SPOILER WARNING: If you have not seen the episode, the analysis is full of unmarked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.
This episode gives a viewer with an eye for characterization and continuity a lot of food for thought. It's a study in the contrasts and similarities between the two shorter Crystal Gems and how they relate to Steven.
Pearl and Amethyst have never gotten along well. Other episodes like "Tiger Millionaire" have made it clear that Pearl's constant nit-picking, perfectionism, and criticism make Amethyst feel stifled and frustrated. The feeling is mutual, as Pearl tends to find Amethyst's brusqueness, tactlessness, and lack of forethought equally frustrating, as seen in "Gem Glow".
This episode gives a little more attention to the contention between the two.
Pearl finds Steven's water balloons an unnecessary addition to the game of checkers, which she takes as seriously as chess or a mission. When Amethyst taunts her about being a sore loser, Pearl is visibly irritated, and makes an extraordinary six jump move to win the game so she can smile smugly at Amethyst, who she has just made the loser.
Amethyst, on the other hand, is way less uptight (a word she uses explicitly to describe Pearl) about losing. She spends literally one second being astonished by the move, then is done thinking about it. She looks up to Steven and his water balloons. Given they live at a beach town where it always seems to be summer, finds getting doused with them refreshing. Her playful remark about "it feels good to lose" is taken literally by Pearl and used as a reason to start criticizing her teammate. (Steven seems to consider them his sisters, but I'm not sure they feel that way about each other). Amethyst, however, doesn't sit still for being criticized, so every time this happens it escalates into a quarrel or full blown argument. In this case, Amethyst remarks that Pearl's no fun anymore and that's why they stopped forming Opal. Pearl points in Amethyst's face saying they stopped doing so because Amethyst is "difficult" and "a mess". Hard not to sympathize with Amethyst here; I'm not sure I'd want to work so closely with someone who points in my face and has such a low opinion of me.
In this case, though, there's no mission. It's only Steven's exuberant curiosity that gets between the two and stops them from continuing to snap at each other. When he asks what Opal is, the descriptions he gets from each Gem match her personality.
- Amethyst: Oh, it's the two of us. mashed together.
Pearl: When we synchronise our forms, we can combine into a powerful fusion gem named Opal.
Pearl's description is far more detailed. She uses animated sand figures to show Steven how the process works. But in so doing, she animates the Amethyst figure dancing in a more formal and precise balletic style, as Pearl herself does. Amethyst, irritated by being portrayed this way stamps on the sand sculpture, and declares she doesn't dance that way. It comes across as Pearl thinks her way is the right way and the only way to setup the Fusion Dance, whereas Amethyst thinks her way is equally valid. Again, I can see why Amethyst prefers not to work closely with someone who doesn't want to consider any one else's input as useful or valid.
- Amethyst: She's an ultra-powerful, stone-cold Betty. That part's me. And she's like... kinda tall. That part's Pearl.
Pearl: What Amethyst is trying to say is that Opal is an amalgam of our combined physical and magical attributes fused into a single entity.
Amethyst's first description is very simplified. Which makes a certain amount of sense as Steven is only a tween-aged boy.
Pearl's is far more detailed. This also makes a certain amount of sense, because small boy or not, Stephen does need to learn about life as a Gem, and Pearl clearly takes her responsibility as teacher and trainer seriously.
Going deeper, Amethyst places importance on Opal's looks and her strengths, while diminishing anything Pearl contributes except for her lankiness. Understandable, given Amethyst has been belittled so much by Pearl and is the shortest of the three Gems. Whether she's overcompensating or just sniping back isn't clear and doesn't really need to be.
Steven, who either hasn't considered or hasn't noticed that the two Gems' bad blood is more than moment to moment reacts with charcteristic enthusiasm and asks them to show him the fusion at once.
Amethyst simply puffs her hair out of her eyes in a near-universal gesture of annoyance. Pearl gives another, longer explanation as to why they don't do it except in very serious situations. Again, while Pearl just seems to prefer using five words when two will do (a trait I admittedly share), she is still taking her role as teacher into account with everything she says on the subject. But she also looks annoyed by the request, indicating that it's a sore spot between the two and probably has been for a while, if the mere mention of not forming Opal anymore is enough to start an argument.
The discussion is sidelined for a short while when Garnet returns and tells them their next mission is to find the Heaven Beetle while she goes off for the Earth Beetle. Amethyst immediately says she wants to go with "not Pearl", which Pearl retorts to by saying she doesn't want to go with "grammatically incorrect people anyway". The bond between Steven and Amethyst shows as Steven asks, "Is her talking about me?" which is obviously a playful attempt to ease the restored tension as much as it is a show of solidarity with Amethyst's "loosen up" position about how uptight Pearl is.
