Still-corrupted Gems

I think there have got to still be corrupted Gems running around even after the events of "Change Your Mind."

I know the focus of the show largely moved away from capturing and bubbling corrupted Gems after the first season, but that was depicted as a consequence of the focus on either bigger problems caused by Homeworld or interpersonal drama. It's implied they're still going on missions in between, and now that we already know what a typical Gem recovery mission is like, we don't need to see them all the time.

So we saw a bunch of corruptions captured in Season 1, but it eases off a ton starting in 2. They pursue the Slinker in "Reformed." They go after the Crab Monster in "Rising Tides, Crashing Skies." Pearl, Connie, and Steven go to the Great North to get the Quartz corruptions in "Gem Hunt." The roadrunner-like Gem gets poofed and bubbled by Peridot in "Kindergarten Kid." Besides the Gem mutants that popped up several times, I think the last corruption we encountered in the wild was the monster that got mistaken for a flower in "Back to the Kindergarten."

That was as recently as episode 136. Other corruptions have to still be around if they're STILL finding ones they didn't know about before and they've been rescuing them for 5,000 years.

Corrupted Gems are supposedly drawn to the Crystal Gems (so says Pearl in "Rising Tides, Crashing Skies"), so we should still be seeing some show up even though now we've got a way to (mostly) cure corruption. It'd be too much of a coincidence if right when they've solved corruption, they've also found everyone who needs the antidote.

And I worry a lot about the Gem mutants. They're suffering and broken, and some of them do seem to be roaming around despite the Crystal Gems' best efforts. There was a Gem mutant in one of Jasper's cages in "Earthlings," and it just ran away with the other corruptions when they escaped.

I hope they do find a way to help these guys. I don't like the idea that they could be beyond help, even if I guess the Cluster is their ally. It doesn't deserve to just live all stuck together and not whole.

Nothing can totally undo the damage the Diamonds did (especially since Earth is not the first planet where they tried to commit genocide), but I would really like to see a resolution to the lingering corruptions and mutant fusions. Until that happens, the happy ending we got to that saga feels a little bittersweet to me. (Though "and in the end they couldn't solve every problem and can't make everything perfect" is actually a nice little realistic lesson to learn too!)

Looking forward to what else the show will have up its sleeve....