A house show, a cute punk with colorful hair, a fleeting moment of eye contact and a wordless smile – this past episode of Steven Universe seemed to have been lifted straight out of a teen gay girl’s vintage lesbian Bildungsroman. Fashioned with both the aesthetic and formulaic plot of a 1980s coming-of-age movie, Last One Out of Beach City focuses on Pearl’s character development, particularly her struggle with her past and her attempts to conquer her insecurities, all symbolized through an implicitly sapphic romantic storyline between her and a pink-haired mystery woman.

Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe, a series created by animator and director Rebecca Sugar, revolves around the adventures of a half human, half alien boy named Steven and his alien guardians, the Crystal Gems. The show has stormed social media, amassing a huge and visible LGBT fanbase, largely due to its numerous woman-coded characters and the inclusion of nonbinary characters, a voice cast largely consisting of women of color, and its incredible portrayal of healthy same-gender attraction and relationships. The show has also received praise for exploring serious topics in a way that is palatable to younger audiences, such as using gem fusion to illustrate the importance of consent and the character of Lapis Lazuli to depict recovery from abusive relationships.

Last One Out of Beach City strays from some of the more grave themes that this past season touched on, such as gem corruption and Steven’s increasingly evolving perception of his mother, and instead promises us a silly road trip comedy. The episode begins with Pearl and Steven proposing to go with Amethyst to a rock show after Greg is unable to go due to prior plans. Pearl sees the trip as a chance to try something new and an opportunity to prove the existence of her more “rebellious” side. With Pearl dressed in skinny jeans and her jacket collar popped like a real butch lesbian, what we get is even better: a giddy, fast-paced and funny gay romance with a few tear-jerky moments and (this especially goes for the women who love women) some giggles and squeals when Pearl finally gets Her: the Mystery Woman.

Pearl first spots her walking into the donut shop in the beginning of the episode, a tall and thick stranger with a mane of pink hair, and she is immediately enamored – the scene is complete with sparkles, a hair-flip sequence, and Pearl literally dropping her drink. This how the “straight” game is played: immediately Pearl enters the conventional role of the Nerdy Underdog going after the Super Hot Chick, aka the Mystery Woman. She’s not much more than a plot device used to further Pearl’s character development---in fact, she literally has zero speaking lines, and the interactions between her and Pearl are limited to eye contact and a single conversation. What is remarkable is that here we see Pearl playing the kind of protagonist that is traditionally reserved for the cisgender straight man in media, her presence ultimately reinventing a tired and problematic cliche. The dynamic between Pearl and the Mystery Woman is very single-minded, with Pearl’s attraction appearing to be largely surface-level. After all, her first words about the Mystery Woman were, “I just didn’t realize humans could come with pink hair.”

Of course, she is the spitting image of Rose Quartz.

It is immediately established that Pearl’s interest in her reminisces that of her past love for Rose after Steven points out, “Nobody’s going to say it, but she kinda looked like mom! You noticed, I noticed, we all noticed.”

However, as far as direct references go, that’s about it. The interesting thing is that Pearl’s attraction to the Mystery Woman is never explicitly stated at any point---the implication is carried beautifully by a formula and execution that has been drilled into our heads a million times. By weaving a thinly-veiled queer romance into this age-old plot pattern, we get representation that is casual and normalized. We see Pearl coincidentally pull up beside the Mystery Woman on the way to the house show and blush furiously after locking eyes with her. She proceeds to run a red light following the Mystery Woman and ends up running from the police in an attempt to prove herself. We know that Pearl has big gay crush on the Mystery Woman without being told becayse we've already seen all of these motifs before in a hundred million cheesy hetero geek-meets-beauty romcoms.

Except this time, it’s not Julie and Randy from Valley Girl or Ronald and Cindy from Can’t Buy Me Love, and this time our lead couple doesn’t involve Patrick Dempsey or Nicolas Cage or any other mediocre guy playing a mediocre protagonist manipulating and hounding women out of their league to date them. This time our hero is called ‘she’ like us, and wears her hair short and queer like us, is awkward and lonely like us, deserves love and deserves triumph over her battles like us. At the end of the episode, Pearl ignores Amethyst’s advice to “ease into socializing” and decides to take a chance by talking to the Mystery Woman at the show. It goes well and Pearl ends up with her phone number, a happy and deliciously cheesy ending that leaves off with our “repressed nerd” turned “rock star”.

The turn of events in this episode is refreshing in light of Pearl’s recent exploration of her feelings for Rose. The last time we see Pearl explore her romantic side was in ‘Mr. Greg’ with the heartbreaking song “It’s Over, Isn’t It?”, a ballad about her love for Rose Quartz and her struggle to find closure since Rose’s departure. Though that episode did end with a positive resolution, it seemed to leave off Pearl’s romantic and emotional development on a somber note. With ‘Last One Out of Beach City’, Pearl is given another chance at romance and we see her finally get the happy ending she deserves.

Though the Mystery Woman is definitely a one-dimensional character and serves largely as a plot device in the story, it’s not the exact nature of her personality and her relationship with Pearl that’s actually important. The vagueness of the Mystery Woman and the predictable plot pattern allows us to put ourselves in Pearl’s shoes, going out and conquering our fears and building up the courage to talk to that person that we have a big ole’ gay crush on. It’s why male characters’ love interests in straight romances always tend to lack depth and dimension---they are ultimately props, used to further the male protagonist’s development and to give the audience a template to project their own feelings on. By taking this convention and subverting it with a sapphic queer romance, we see ‘Steven Universe’ essentially remove the male gaze from the formula and create a story that gives women who love women the cute, relatable, and feel-good romance that already exists in abundance for straight people.

The chance that Mystery Woman is going to serve as more than a trophy for Pearl and will reappear as a more developed character, is sadly, miniscule. Though she’s probably better left as a memorable yet fleeting figure, I know that we all want badly to see her again. Which one of us hasn’t been there before, making a momentary connection with a cute girl, wishing we had the courage to talk to her but missing the chance? We want to see that it worked out and we want to see Pearl and the Woman happy together so that we can know that it'll work out for us too. We need stories like this so that we can fantasize like everyone else, so that we know that yes, love is out there and it’s everywhere and it’s for you.