So there’s something I’ve been noticing about Peridot recently, and for a while, I thought it was just me paying too much attention to her, since she’s one of my faves. But as I’ve watched more, it’s becoming more and more obvious.

Peridot was sent to Earth by Yellow Diamond, presumably, along with only two others (one of which she couldn’t even trust), and has since been stuck by herself on an unfamiliar planet with absolutely no one to help her.

The first time you see her, she looked, like, almost menacing. Like a supreme hyper intelligent evil. The second time you see her, in Jailbreak, she’s still got that sense of being somewhat condescending, and after that, she makes her escape, and we don’t hear from her for a while. But the next time we actually saw her was in Keeping It Together, and it’s become a little obvious that her personality has changed.

I mean, she’s still the same technologically-obsessed nerdlord that she originally was, but it’s definitely apparent (especially now) that she’s lost some of her composure. The way she saw Steven but didn’t even register he was there, the frantic way she was trying everything to get away from The Crystal Gems, and, as we all remember, her comedic escape by helicopter hands while laughing maniacally. Now, that obviously was just a, what, 45 second appearence? not much to base off of. but after this stevenbomb, there’s a lot more that plays into what i’m getting at here.

In Cry For Help, we hear from her again, and she’s literally, well, crying for help. She’s gotten so desperate as to trying anything to get off this planet, even though she’s quickly shut down by the Crystal Gems. And then, today, we got even more to play into this theory.

In the opening fight scene in Friend Ship, we see her again, mumbling to herself, trying to get the warp pads to work, trying to get back to homeworld. Then, as usual, The Crystal Gems show up, try to stop her, etc etc etc. We find out in this scene that she’s made a weapon out of her floaty-hands as well; a laser beam, no less. However, looking closer into this, it’s pretty obvious she’s only figured out that she can use this recently.

The way she flies back after firing it, and how after it misses, she’s left unable to do anything: similar to the way Steven can only make three sheilds before becoming fatigued. It’s obvious she’s only discovered (created?) this weapon recently, and probably for the purpose of defending herself against The Crystal Gems. As she makes her escape, she makes some usually witty comments, the same kind that she made during her escape in Keeping It Together.

Later in Friend Ship, we see her again, and it’s in the crashed pod from homeworld. During this entire scene, she’s a ton more expressive than she was in Marble Madness. Also, we’ve got her frantic screaming of “DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE” while shooting lasers at The Crystal Gems, trapping them in a hole and trying to crush them, etc. plus, then we have her little episode when she can’t figure out why the controls in the ship have busted, followed by her second escape from The Gems.

After Steven has grabbed onto her, as well as the other Gems, and they have no intention of letting go, she pretty much does the gem equivalent of cutting off her leg. Like, no one’s talking about this, but she’s not getting that back unless she reforms. She literally just cut one of her legs off. And then, once again, she disappears into the sunset. Now, I already had all of this, but then, just to back myself up even more, I took a quick visit down research lane on the qualities of actual peridots, and I found exactly what I suspected.

Apparently, peridots can be found in meteorites that landed from space, but, more importantly, peridots have extreme chemical instability in Earth’s atmosphere.

So basically, tl;dr, peridot is losing her mind and quite literally falling apart and the only way she can save herself is getting off of Earth. which she can’t.