The reason the gems are using male pronouns.
Is because Sensei taught them to do so. After all, the very first thing every "newborn" Lustrous learns is language. From Sensei. And judging from Phos' reaction to the snail king's more "cherished" parts, it's obvious that Sensei isn't bothering with teaching his students anything about feminine pronouns or details in their education. The last body part Phos will lose is his heart.
A growing theme with Phos losing his body parts and getting replacement parts from other gems is that his character changes. With Lapis's head (mind/thinking), Phos's thoughts are already changing. If he loses his heart (especially if it's the last body part removed), it will be symbolic of Phos completely losing his way.- Bonus points if it is replaced with Ruby, since ruby (being a gem of corundum) is one of the most hardest gems after diamond.
The reason Sensei refuses to let the Lunarians pass on...
...is that he will cease to function once he finally completes his task. And if he ceases to function, the Lustrous would be left all alone in the same situation that the Lunarians are currently facing themselves. For as long the Lunarians exists, Sensei can grant the Lustrous a meaning with their existence, even if it ends up hurting them from time to time. He simply cares too much about them to leave them all alone without a purpose in the world.- Jossed. The reason why is that his gaining sentience and love for the Lustrous messed with his programming.
If/when Phos loses another body part, it will be replaced with Padparadscha.
As a stand-in for Ruby, since padparadscha and ruby are both corundum gems.- If not them, then definitely Red Diamond. As the only other somewhat relevant Gem with a red color scheme, they will get reintroduced into the story to become part of Phos.
- As of 74, add Alexandrite to the list of possible candidates, since they plan on locking themselves in Red Alex mode.
- Jossed. It turns out the answer is none of them. Cinnabar turned out to be the final piece, as they and Phos fused after their fight, giving Phos a humanoid form very similar-looking to Sensei. You could also make the argument that Sensei's eye, which turns out to be the machine that activates prayer, is the corundum representative of the last Treasure.
The reason Sensei wanted Phos to write the encyclopedia.
Was because he had finally going to do his job and send off the Lunarians to Nirvana at last, and remove the one threat the Lustrous are facing in this world even if it would come at the expense of himself. He wanted the encyclopedia as a insurance that the Lustrous would be able to educate themselves even after he was gone. He was going to go through with his task once Phos was finished, however, due to the circumstances, the plan got postponed thanks to Phos' unwillingness and actions, which gave Sensei an excuse to drag the decision out even further until Phos grows up and complete the task on their own volition.Ecco is an alternate universe of HNK in which the Admirabilis became dolphins instead of snails.
Sapient crystals, mysteriously disappeared/absent humans, an alien race kidnapping the Earth's lifeforms...it all makes sense.Other possibilities for Sensei's breakdown
- He was built to move human souls into the afterlife. If he sends the Lunarians on, there will be no more human souls, which means he won't be able to fulfill his purpose. Procrastinating with the Lunarians is his compromise to that impending Logic Bomb: as long as these last souls still exist, he will still function normally, as his job is still technically possible.
- The Lunarians are wrong about Sensei being broken. Their inability to pass on is something wrong with them, not him. Shiro would not move on until he was satisfied by one last visit with his master. The game board would not move on until it had served its purpose in a final game. Some unresolved issue is still tying the Lunarians to material existence, and they need to resolve that thing on their own.
- Half-jossed. They're definitely correct about Sensei being broken— the Prince outright states that Sensei wants to avoid risking the annihilation of all of humanity's descendants. However, the fact that all remaining Lunarians sans the Prince were apparently the literal worst parts of humanities leads credence to the idea that there's something wrong with them. Even when Phos succeeds in activating Sensei for their own sake, the Lunarians respond by reveling in their last moments of existence. The Prince even says to Cairngorn that he would forgo having Sensei destroy all remnants of humanity were they able to have a child. It's entirely possible they're still attached to material existence as a collective, for a reason they either don't want to admit or are unaware of.
Diamond will become essential in the task of recovering the captured and grinded gems back together while on the moon
.Once he arrives, he will learn the situation, spot the giant sea-snails feeding on the shimmering sands on the moon's surface, spot lustrous sections in their shells, and recall how he and the other Lustrous managed to salvage Phos from his encounter with the giant sea-snail the Lunarians dumped on the doorsteps all those centuries ago. With the idea in mind, he will, with the assistant of the other Lustrous with him, and tools from the Lunarians(after asking for permission of course) start hacking up the shells and get the gemstone pieces back from them. The Lunarians will permit it (they might even help the Lustrous out as something to do against their eternal boredom) on the assurance that the reassembled gems stay on the Moon until Sensei gives in to their demands. What happens in the meantime this recollection and recovery happens, is a whole other story.- Jossed. Dia assimilated quite cleanly into Lunarian culture, mostly just having fun and becoming a pop idol on the Moon. They're not particularly keen on the revival plan.
