If Past Life really is the last Life Series or at least the last one for a while, I can’t help but think about how tragic a figure that makes Pearl in the overall story of everything.
She starts her place in the series as a powerful entity, but one whose only role in the overarching narrative of the season is largely seen as an accomplice to Scott. Then the next season, when she is forcefully broken from Scott, even while cosmically tied to him, she is shunned by everyone. She is alone, she is feared, misunderstood, or demeaned by nearly everyone, even the people who claim to be her allies. She is the only winner who has no moment to stand and bask in her win because she dies when Scott decides they will.
And then we have Limited Life where it feels like Pearl starts to heal. She’s got a good teammate, she makes fourth place again. She kills Scott for BigB, BigB calls her a good teammate to Scott’s face (which Scott doesn’t disagree with but it still feels pointed given what happened the season before). But we also see the same patterns that will screw her over in later series. The episode where she puts on the Scarlet Pearl skin just to mess with people, only to find that the server has already gone to hell and no one really cares about the skin, may as well be foreshadowing for her in later series. She’s trying to live up to who she was in Double Life constantly.
In Secret Life we see Pearl really start to reckon with the shadows of Double Life. She’s on a fairly large team, four is usually about as big as Life Series teams get, she’s certainly got people who love her. Hell, Scott tells her that he loves her and Pearl brushes him off. She makes up with him the next episode, but it’s still a good moment of vindication. We get Gem. Gem who kills Pearl twice and Pearl’s only reaction is to team with her. Gem who expresses that Pearl is scaring her, but is equally excited by the violence Pearl is capable off. The real reckoning comes with how Pearl treats Lizzie and Scar, two people who are isolated much like she was. Other than Joel, Pearl is certainly the kindest person to Lizzie. She’s one of the few people whose first reaction to Lizzie’s death was to be sad for Lizzie rather than happy for Jimmy. And with Scar, him and Pearl have a kind of weird kinship. They aren’t particularly close, but they have moments of connection that are more than Scar gets with most people that season (very similar to how Scar was for Pearl in Double Life). She offers to die for him and he denies her. She makes him an honorary Mounder. She warns him that a zombie is behind him during their final fight, which to me is the biggest indication that Pearl was not fighting to win (if her earlier offer to die for him hadn’t already told you that). Unlike Scott who didn’t give her the dignity of a final fight, Pearl gives Scar his win the way he wants it.
And then Wild Life happens and it feels like Pearl spends all season a nervous wreck. She dies to every Wild Card in some way besides the superhero one. She picks a champion in Impulse, the way she’s chosen BigB and Bdubs and Scar before him, but that’s not the real meat of her season. Scott is back to thinking she’s an untrustworthy loose canon despite having spent the last two seasons being nice to her and saying she was a good teammate, because for some reason he can only acknowledge her as a good teammate when they aren’t actually teamed (he does the same thing in Past Life). And she spends far too much of the season trying to make up with Gem, who is pissed at her for no good reason. Seriously, Gem literally says in Pearl’s POV that she doesn’t have a good reason to be mad at Pearl and is doing it for drama. Gem took two of Pearl’s lives in Secret Life and she expects Pearl to grovel and apologize for even helping Scar take one of hers. If Gem had killed Pearl in that 2v1, I don’t think Pearl would expect Gem to apologize, just like she didn’t make her apologize for the other two times, and Gem knows that. And when Pearl does try to get retribution this season, she fails miserably. When Pearl dies, it’s without getting closure with literally anyone. She intentionally doesn’t heal up before going into the final fight because she doesn’t care about how she places.
And then we have Past Life which feels like the bottom of the downward spiral that started in Wild Life. While in WL she at least had Cleo and Impulse who were cheering her on (or enabling her, in Cleo’s words), she doesn’t really have someone like that in PL. Gem and Grian, despite actively seeking Pearl out, are both vocally unsupportive of her actions most of the time. They only support her fully when she has dropped down to her red life, because they expect her to magically become Scarlet Pearl after one of the worst sessions anyone has ever had in the entire Life Series. She dies invisible, armorless, trying to live up to a reputation. Even at her funeral, people are arguing about whether or not she deserved better, whether the Villies treated her correctly. Grian says they lost their cannon.
It just feels like Pearl’s overall arc has been one where she was hurt, started to heal, and then lost that healing because she felt like the best way to be useful was to be who she was when she was hurting again.
