Headscratchers pages are for post-viewing discussion, so spoilers are unmarked.
How are Yellow and Blue Pearl doing two years after Steven helped heal the Diamond Authority family dynamic and started reforming Homeworld? Yellow Pearl sounded a bit snide when commenting that White Diamond's "time is up anyway," followed by a giggle from Blue Pearl. Is there any reason for them acting this way in their only appearance?
It seems like they have they started their own TV show? They even have a logo on the hologram screens!
How has Onion not gotten bigger in two years?
Maybe he is a late bloomer?
Steven and Connie are basically the only characters with new designs, despite the timeskip — probably for the simple production reason that redesigning every under-20 member of the cast when most of them have tiny cameos would be incredibly time-intensive for such little payoff.
Not quite; Peedee is noticeably taller in his brief appearances.
He's Onion.
Onion is already Ambiguously Human. Plus, his father Yellowtail is also a fairly short person.
We're told that the bio-poison is going to kill all life on the entire planet - yet during the third act, we clearly see that the Injector is completely empty. Everything's been injected, right? Yet the damage doesn't seem to be spread any further than just the immediate area near Beach City. Even Little Homeworld, which isn't too far from Beach City, doesn't seem to be affected at all.
Peridot's estimate is based on the bio-poison being uncontrolled. Given that it the battle took place over the span of an evening and the clean-up began the following evening and lasted at least (assuming no days passed) through to the following afternoon, the worst case scenario was averted. This may have been too rapid a timeline to be plausible, depending on the range on Steven's healing ability (he restored only a small patch of ground with one of his kisses).
It seems that rather than the gradual release the Injector was supposed to do, Spinel just dumped the whole thing into Beach City all at once rather than through the ground itself as it's supposed to.
This. Due to the rapid release, most of the poison ended up in cracks on the surface, instead of deep in the Earth, and beyond the reach of Steven's healing spit powers. Otherwise, why would it be such a long drawn out process of injection in the first place?
How did Spinel acquire the giant injector? Especially considering that at least less than a day has supposedly passed between her receiving Steven's message in the beginning and her coming to Earth, how did she managed to get one entirely filled up very quickly?
In addition, where did she get her rejuvenator from? Given that Bismuth knew what it was and what it did, its clearly not Spinel's unique gem weapon specifically. She seems to have gone insane and lost it, gotten all her tech together and gotten to Earth in the time it took Steven to warp home and sing a the opening song of the film
Spinel may have been essentially a living toy, but she was still a toy for a Diamond and would have seen and heard a lot about how they managed things and known where to look when she wanted weapons. Alternately — this is WMG, of course — it's possible that the Diamonds' disarmament could be to blame. They might just have tossed their weapons unguarded on some uninhabited planet or asteroid without much forethought where Spinel could have easily picked them up.
Related to the above, take another look at the location where Pink's old garden is on. It very much looks like a ruined world, resembling Yellow's own abandoned colony that we see in the episode where Stevonnie gets stuck on an alien world. It's entirely possible that both the injector, and the scythe, were remnants from that effort. Left behind like old tools/construction equipment at a hastily abandoned site.
So why did Pink Diamond leave Spinel at the garden? And why didn't she come back for Spinel to be part of the Crystal Gems before faking her death when the interstellar warp was still functional? Having as many allies as possible is a good thing when starting a war.
Spinel is, as far as we can tell, a unique Gem created solely for Pink Diamond — Pearl and the other Diamonds recognize her on sight, even in her ruined form. Pearl was able to hide among the rebel Crystal Gems because there are lots of Pearls, but Spinel would instantly raise suspicion if the Diamonds saw her with Pink's enemies. On a more personal note, look at how she acts when Pink leaves to run the colony: she's goofing off, playing games, even grabbing Pink's hand to stop her from leaving. Spinel, at the time, was far too silly for Pink to take with to run the colony — it completely undermines her entire "I'm a Diamond too, you all have to take me seriously" narrative.
In that case, it would make more sense for Spinel to be there for the assassination as an assistant to it. The Diamonds would see her as a traitor in the same manner as Rose Quartz and Pearl, yes, it would be difficult to get her to go through with it but Pearl did the exact same thing with the same mentality of servitude (and if it's that she was too goofy to pull off the stabbing you could just have her as a supporting role of sneaking in the sword for Rose Quartz to use, remember that in "The Trial" the main argument for the defense was that Rose couldn't have gotten the weapon close enough to the Pink Diamond without being noticed, therefore Spinel giving Rose the sword would be a good cover-up against that argument).