The Lunarians have become very desperate to pass on because their home will no longer be habitable.
The Prince mentioned that their home will become a beautiful star. That's a pretty nice way of describing the kind of hell they're going to be in if they don't pass away before the moon becomes a star. Having your body burn for an eternity is pretty much a Fate Worse than Death.- He meant that it would shine like a star when all the gems were covering it, not that it would be on fire.
The Lunarians have been lying about everything they can.
The Lunarians have something even more sinister up their sleeve, and the trade-offs they've been offering have been all false. The gem dust on the moon is actually artificial in the same way that the pieces sent back to earth was, and the actual captured gems are either still alive or somewhere already off into space. The inclusions in Cairngorm's eye had no influence over him and Prince was blatantly lying to his face. For some reason or another, the Lunarians want to get as much suffering as possible out of not only Sensei but the gems themselves. We have no reason to believe them. Phos, not Sensei, will be the one to absolve the Lunarians through the power of prayer.
At one point Sensei will be on the doorstep of sleeping in permanently as a result of a broken heart (unintentionally caused by Phos and his actions nevertheless) and in their final moments, teach Phos about the "secret of prayer" before sleeping in and cease in its function. The Lunarians will freak out due to have lost their only means into Nirvana,(and not understanding what Sensei told Phos through the pearl eye as silent observers) and cross the true Moral Event Horizon as they turn their despair and fury at the captured gems on the moon and on the lands in imaginary retaliation against Phos. Phos however, will request a meeting with the Prince and Cicada will be the one to pick him up while the chaos on the moon occurs. Once he arrives, he will get chewed out for losing Sensei, however, Phos (a Phos with all the seven treasures symbolism into himself) will only tell the Prince to calm down. Once done, he will demonstrate Sensei's teachings by absolving Cicada and sending him off into the afterlife through the power of prayers. The Prince (and by extent, all of the Lunarians) will be utterly shocked over the revelation at the mere thought of a mere "gemstone" being capable of something they believed only a living human (and the "prayer machine" that Sensei was) could do. Phos, calm and collected, will turn to the Prince and then kindly ask (not demand, ask) The Prince and the Lunarians to return all of the Lustrous on the moon and all of the Admirabilis that had been held captured on the moonscape, to be returned to the Land. The Prince, (too frightened to hurt Phos in the danger of losing the last glimmer of hope for the Lunarians to move on), allows it and due to the scale of the request, lets all of the Lunarians carry the sea snails back down to the Land, alongside with the captured gems. Once completed, Prince (alongside with the entirety of the Lunarians standing behind him) will tell Phos that the task reached completion and ask for the reward. Phos, smiling, will tell him that he never promised anything of the sort. However, before the Prince and the Lunarians can object in protests of their own assumptions, Phos will smile back at them and put his hands together in a sign of "gratitude" and trigger the send-off for the Lunarians to the afterlife. Prince, confused, will ask him "Why?". Phos will simply tell them, still smiling, that they still obliged with his request even without anything promised to them, making it a "selfless act by their own free will for the sake of someone else". Prince, confused for a moment, realizes the meaning, smiles, and bids Phos farewell as he dissolves alongside with the rest of his people and the city they lived in. However, in absolving the Lunarians, Phos loses his only way back home to the Land as no lunarian vessel or technology exist anymore. Phos won't mind it, as he accepts this outcome as a punishment for his own actions which caused everyone so much suffering beforehand and acknowledges this as a chance of redemption for all of them, as he enters his own self-imposed exile on the moon in complete isolation (and sitting in a lotus-formation in the pale moon dust). Smiling, eyes closed, and completely content.- Confirmed. Aechmea certainly wants Phos to be the human stand-in and prayer in case Sensei failed, and carefully maneuvered around events to get Phos to a point of artificial humanity. In Chapter 94, Sensei does indeed break down and tells Phos to pray— and Phos incorporates Sensei's right eye into themself, and seems to pray for happiness as Sensei told them to. Fully absorbing Sensei's eye and learning about humanity and Sensei's creator made Phos emotionally and physically ready to carry our the prayer.
Cinnabar's job will be...
- To write that encyclopedia Sensei asked Phos to do.
- To become an agent of Death for the Gems, a la Casshern in Casshern Sins. Since their mercury is one of the few things capable of clogging inclusions, Gems have a much harder chance of coming back after getting destroyed.
- More specifically, to kill Phos. This one is admittedly a much repeated theory by the fandom.
