Wait how did Pearl remember everything again? Was it because Steven was just gone for a month?
Pearl needed three elements to trigger her old memories to change back into herself- rebellion, loss, and true freedom. So in that month and in going to save Steven, she got those three- just a little out of order.
In the month Steven was imprisoned, Pearl had absolutely nothing to do. There was nothing she wanted to do without an order from her Diamond to do so. And that meant she had a month straight- 768 hours in a row- where she was doing nothing but sitting, waiting, and (though she didn’t want to be) thinking.
It stirred something in her. She couldn’t bring back the memories of Rose, but the emotions of it started to come back as she waited (just as Spinel’s bitterness at feeling alone returned before the memories attached could). Without anything to distract her or regulate any of it, those old, unnamed feelings of losing Rose snowballed into feeling like she’d lost Steven when he went longer and longer without a word and without returning.
And then she left. She broke the one single rule she’d ever been given. She rebelled... and with that, she quickly was then able to understand what freedom was. It wasn’t just getting Steven out of the tower- it was what she’d been feeling since she stepped foot off Earth and broke that order.