Furthermore she might not have been one of a kind seeing as how a reset Pearl recognized and identified her and her function. If she was made only for Pink Diamond a random pearl wouldn't have known about her. She might have been discontinued seeing as how she seems to be able to stretch and compress herself so much and that might take too many resources for an Era 2 starved gem to have. Like a collector's edition toy for example.
Pearl also states that Spinel's 'cut is perfect.' Being 'perfect' by Homeworld standards is a big deal, with only the Diamonds and Jasper ever being referred to as such. This implies that Spinel is potentially like Jasper and an extremely rare perfect Gem, but unlike Jasper this perfection is externally visible. This means even if Spinels aren't one of a kind, Spinel herself is unique enough that no one would mistake her for any other Spinel.
The fact is Spinel would not have made a good rebel in Pink's view. She was a childlike playmate, built for games and seemingly unable to take anything seriously. It's very questionable how well she could've obeyed orders even with the "this is a new game" trick; some of her earlier behavior showed that she could be resistant to instruction. Pink saw that getting Spinel — the closest thing Gemkind has to an innocent child — involved in a war would've been a terrible idea. That Spinel turned out to be an astonishingly good fighter was a twist of irony that likely no Gem could've seen coming, not even Pink Diamond. And finally, for all the explanations we tropers can come up with to justify a better course of action, Pink Diamond simply didn't consider things that deeply (her major character flaw), and once the war was well on its way, she had probably forgotten about Spinel altogether.
Pink left Spinel soon after getting her colony, with no intention to rebel or fight, but simply to have the control that she wanted for many years. That only came years later, after sneaking down as Rose Quartz at Pearl's suggestion. Her reasoning couldn't have been Spinel was no good for war, simply because there was no war to be fought by the time Pink left her. It was most likely her actions were done without taking into Spinel's mental health into question, seeing how by this point she had a major Lack of Empathy.
Honestly, I don't think that Pink expected Spinel to even be in the Garden, any more, by the time she would have thought about her again on Earth. As far as she saw Spinel, she was a goofy little creature with a short attention span and no sense of responsibility. Pink probably expected that Spinel would forget about the new "game" very quickly, play around a bit on her own and then set off in search of new playmates. That she was just as obedient and loyal as the staunchest Quartz soldier didn't probably even enter Pink's mind.
It is possible that she had to leave Spinel behind because she wasn't allowed to have her accompany her to Earth, because she was for playing, not business. Remember that the Diamonds used to be strictly forbidden from associating with their subjects. If she brought her with her, they would be punished. Pink couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a planet, and blindly promised Spinel she would be back. Once she realized the truth of colonization, she couldn't return to Homeworld because doing so would mean Yellow and Blue would take over Earth and destroy it. She's essentially trapped in a tragic Friend-or-Idol Decision, and regretfully chose the idol.
It would have taken only a couple minutes to warp to the garden and get Spinel, Blue and Yellow wouldn't have even noticed (if Pink can go down to Earth for a prolonged visit as she explored the planet with her Pearl without them noticing they won't notice a quick warp and back.) Pink left Spinel behind because she didn't care and likely forgot about her by the time she'd grown up enough to realise how terrible she'd treated her.
Furthermore, unlike Pink's original Pearl, Spinel was specifically given to her for the sake of being her friend, as is implied to be the purpose of all gems of her kind, so Pink growing attached to her was the main function. If Pink truly wanted her around, Blue and Yellow most likely would have no problems seeing how that's what she was meant to be doing. Pink left her because of annoyance, not for her safety.
Pearl made a mention of her perfect cut, but also her pink color. Even if there are more Spinels, it's possible there's only one pink one, just like there probably only was one pink pearl.
The Pearl analogy doesn't really work, but the point that Spinel may have had a very distinctive appearance stands.
After the war ended, why did no one return for Spinel? Pink Diamond's ship was still on Earth in working condition and, even if they couldn't physically retrieve her, why did Pink never send her a message since the communication devices were still working? The toy analogy doesn't quite work because Spinel was alive, and Pink knew she had emotions and that Spinel loved her.
