Then, over halfway through the season, audiences are suddenly given a glimpse at Love’s past relationship, and BAM: I’m no longer looking at the Love I thought I knew. I’m looking at half her face, with the other half covered in effortlessly styled bohemian curtains. My first thought—besides “BANGS!”—was that I’ve definitely seen this happen before. Flashback Bangs are a thing; and while I did not make up the term, it is the first grouping of words I put together in my Google search. Turns out, there’s even a Twitter account devoted to the television device.

If they’re around long enough, most of your favorite female characters have probably had flashback bangs at some point or another, a tool obviously used to help audiences differentiate quickly between the past and the present (and sometimes the future)—though it’s worth noting that men rarely transform on screen in the same way. Scandal’s Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) has fallen victim to full-frontal bangs, as have Jane the Virgin’s Petra Solano (Yael Grobglas), and Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Sergeant Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero). Rachel Green has gone through a variety of Flashback Bangs on Friends…some worse than others.

But do these changes in hairstyles have any further use than as a tool to mark a change in time? Because, honestly, if we can figure out that Joe having a conversation with Candice in the middle of a yurt is happening at a separate point in time than him tackling her to the ground in the middle of the woods without giving him a beard than I’m sure we could have managed without Love’s ‘70s phase. In our culture, hair tends to mean something, and we should expect it to do the same in the media we consume.

The answer is yes, according to You’s hair department head, Brittany Madrigal—who, by the way, loves the term Flashback Bangs even though she’s never heard it before. “We wanted something to distinguish going back in time, and we thought that bangs gave her a younger, sweeter, kind of look,” Madrigal confirms over the phone, but it was more thought out than that. Though she could not give me an answer about what motivated Love to choose bangs (she’s not the writer of the show after all), they do give extra insight into the character’s mental state.

“Later in life when she grew them out, she has this tougher personality, she’s out on the prowl and hunting,” Madrigal says. “[In the flashbacks] we really wanted to show the past Love, the sweet innocent, youthful character.”

But it’s not just the bangs that we should be focussed on. “Love’s look later is definitely harder. When Love was going to an event or a wedding, she had a side part, which made her softer. But for her everyday life, that middle part was very hard.” Sounds like a subtle hint at that season finale twist, huh?

Ultimately, the Flashback Bang as a tool is probably not going away, but there’s a variety of ways hair departments can help add to a character’s ethos…oh great, now I have to wonder about my own middle-part and whether or not I’m giving off “will-kill-for-you” vibes. Maybe I should get bangs?

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