oathkeeper-of-tarth:

Homeworld Gems retreating from Earth in a panic after it “became clear there was no hope in stopping the rebellion”

A snippet of the very recognisable Diamond leitmotif playing, as previously heard here and here, as a blue-white-yellow explosion swallows the sky

Along with Peridot’s shocked “But the records say Gems were wiped out on Earth!”, it sure looks more and more likely the war really did end by Earth getting nuked from orbit by some sort of corruption bomb, leaving Rose, Garnet, and Pearl as the sole survivors thanks to Rose’s shield protecting them from the blast:

In the end, your mother could only save a handful of her closest friends. If it weren’t for her shield, man, I don’t know…

and Amethyst presumably being spared by the fact she was still in the ground (as we’ve now seen being in the mirror probably kept Lapis from feeling the effects of it).

I also find it interesting that this episode pretty convincingly takes Rose Quartz off the suspect list for two very popularly theorised-about twists: that she was the one who put Lapis in the mirror, and that she caused the corruption in a last-ditch attempt to drive Homeworld away. Rather, it seems the Rebellion was even more successful than was mostly believed – and it was Homeworld and the Diamonds who were desperate to stop it from spreading, with the complete overkill of both this and the Cluster. It’ll be interesting to see how knowledge of Earth and the Rebellion is treated on Homeworld in the present day, as we’ve already had some pretty intriguing hints.