Well, for one, Rose was determined to abandon every sign that she had ever been Pink Diamond, including pretending that she had been created right there on Earth and had never left it. For another, Pink may have either genuinely completely forgotten about Spinel, or assumed that, given how Pink knew her as someone who was never able to take things seriously, Spinel had eventually given up on the "game" and left the garden of her own volition long before.
"Change Your Mind" showed there's a level of mental connection between a Diamond and her ship, maybe even related to their aura powers; if Rose activated Pink's ship, the other Diamonds might've sensed her aura and figure out the sham. Sadly, getting in contact with anything Homeworld was too risky. It's more surprising that Blue, in her grief-fueled hoarding, never visited Pink's asteroid garden and found Spinel sooner.
Another question is, why did Blue, who regularly visited and collected things that were under Pink's jurisdiction, never come to the garden to find her? You'd think that with all her hoarding, collecting the former playmate of the one she lost would have been on her list of things to do.
The most likely answer to this and other questions about how Spinel was forgotten are that Spinel is an Unreliable Narrator regarding her own importance - she (and the garden) simply weren't as big a deal in Pink Diamond's life as she thought they were, even at the height of their relationship. When Pink Diamond left, the Diamonds (who had much bigger things on their mind) simply didn't think about her or the garden at all until her reappearance reminded them. It's like forgetting your deceased child's toy in the attic - sure, if you happened to come across it you might put it somewhere as a memorial, but you're not necessarily going to remember (and hunt down) each and every toy they ever had. Spinel was simply never that big of a part of Pink Diamond's life, at least as far as anyone but Spinel was concerned.
Perhaps when Spinel said that the garden was built just for her and Pink Diamond she was being more literal then the audience realized. It does appear to be on a discarded husk of an asteroid in orbit of a dead planet. Perhaps Pink built that place to be her escape from life with the other diamonds and didn't expressly tell then where it was? Sure White could probably track it down easily enough if Pink ran off when she was supposed to be punished but otherwise she gave them a communicator address incase they needed her and told them nothing else about it after she built it on some long abandoned asteroid around a former colony.
Steven's kisses heal part of the ground that was poisoned such that no organic life could sustain it, similar to the condition of the Kindergarten. Could he kiss the ground in the Kindergarten to heal it?
Possibly but unlikely. Spinel's injector brought biological poison specifically in order to destroy. The injectors in the kindergarten specifically drained all life to make new life. The injector poison is a foreign entity that is hurting the original so it can be healed whereas the kindergarten had everything drained away so there is nothing left to heal. Think of it like giving someone with an illness a shot to make them better as opposed to giving a dead person a shot to bring them back to life.
Steven's kisses worked because the ground was damaged via the poison, the Kindergarden is a lifeless husk, everything that let things grow there was absorbed by the Quartz soldiers. There's nothing left to heal.
"I can't believe mom did that to you... Actually, I can totally believe it..." But she didn't. Did Steven forget why Pearl tried to build that rocket in "Space Race" that almost killed them? He knows the warp pads on Earth have been inactive since the war making off world travel impossible. Why didn't Steven try to tell Spinel that?
The Galaxy Warp was damaged at some point in the war, but saying that Pink would've come back for Spinel if she could've, would just be a weak excuse bordering on a lie. (And Steven knows this.) Pink left Spinel and didn't give her a thought even as she started her new colony, explored the Earth with Pearl, decided to preserve it, and finally started the rebellion. Those actions alone took centuries. Right up to her "shattering" Pink could've returned to the garden if she really wanted to. Pink didn't care about Spinel and abandoned her. That's what matters.
That was before Rose existed, she would've forced Pink to realize that Spinel did mean to her as much as everyone else she loved. Unfortunately, she couldn't take any chances of returning to Spinel because the Diamonds might take over her planet. She had no regrets on starting the rebellion, but most likely regretted stranding Spinel. If Pink didn't care about Spinel, she would've destroyed her without a thought. She wouldn't care about her "other friends", organic life, or enemies. She wouldn't be Rose.
Rose wouldn't have "forced" Pink to do anything. Rose is just Pink in the shape of a Rose Quartz, selfish spoiled personality and all. This is the same person who locked Bismuth away and didn't tell anybody else on her team what happened to her for thousands of years. And just because Pink didn't care about Spinel doesn't mean that she would destroy her. There's plenty of instances in real life where people don't care for someone's company, and quietly move on from them to spend time with those they actually do like. It's called ghosting.
