The Quiet Pain of Pearl on Steven Universe

We must now reckon with the new episodes of Rebecca Sugar’s ticking emotional time bomb.

“A Single Pale Rose”

This post contains spoilers for the latest episode of Steven Universe: “A Single Pale Rose.”

Rose Quartz wasn’t good. She was just drawn that way.

The last seconds of the latest episode of Steven Universe ended with a cataclysmic revelation: Rose Quartz, Steven’s mom and the leader of the Crystal Gems, was in fact Pink Diamond all along. Rose was part of the Diamond Authority she was rebelling against. She lied to her teammates, keeping it a secret for centuries. She also manipulated Pearl into being a party to that lie and exercised her Diamond-level power over Pearl to hold that secret in for even longer—well after Rose died and Pearl was helping to raise her son.

It’s hard not to empathize with Pearl here, and now more than ever. As a Pearl, she cannot disobey any direct orders from her Diamond. She formed a toxic attachment to Rose both as a result of her Pearl function but also because she serves as the agent of Rose’s original sin on the show: lying to the rest of the Crystal Gems about who she was. As Steven’s Inception-style dive into her mind revealed, and as we already know after Pearl songs like “It’s Over, Isn’t It?” and “Do It for Her,” Pearl is never able to move past that original sin—one that wasn’t something she wanted to do in the first place. Still, Pearl made the tough call and acquiesced to the request because she trusted Rose. For her trouble, Rose forcefully silenced her anyway.

All this time that she’s been fighting alongside the Crystal Gems, and raising Steven, and trying to evolve and do things like use a cell phone, she’s been held back by the moment when a person in power told her that things had to be a certain way, then shut her up for good.

In “It’s Over, Isn’t It?” Pearl asks, “Why can’t I move on?”

Now we know.

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