Saturn Awakens: The Ten Sailor Guardians Unite

A quiet date in the park sours when sunlight glancing off Usagi's balloon strikes the shard buried in Mamoru's eye, conjuring a vision of Nehelenia and doubling him over in pain. He begs off and heads home, leaving Usagi confused and anxious. Elsewhere the household of Haruka, Michiru, and Setsuna is raising the reborn Hotaru, still physically five years old but now grasping complex poetry and cosmic theory at startling speed. When the girl vanishes, they find her in her room conjuring a hologram of the universe's birth that narrows onto the Moon before she collapses, murmuring in a trance that darkness is closing on the Moon and a bright-haired girl will fall into evil hands.

Mamoru's eye grows worse through the night as flashes of Nehelenia torment him, and across the city her shadow flickers in every window, mirror, and pool of water. One such shadow rises at Hotaru's bedside, only for Sailor Saturn's glowing spirit to appear before her reincarnation and banish it.

Saturn touches Hotaru's forehead and returns every buried memory to her, from meeting Chibiusa and picnicking with the girls to Sailor Moon shielding her, Mistress 9's takeover, and the laboratory explosion that nearly killed her and her father. The awakening completes with Saturn's mark on her brow, and a now older Hotaru warns the outer team that the Princess and the inner Guardians are in danger.

At Hikawa Shrine, a swarm of Mirror Paredri erupts from shattered glass and multiplies with every hit, pinning the inner Guardians until Tuxedo Mask, then the outer Guardians and Super Sailor Saturn, arrive. Uranus clears the enemies with an amplified World Shaking, and Saturn declares that Sailor Moon must ascend to her true form. As the nine channel their signature energies into her, the Crisis Moon Compact evolves into the Eternal Moon Article and the Moon Kaleido Scope into the Eternal Tiare, letting her transform into Eternal Sailor Moon and unleash Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss to annihilate the monsters, though the strain reverts her items and leaves her drained.

Saturn explains that the whole purpose of her awakening was to grant the Princess her authentic form and power. The episode ends darkly: alone before his bathroom mirror, Mamoru watches Nehelenia wrap herself around his reflection and reveal her plan to strip Usagi of everyone she loves, having by now seized total control over him.

Roughly half the installment adapts Act 44 of the manga. It debuts Super Sailor Saturn and, in earnest, Eternal Sailor Moon, the Eternal Moon Article, the Eternal Tiare, and the phrase Moon Eternal, Make Up, while also marking the last on-screen appearance of Tuxedo Mask and the inner Guardians' first Super transformations of the fifth season.