She most likely did just forget about Spinel, but not out of malice or cruelty. Like all of her questionable actions, she did it because the reality is that despite her wise, motherly, dependable image as Rose Quartz, she's actually Pink Diamond the pampered, childish, naïve and impulsive youngest member of her family.
As the above stated, Pink was still in her pre-Earth spoiled selfish brat stage when she knew Spinel. From what we saw by the time she got her colony Pink was sick of Spinel and just found her annoying. While she would eventually develop to the point where she would have realized how awful she'd been to a gem that was just trying to make her happy saying she loved Spinel is unlikely. She likely saw Spinel as nothing more than a toy she was sick of and may have completely forgotten her by the time it mattered.
We also have to consider that Pink may not have realized that Spinel would take her order to stand still in the garden that literally, and may have assumed that Spinel had eventually left of her own volition long before she actually did.
Pink certainly didn't regret abandoning Spinel, but did Rose?
They're the same person. Changing into Rose didn't magically give Pink any sort of special character development or altered outlook. She did develop somewhat by seeing life on earth, but that was about appreciating life and the ability to grow and change. It didn't actually turn her into the all-loving, all-knowing, endlessly-wise leader she pretended to be. And, in fact, in her later life she did similar things with the Diamonds, Bismuth, Pearl, and (to a lesser extent) the other Crystal Gems - sometimes with more justification or rationale, but ultimately taking the easy way out on every single occasion. That's why Steven says that he could totally see his mom doing that, and the reason he says Spinel wasn't the only one Rose hurt - he experienced it personally and saw the impact of her doing something extremely comparable to everyone he loves. And she did most of that as Rose, not as Pink Diamond.
Spinel’s comments about not being able to solve things with a stupid song basically confirm that Steven is actually singing "Change" in-universe. Is all the music from the movie/show (besides the obvious performance scenes) diegetic like this? Because it would be extremely weird to break out into song randomly all the time, not that the show is particularly grounded in realism but anyways.... is the background music of these numbers also diegetic or are the characters basically breaking out into acapella musical numbers randomly? We don’t see Steven with any instruments during the battle or Garnet during True Kinda Love and Stronger Than You, Spinel during Drift Away etc.
During 'Who We Are", Steven points out that Ruby and Sapphire aren't singing along due to losing their memories, indicating that the song is actually happening In-Universe. So maybe the world of Steven Universe is one where breaking out into song is just a normal thing to do?
The singing has been repeatedly mentioned to be happening many times in both the movie and the show. The series falls under Musical Alternate Universe. At the very least, songs always have a diegetic switch partway through if they don't start off as such. As for the instrumentals, it can probably be assumed that those aren't actually happening outside moments of source music being present.
Probably a similar case to Phineas and Ferb's Danville being known for their spontaneous musical numbers. Beach City wouldn't be known for them, but perhaps just happens frequently enough that no one really questions it.
Steven grew up with a former rockstar dad who made all kinds of silly/sweet songs to express himself, and naturally learned to express himself the same way. Gems, who are not human and haven't taken to all the conventions of human society, adopted this practice with him and don't see anything wrong with spontaneously bursting into song (see how Steven teaches Peridot to sing "Peace and Love on the Planet Earth".) It is mostly gems who participate in the musical numbers, after all. By contrast, when other humans in the series sing it's usually in more song-appropriate contexts like concerts or Sadie showing off her singing talent to the cool kids.
How does Steven tap-dance with sandals in "No Matter What"?
Specially-made sandals designed specifically for that purpose?
He still has some of his powers; perhaps he was able to instinctively use them for this (eg. small shields flickering on the tip of his sandals for the taps, or just some sort of general subtle 'make songs work' power that he's always been using without thinking.)
Spinel claims in her Villain Song that she "heard the story over and over again". When did that happen? She heard Steven's transmission, took the injector and the rejuvenator, and headed to Earth to destroy Steven. The movie implies that Steven headed straight back to Earth after the transmission and Spinel arrived on the very same day. Thus, she had no time to hear the story over and over. Unless there were several transmissions by Steven over the course of the Time Skip, and what we saw in the movie was only the last one.
I assumed she put the transmission on repeat as part of her Sanity Slippage either before she decided to destroy Steven or during the trip the to Earth.