Garnet settles the issue by saying she undertakes her mission alone, and Steven will go with the other two Gems. Both Gems are astonished and ask why. Garnet, ever the pragmatic and practical, points out that she is the only Gem capable of swimming in lava. She goes on to describe that their mission is the safer one. Amethyst ungramatically says "boringer," and Pearl corrects her with "more boring". Amethyst either needles Pearl intentionally, tries to lighten things up (or some combination of the two) by saying "so you agree with me," but it doesn't work and they leave for the mission with Garnet admonishing Steven to keep the harmony. The eldest and wisest of the Gems knows the two have a history of bickering and is trusting Steven to keep them from doing so — which says a lot about how much emotional intelligence she thinks he has.
On arriving at the sky spire, Stephen immediately returns to his barrage of questions about Opal, to the pair's annoyance. They try ignoring him, but Steven Universe is nothing if not persistent. Pearl gets exasperated and reminds Steven that they only use Opal for lethal situations when he tries to convince them a mountain goat is a threat worthy of the fusion. The goat proves its threat level by biting Pearl's thumb. Pearl scolds the goat as if it were a pet, and Amethyst finds the whole thing hilarious.
The montage that plays along with the "Giant Woman" song goes on to show the personalities at play without dialogue - which is always a feat I admire in a visual medium like animation. He sings about how much he wants to see the giant woman he's heard about, and the earnestness in his voice is enough to make them look at each other in consideration of whether they should put aside their bickering for his sake.
The song is equal parts Steven wanting them to stop fighting and fuse because he doesn't necessarily like seeing them fight, and Steven just wanting to see Opal because seeing a giant woman would be cool.
The two still find ways to get on each other's nerves all the way up the mountain. While climbing, Steven is at the top so Pearl and Amethyst can catch him if he falls, but that leaves Amethyst at the bottom to get dirt and rocks scuffed in her face by Pearl who seems blithe about it. Amethyst gets hers back when Pearl daintily hops across stepping stones in a stream by shapeshifting into a shark, much to Pearl's dismay and Steven's amusement. The younger duo wiggle the rope bridge, which alarms and annoys the serious Pearl. But they finally make it to the mountaintop only to have to continue a more treacherous path to the Heaven Beetle's home.
Steven finds the little Beetle home fascinating. Pearl is once again upset that the beetle isn't present. This is one of the times it's hard to sympathize with her, because it's no one's fault that things aren't going perfectly and orderly as she prefers, but because the whole day has been going this way, she's primed to turn on Amethyst and place blame on her when Amethyst actually didn't do anything to provoke her. It starts yet another fight until the genuine threat shows up. But because of a history of anger, frustration, blame, and unhappiness between the two, they insist they can handle the threat without fusing. At this point it gets hard to sympathize with either of them. As a viewer I just wanted to yell, "Oh, get over yourselves already" because the mission and their safety should've taken priority over their egoes.
When Steven finally does convince them to try, it's Pearl's inflexibility that messes up the fuse. They know their finishing moves, but Pearl isn't even really trying to synchronise her moves with Amethyst's. It's Amethyst who ended up hit in the face, which meant she was at least making an effort to be aware of her partner's dance moves. They initially refuse to try again. Steven implores them with the same half-do-it-for-me and half-do-it-because-we-need-it. The bird makes the point for him by eating him.
This turns out to have worked out for the best (in as much as being eaten by a giant bird could be) as the Heaven Beetle turns out to have at some point been eaten as well. Steven gets the beetle safely tucked away in his pockets, and the two — three giant fists that burst into the bird's Body to rescue him and the goat reveal that Opal is here at last!
Opal is revealed to be a visible combination of Amethyst and Pearl.
She has Pearl's eyes and nose but Amethyst's lips. Her skintone is a lighter shade of purple, a smooth combination of deeper violet and paler white. Her hair is long like Amethyst's, but in response to Pearl's preference for tidy things, the long part that would be in her eyes is tied back at the sides of her face, and in a ponytail. She has Pearl's body language — graceful and fluid. She walks en pointe like a ballerina. She tends to use showy acrobatics like Pearl does, rather than meeting the threat head on as Amethyst would. Opal's weapons are also a fusion. She has the gem in her head as Pearl would; the gem in her chest as Amythyst would, and can pull the individual weapons, to conbime spear and whip into a bow that fires magic energy arrows.
At her core, though, she's as Pearl described her: the best of the two of them. She's also as Amethyst described her. Very powerful. Four arms were capable of punching through the bird's body, then curling in a ball to shield Steven and the goat from a harsh water landing. Opal is capable of rail-grinding on the mountainside as Amethyst might do on an ordinary day.
When he sees how different the fused Gem is as compared to the two he knows, Steven is a little shaken and frightened they'll no longer know him. But Amethyst and Pearl are still in there somewhere. It's Pearl's amusement in her eyes, but Amethyst's inclination to sing that informs her reaction that reassures Steven.
And like Steven, I'm very curious how cool it'll be when he learns to fuse.
Whew. That was a lot of characterization for only eight minutes.
