As a professional lesbian TV critic who’s been professionally lesbianly critiquing TV for over a decade(!) it’s hard to get me to really feel TV in my bones like I did when I was a kid — or, you know, like I did before I wrote recaps about ten hundred thousand fictional gays getting axe-murdered — so I was shocked when I heard myself whimper during Friday night’s episode of Steven Universe, and reached up to feel tears flowing down my cheeks. But these were happy tears! Real, genuine, earned, treasured, happy tears! At the end of the five-episode Heart of the Crystal Gems arc, which included a shocking revelation about Rose Quartz and a horrifying fight between Ruby and Sapphire, Steven Universe went where no animated TV show had gone before with its queer characters — to the altar.
Their wedding came to be when Ruby and Sapphire unfused during the mid-week episode “The Question” because they were in turmoil over the discovery that Rose Quartz was actually Pink Diamond. She’s the reason they became comfortable with who they were, together, after all. She called them The Answer! But if she’s not who she said she was, then who was she to tell them who they were? Ruby took off on a cowboy adventure with Steven and seemed to be having a good time on her own, but at night, by the campfire, she confessed that every cool thing they did was only a fraction as good and fun and right as it could have been if she’d shared it with Sapphire. And so she galloped back home and dropped to one knee and asked Sapphire to marry her, so they could be together even when they’re apart, and as a symbol that their love is their own decision.
And that’s where “Reunited” kicks off, and with a big-stage opening number during which Steven recounts the heartache of the discoveries and deceptions of the last few episodes, as he implores the other Gems to focus on Ruby and Sapphire, just for today.
There’s so much to love about the lead-up to the wedding: masc Gems in dresses, femme Gems in tuxes, Bismuth in her armor because it’s the nicest thing she owns, together breakfast as a wedding cake with literally perfect cake toppers, Peridot wearing a dress she very clearly fashioned on top of her regular Peridot clothes, Peridot executing her flower girl duty with gusto and reporting to “wedding commander” Steven that all the flowers had been deployed, Greg strumming “Stronger Than You” on his guitar for the wedding procession, and Ruby rushing down the aisle so fast she leaves a trail of literal fire behind her, which Amethyst has to rush to stomp out.
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