She actually outright says she's had the broadcast on repeat.
The bodies of fusions are typically a combination of the physical qualities of the fused characters... But Steven and especially Greg are both chubby, so how come Steg is absolutely ripped?
Stevonnie wasn't chubby either (sure Connie is skinny but not by enough to cancel out Steven's chub) so it's likely a side effect of the fusion.
Post Time Skip Steven is considerably less pudgy than pre-time skip Steven. However, on top of that, both Greg and Steven aren't exactly out of shape and fairly strong, and Greg is known to work out.
Still, neither Steven nor Greg is even half as buff as Steg is.
Steg's appearance is a nod to a drawing Steven made of his dad that was ripped. What fusions look like is more than just merging together the fusing partners' physical traits, it's vaguely dependent on the relationship between the two fusing (or else Garnet should have four arms, for example.) Steven's dad is his rockstar hero, so Steg looks more classically heroic.
Is there a reason Steven and the remaining Gems don't think to ask Lars about the injector or Spinel's scythe? Sure, he might not have known anything about it, but asking the local space pirate who spent the better part of a year fighting Homeworld gems seems like it would be a GIVEN.
Who are you going to ask first: Lars, the human who barely knows anything about gem stuff or Peridot, the gem technician who was on Homeworld for thousands of years?
The question is more "why didn't they ask him at all", not first. And calling him a human who knows nothing about Gem stuff when he spent a year or more piloting Gemcraft with multiple Gems while fighting Homeworld is flat out wrong. It's just really weird that not one of Steve, Peridot, Lapis, or Bismuth thinks to ask the other contingent of Homeworld-knowledgeable people and Gems in town when they hit roadblocks with this stuff.
Small nitpick: Just because the hiatus was that long doesn't mean Lars was in space for a "year or more". Steven was 14 when he died on Homeworld and 14 when he arrived on Earth, and both events happen after winter and before fall. He was gone a couple months at most.
Again, Lars knows very little about Homeworld and its tech. He did not pilot the ship to Earth, he couldn't, without a gem you can't affect Gem tech. He made the decisions and the Off Colours did the work. The Off Colours had also been hiding in those caverns for eons before they ran back to Earth. They have nothing to offer.
Why don't Steven and the remaining gems ask the Diamonds about Spinel's injector or scythe? They have a teleporter that can reach Homeworld now. The Diamonds would obviously know (or could easily get in contact with someone who knows) how to shut down an injector without much fuss and would be completely eager to help. Sure, Steven was trying to get away from them, but with the entire earth in danger, it seems like contacting them was much safer and more reliable than trying to restore and convince Spinel (whose motivations, at the time, weren't even known at all and therefore may not have been subject to persuasion.)
Because it's programmed to only respond to Spinel and messing with it makes things worse. Nothing the Diamonds can do about that, Steven is already a Diamond himself so if it's not responding to him it won't respond to them. And for the scythe Bismuth knew what it was and Spinel figured out how to get them back. Steven even mentions bringing in the Diamonds and it's pointed out there's little they could do to help.
Why was Steven's broadcast the first transmission to the garden in 6,000 years? You'd think there would have been other announcements before then that were important enough to be beamed to the entire gem empire - like, say, news of Pink Diamond's "death"...
It would be in the Diamonds' best interest not to make it well known that Pink Diamond had been "shattered": first, because it was very painful on an emotional level, and second, it was due to a rebellion - which might give others under oppression by the Empire the same idea. Even more dangerous, it would belie the image of perfection the Diamond Authority had going for it. So all in all, it's believable that they wouldn't announce it to the universe.
Except it’s already known by most of Gemkind what “Rose” did to Pink, both as evidenced by The Off-Colors and by Gems like Aquamarine or Topaz who, for all we know, could have been made on one of dozens of Blue or Yellow’s planets respectively. It’s also no secret to Holly Blue, someone who likely knows why her Diamond keeps coming back to a place that isn’t explicitly hers and why there are hundreds of Pink-Colony Rose Quartzes bubbles in Blue’s brooding room.
In fact, pretty much every antagonistic Gem save for Spinel and White (maybe) was certain of her fate, so certain that upon Steven’s arrival on Homeworld, there’s a huge crowd of Gems celebrating a return of someone they likely thought was dead. And if it was broadcasted, why wouldn’t the Diamonds take extra precautions like ‘’rejuvenators’’ and gem destabilizers to avoid more rebellions?