- Partially confirmed. In the last bits of Chapter 91, the blurb that ends the chapter describes opposing Phos from getting to Sensei as "the job only Cinnabar can do". The followup chapter then clarifies that the "fun job only Cinnabar can do" was actually their time as the person cheering on the other Gems. However, Phos themselves didn't give Cinnabar the job, as it happened on its own.
- More specifically, to kill Phos. This one is admittedly a much repeated theory by the fandom.
The setting is far into the future of Steven Universe.
Steven and Connie's offspring spread through the population of Earth in the eons to come; and hybrids and fusions made spiritual powers commonplace. The human pursuit of immortality found a way to fuse shattered Gems together; although this process removed most of the merging of souls. Eons passed, even nigh-immortals died or left Earth.- Then the Calamity happened. Asteroids, moons, the ocean, the Beach of Beginning. The End of the World as We Know It closed the lanes of travel from Homeworld and the Gem Empire with Earth, and all history was lost. After even more eons of divergent evolution; the new Gems and souls emerged.
Phos probably has a human particle in their pearl eye.
There's a lot of attention paid to the particle when we first see the chamber it's floating in. Phos's comment of "I feel sick" is made in conjunction with a view of the particle, which happens after they get the new eye. And do when they get back to earth after the first visit to the Moon, Sensei immediately stops in his tracks when he sees Phos, more attention is paid to the eye, and the scene is capped off with an amorphous cloud over their heads— the same kind of shape the particles have.
Phos's last step to becoming human is making new gems
If we go by the definition of "life", neither the Lunarians, or gems, or even sensei can be considered biologically 'Alive'. To be considered as "life," the organsim/subject has to be characterized by the capability to metabolize, grow, react to stimuli, and reproduce.
While the gems themselves are closer to "life" than the lunarians (inclusions metabolize sunlight, they react to stimuli, and they can cognitively change and grow). None of them can reproduce. Phos has already fulfilled the legend the admirabilis passed down, in that they now have flesh (Aculeatus's shell), soul (lunarian pearl eye), and bones (themselves) of splintered humanity. They've also shown the most change and growth among the gems (both narratively, and physically they're bigger then they were before- and they're an agent of change among the gems themselves ( Cinnabar finally connecting with the other gems, Bort losing their hair & their duty as Ace fighter against the Lunarians, Padparadascha waking up, Carnigorm going to the moon and meeting Archmea and removing Ghost's "influence", all the gems questioning their place and purpose e.t.c.).
So the last thing left for them to become fully "alive" and "human", is the ability to reproduce. What better way than being the spark that wakes up all the dead gems on the moon? Because as we've seen with previous gem mixings, gem's made of Phos's inclusions, and other gems like Lapis, almost become entirely different beings. Dead gems revived on the moon from Phos's inclusions wouldn't be Phos or the original gems they died as- they'd be new beings. Thus fulfilling the last requirement for life.
The Prince is only in for himself regarding his alliance with Phos and the Gems.
Either by knowing or just plainly giving up on the idea, he simply resorts to being freed the same way Shiro and the Pieces where, by completing his own personal desire in order to achieve Nirvana by himself, using Cairngorm to do so. Once he gets what he personally wanted from his life, and achieves Nirvana, he will vanish from the moon, abandoning his responsibilities and selfishly leaving everyone behind as he ceases to exist and enters oblivion, satisfied. Once it happens, everyone will be forced to react and deal with the lunarian crisis and drama which no doubt will unfold from the disappearance of their leader and forcing some drastic change of leadership to be made, possibly making Phos the leader of the Lunarians due to nobody else wanting the job and resolving all of their problems. Also, Cairngorm will be forced to deal with the loss of someone that showed them so much, possibly carry the blame for the prince's "appearance" by the lunarian people, and forced to enter a redemption growth as all allies essentially abandoned them as an act of karma at that point. All while the prince alone gets what he wanted from the start. Oblivion.
Praying is a Fantastic Nuke.
While it seems rather convenient that the Lunarians just want to be prayed away, there is an ominous aura surrounding the idea. Sensei has to stop himself a few times on screen from praying them away, and when we actually see him doing it, the cage that Phos was in melted away like it was nothing. The lunarians also like emphasizing heading towards "oblivion" in the hopes that Sensei will give it to them...- Confirmed. Sensei's malfunction makes it so that if he ever completed a prayer, all of the remnants of Humanity will be destroyed... meaning all races will go instead of just the Lunarians.
The Prince is trying to turn Phos into a Buddha.
Specifically, the Maitreya Buddha, who would come after all of the historical Buddha's teachings had been forgotten. , and reincarnation into a human is considered the easiest place in which to achieve enlightenment in Buddhism. It also seems to line up with the Prince's insistence to make Phos something even greater than a human, and probably something even better than the prayer machine found in Sensei. During the.10,000 years of power transfer from sensei
... Phos will spend their time writing encyclopaedia