Steven Universe Shows Off Its Punk Soul in “Last One Out of Beach City”

Before Cartoon Network released the synopsis for “Last One Out Of Beach City,” the episode seemed like a stone cold lock to feature some sort of evacuation crisis. We’ve seen it before, and with the Diamond Authority good and pissed off at Earth, we’ll probably see it again. But as is often the case on Steven Universe, titles can be misleading. Instead of a gut-wrenching disaster, we got the show’s most fun episode of 2016, maybe ever—even more fun than Lapis and her bat flips in “Hit the Diamond,” and seeing as that’s still my Twitter cover photo, that’s saying a lot.
PEARL, THE LOVE-DRUNK PUNK
Given the Summer of Steven’s broad narrative focus on Amethyst and Steven arcs, it’s been awhile since we’ve had a Pearl feature. Last we saw, she was belting out “It’s Over, Isn’t It” to an unresponsive Empire City sky and overcoming both her unrequited love for Rose and her animosity toward Greg. It was really deep and really beautiful; I still think “Mr. Greg” is the best eleven minutes Steven Universe has ever aired. But we already knew that side of Pearl existed, couched in the neurotic, control-freak behavior that covers the Rose-sized hole in her soul. What we saw last night seemed like pretty much the opposite of the Pearl we know. She was, in Amethyst’s (unfinished) words, a total badass. (Nice one, Crewniverse.)
But was this new Pearl with no plan really a complete departure from her character? I’d suggest not. At the start of the episode, Pearl’s motivation to go to the show seems pretty straightforward: it’s part of the shift we saw at the end of “Mr. Greg.” In an effort to redefine her life and purpose on her own terms, instead of in relation to Rose, she feels the need to leave behind the aspects of her personality that burdened her in the past. She’ll drink a juice (another nice one, Crewniverse) and pop her collar because that’s what she thinks the cool kids do, and Pearl hasn’t been cool since she was rebelling against Homeworld several millennia ago. We’ve heard her wax poetic about those days before, but here it seems like she’s just trying to prove a point. She doesn’t like juice—she’s posturing. It’s an effort to convince not only Steven Amethyst but also herself of her fresh start. And it’s hard to blame her…it’s not an easy thing to create a new self-concept, and most attempts to do so are bound to be fraught with a trial-and-error period. Just about the only thing Pearl knows about herself after the events of “Mr. Greg” is that she needs to be there for Steven. Everything else, if she’s truly come to terms with Rose’s passing and with her anti-Greg sentiments, is a blank slate.
It’s not until Rose’s doppelganger walks through the door of the Big Donut that Pearl finds the authentic rebel within, the rebel that’s always been there but has lain dormant for a few thousand years.
We know that Steven Universe is, at its core, a show about love and the crazy, stupid, life-affirming things it makes people do. In this case, it makes Pearl run a red light and reenact Need For Speed on the rural Delmarva road. It’s abundantly clear that Pearl is doing these things for the Mystery Girl, and that this isn’t the faked rebelliousness of her Nirvana-cum-James Dean jacket. This is more like the recklessness that pushed Pearl to sacrifice her physical body for Rose over and over in battle, or the recklessness that almost got her and Steven blown up in her makeshift spaceship. With her feelings for Rose reactivated, she loses all sense of inhibition and acts the way she did when the love of her life fought by her side, pursuing love—or, in this case, the possibility of love—to the detriment of just about everything else. In the past, we’ve seen this come across as alarming, but in the context of “Last One Out Of Beach City,” with Mike Krol’s raw garage rock blaring in the background and Amethyst egging her on, Pearl’s renegade streak is freaking awesome.