The answer is probably simple: it demonstrates the different mindsets between Steven and the Diamonds. The Diamonds never made news broadcasts, they relayed orders to their subordinates. And since there were no subordinates who would need to receive any commands in the Garden, they never sent a message there. Steven was the first one to introduce the concept of a universal broadcast to the Gemkind that wasn't aimed at a specific recipient, but to everybody everywhere.
It's explicitly said that the Rejuvenator was created on Homeworld, and that its purpose was to return rebel Gems back to their factory settings. If that's true, why is it so easy to reverse its effect and bring back the personality and memories it erased? Shouldn't the memory erasure be permanent and irreversible? Wouldn't Homeworld want to make sure the rebellious Gem will never return, so the Rejuvenator should wipe out all traces of her previous personality?
That might just be why they fell out of use in the first place. Another possibility is that the Crystal Gems and Spinel had personalities too entrenched to be permanently erased, as the rejuvenator would likely have been used at the first sign of deviance.
Also, Pearl, Amethyst, Garnet and Spinel took only one hit from the Rejuvinator, while Steven took at least four (but he's half-human, so the rules are different for him). Maybe one hit is only enough to rejuvinate the Gem in question so that it can be reversed, and it has to be repeated for a permanent effect. Like deleting a file to the Recycle Bin - it's still there, and be restored, but if you delete from the Recycle Bin, it's gone forever.
In the beginning of the movie, we see Steven use a transporter that beams him directly from Homeworld to Earth. If the Diamonds have such a technology, why did they use their starships for interstellar trips in all of the previous episodes? (And again, at the end of this movie.) Why not use the transporter?
Because it's a more dramatic entrance? It might be because they wouldn't fit inside the room where the warp pad is, but we all know the Diamonds love drama, especially White.
Maybe they're energy-costly to use, or a riskier form of travel. Steven just used it because he was really impatient to get back home.
We already knew it was possible to beam from Homeworld to Earth (the Galaxy Warp pad is introduced in Space Race and repaired and used in Warp Tour by Peridot, then smashed again by Garnet.) As for why it isn't used much in the series, there's several reasons:
First, remember that you need a functional Galaxy Warp to warp between Homeworld and Earth (featured in Warp Tour) - normal warp pads can't do it. For most of the series, the Galaxy Warp is damaged - it was ruined after the war; in Warp Tour, Peridot repairs it by sending a ton of Flask Robonoids, but then Garnet smashes it at the end of the episode, and the Crystal Gems destroy all incoming Flask Robonoids after that until she (and by extension Homeworld) gives up on their plan to repair and use it. Once she changed sides, Peridot didn't have the technology to repair it again until after the series ends, so off-Earth warp was unavailable to the Crystal Gems (and they wouldn't have repaired it anyway out of fear that Homeworld would use it and discover them.) Note that Peridot presumably had intended to do periodic maintenance on the Cluster as it neared completion, hence why she repaired the pad to make her job easier; it wasn't really necessary, since Homeworld has plenty of faster-than-light ships.
Unlike Peridot, most gems who arrived after that were only there for one visit, so it didn't make sense for them to spend time repairing the Galaxy Warp or to deliver a new one, especially since the planet is scheduled to be blown up. In "The Return" in particular, Peridot has requested assistance because her efforts keep getting stymied, and it was granted because her and Lapis' report raised the possibility that there were still Crystal Gems active on Earth - so they sent an entire battleship, which obviously couldn't be sent via warp pad even if the Galaxy Warp was intact, which it wasn't. Likewise, the Rubies, Aquamarine, and Topaz are all just dropping in and have no reason to waste time and resources laying down or repairing infrastructure on a doomed planet - and even if they wanted to do so, Peridot's logs would indicate that her efforts to repair the Galaxy Warp kept failing.
By the time of the movie, things are different - the warp pad in the dome seems to be a new Galaxy Warp, or even the same one we saw before, repaired and moved near Steven's house for convenience since most gems will be going to that area anyway. For the Diamonds, it makes perfect sense to splurge for a new / repaired Galaxy Warp in order to give Pink an easy way to visit, and for the Crystal Gems, they'd obviously want a working Galaxy Warp to serve New Homeworld. All offworld travel we see in the movie is done using that new pad.
