge, loyal soldiers

The fans got another one right: the fan theory that Amethyst should be built like Jasper is was confirmed this week. After Jasper called Amethyst an overcooked runt, people picked up on how similar Amethyst’s hair was to Jasper’s, how both Gems had spin-dash attacks, and how both of their gems were types of quartz (something fans realized well before the Guide to the Crystal Gems came out). It’s another win for analysis by the fans.

We also got a good estimation for Amethyst’s age: if the rebellion started 5,500 years before the start of the show, lasted for about 1,000 years, and Amethyst came out about 500 years after production in the Kindergarten stopped, Amethyst should be about 4,000 years old, or perhaps a couple hundred years older.

There were also implications that Amethyst is, perhaps, stronger than she knows. If she is meant to be roughly Jasper’s size and not a shorter Gem with the same muscular build (if Amethyst’s height were doubled that would put her almost as tall as Jasper), it would stand to reason that she should be roughly as strong as Jasper as well. Jasper, however, seemed stronger than Garnet when they fought; their strengths were close, but she seemed to have the edge. Amethyst is much weaker than Garnet though.

The Guide to the Crystal Gems says that Amethyst can almost hold her own against Garnet. The fight it uses to illustrate that fact, from Tiger Millionaire, doesn’t seem to be a very good indication of Amethyst’s strength: she throws her entire body into a punch and Garnet effortlessly blocks it. The book is written from Steven’s perspective, so it doesn’t have to be completely right about everything, but it was also written by Ms. Sugar, who knows some things we don’t.

Perhaps something we don’t know is that Amethyst is stronger than she knows. When talking about Amethyst’s defect, all Peridot said is that she was small. After Amethyst used her whip to cleanly slice the drill head off Peridot even said that she could do everything a normal quartz could do. We should watch out for Amethyst trying to power up later in the series; it may not have went that well when she tried in Reformed, but if she spent a while focusing on her form rather than trying to rush it out in a few seconds it’s possible she could get better results.

Actually a Gem

Peridot continued to heap out prejudice against Pearls, saying that Pearl wasn’t a Gem (and therefore not in line for command) because she was a Pearl, but also finally came out and said what we had been predicting: fusions aren’t in line for command either. Even a defective quartz outranks a fusion because at least she counts as Gem, while the fusion doesn’t.

We can’t tell whether Ruby and Sapphire fusing in order to fight a battle would pass without comment on homeworld or whether it would merely be accepted as possibly necessary, but Peridot again explicitly stated her assumption that fusion was for war: if they weren’t fighting at the moment, Ruby and Sapphire had no reason to be fused together as Garnet.

Having Garnet around was actually enough to make Peridot express a degree of discomfort. Just in case any was needed, this is still more evidence that on the homeworld the only reason to fuse is for battle.