As far as the Diamonds not using that Galaxy Warp in the movie goes, they may be too big for its capacity or some such thing, or it may be a point of pride and a symbol of their authority to use their ships everywhere they go.
The warp beam is shown to be a physical object, which warping gems have to remain inside to reach their destination; the Diamonds are clearly too large to fit on that pad. While there likely is a warp pad meant for their size on Homeworld, there might not be any on Earth yet.
The Diamonds' announced their intention to move to Earth. They probably wanted to bring the flagship to use as a makeshift home until a proper palace is built at New Homeworld, similar to how a human would want to bring a tent or a trailer to go camping. They could've warped to Earth to inform Steven and bring over their stuff later, but they probably enjoy being dramatic and/or wanted to guilt trip Steven into letting them stay in case he objected ("But we already brought our ship filled with ALL our stuff!")
Lapis Lazuli is so powerful that she can erect a tower into the upper atmosphere using the water from the ocean. Why is it that she never even tries to remove the injector?
Peridot mentions they already tried moving it themselves and all it did was make things worse.
Here's my question about Spinel — it's implied that the Diamonds took Pink's original Pearl away from her because they felt she was getting too friendly with the help. So why give Pink a custom-made jester whose essentially been made to be way too friendly? What kind of distinction were they making here?
Pearls are not meant to be friends or equals. They are made to be servants. Playing is not their purpose. So the Diamonds gave her a more subservient Pearl, and a new Gem, whose purpose is playing, with a garden far away from everything else. Now Pink can keep work and play separate.
Where did Steven warp to Little Homeworld from at the beginning of the movie? Garnet says to take warp but I don’t see a warp pad near them and Little Homeworld doesn’t seem to be THAT far away. Plus I thought the barn area was close to Steven’s house and the temple so it wouldn’t make sense to him to warp there from his house.
She probably meant the warp pad at the Temple, which they use all the time. In addition, the former location of the barn, where Little Homeworld is located, has never been depicted as within walking distance of town: whenever anyone is going between these locations, they either drive or warp over.
An out of universe example, but in the movie’s soundtrack, the song Pearl sings about the functions of all the gems (after being hit by the rejuvenator) is called “system/BOOT.Pearl Final(3).Info.” The title is obviously written like a file name, but why is there a 3 in it? Could it be implying that this is the 3rd life Pearl has lived? If that were the case, it would also imply that Her life as Pink Diamond’s servant and eventually a Crystal Gem was her second life. Could it be possible that she was not actually created for Pink Diamond, but rather served another purpose, got hit by a rejuvenator, then reawakened as Pink Diamond’s servant?
Pink Pearl was Pink Diamond's Pearl before the Crystal Gems' Pearl, so it is possible that she was another high-ranking gems' Pearl. You could also consider her life as Pink Diamond / Rose Quartz' servant and her life without her as two different lives.
It's probably just meaningless technobabble for the sake of the joke, since the song name doesn't resemble any folder structures any modern OS uses.
PearlOS normally keeps two copies of everything, (1) is the prime copy actively taking in information while (2) is the backup passively copying (1) periodically in case something disrupts (1) mid operation which could cause dataloss. In this case (1) has been erased or corrupted beyond repair and (2) is locked down under Rejuvenation encryption meaning the system automatically created (3) with default settings to begin operation.
Alternatively, it's a joke about code and file development. It's very common for developers to save several version of a file as they modify it, for safety. They'll name a file "final" when they think they're done, then find out the "final" version has a bug and make a "final(2)" version, and so on...
Why was Spinel created? We know that Gems don't have fun or games because every gem is made for one purpose, and they live out that purpose and nothing else. Several gems throughout the show, and Future, say that they don't have fun for that reason. Yet Spinel was supposedly created just for Fun and Games. She can't be a unique gem, because Reboot!Pearl recognises her as a Spinel, whereas if Spinel was the only one, then Reboot!Pearl wouldn't recognise her, just as she doesn't recognise Steven, so are there just random Spinels given out to gems who have no need for her?
When Pink's first Pearl was damaged, the other Diamonds took the opportunity to replace her with two separate gems with segregated functions: Spinel, "your knew best friend", and our Pearl, who, you might note, is a) giving the introduction here and b) looks identical to her form in Now We're Only Falling Apart. It is highly likely that our Pearl was factory set with knowledge of Spinel - if not that exact spiel!
