Knives are drawn and mysteries are solved in a riveting episode of Yellowjackets
Our team of girls become monsters in a variety of ways in “Doomcoming,” the penultimate episode of season 1
TV Reviews Yellowjackets
From the first episode of Yellowjackets, there’s been a transition we’ve been waiting to see. How do our group of troubled teen girls in the wood morph into quasi-pagan cannibalistic monsters? Well, the answer is here and it is glorious.
In the present day, things are not going well for Shauna. We start the episode with her confronting Adam wearing a fetching yellow jacket, having concluded he’s the blackmailer who stole her journals. True to horny form, he at first assumes this is a sex game, but when Shauna doesn’t fall for his charms he starts to panic, unable to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why he has books about the Yellowjackets hidden in his studio. When she pulls a knife, it looks like she’s finally going to get some answers from the world’s most suspicious man, but the lines between past and present begin to blur and she plunges a knife into his heart. Adam is dead and theme music plays.
Shauna, still played with an intriguing numbness by Melanie Lynskey, doesn’t panic and instead goes back to her home only to find her journals have been returned to the safe. It turns out Jeff being great at that brunch was just to throw us off the scent—he’s just as terrible as he ever was and Warren Cole plays up the sniveling comedy of the character when confronted. Jeff took out loans from some very bad people in order to save his furniture business and was blackmailing Taissa and Nat to pay them back. He was never having an affair (does that mean he was really doing inventory?!) and he’s horrified that Shauna was not only cheating on him but murdered Adam. Hilariously, he seems most upset that there is no book club.
They resolve to make a plan, stop keeping secrets, and to frame Adam for blackmailing the Yellowjackets, which seems short-sighted to say the least. Shauna calls Taissa, who is spinning out on election day after sending Simone away, and Nat, who is smashing in vending machines that cheat her out of M&Ms, which is a cathartic sight to behold.
The women gather at Adam’s loft around his body, and Shauna sells them the spiel about how Adam was the blackmailer and she killed him when he attacked her. Shauna’s lies land differently when directed at Nat and Taissa. There is a subtlety in Lynskey’s performance, where she hints at the regret at betraying these two, something she never did when she was lying to Jeff or Callie. It’s also interesting how all three are slightly under-reacting to the sight of a murdered man—all very concerned about the potential ramifications this has for them, but barely bat an eyelid at the actual corpse in a pool of blood, reminding us just how much terrible stuff they’ve seen prior to this moment. There’s some great black comedy mined from this scene: Juliette Lewis lands a couple quips which make for a welcome break from Nat’s unrelenting drunken spiral in the past couple of episodes. There’s a beautifully underplayed moment where you still see the cogs turning in Nat’s mind and she knows what must be done. They need Misty.
Misty, who still has Jessica the PI chained up in her basement, is enjoying having company even if she is clearly trying to manipulate her. Jessica touches a raw nerve in Misty when she asks whether or not the other Yellowjackets kept in touch with her the way they did with one another. Excellent performance from Rekha Sharma aside, this scene highlights what is missing from Misty’s storyline in the past. Ever since her she destroyed the black box, it’s been hard to comprehend just what teen Misty is going through as she has no narrative sounding board. It’s unclear now whether she regrets destroying the black box, what she intended to get from poisoning Coach Ben, how any of this is truly affecting her, and what is a performance to curry favor with the team.
The assumption is that Misty must have a modicum of regret as the mood in the wilderness is dire. They’ve resorted to eating grubs (everyone but Jackie who is going on some sort of an emotional hunger strike) and Laura Lee’s death has left everyone feeling nihilistic. One resourceful young lady slightly lifts the mood by producing a large jar of berries in water which has fermented into booze. Now that alcohol is on the table, they decide to have a “Doomcoming” party on the full moon and, as Jackie deadpans, “We’ll drink rotten berries and celebrate our impending death.”
Ella Purnell does her season-best work in this episode by fully leaning into Jackie’s inner mean girl. She toys with Shauna about knowing that Jeff is the father of her baby with a twinkle in her eye and decides that, Nat’s feelings be damned, she’s going to lose her virginity to Travis.
The preparations for Doomcoming go reasonably well: Taissa makes Van and herself intricate matching masks so she won’t feel self-conscious. Coach Ben resentfully agrees to be Misty’s date since her invitation was so pitiful and they are probably going to die anyway. Misty isn’t taking any chances though and resolves to put ’shrooms in his drink. Unfortunately, when her back is turned the ’shrooms get put in the communal pot. It really would have been great for Misty to have a Jessica-like confidant in this moment to unpack what is going on. But she just goes with it, saying nothing to stop her teammates, a pregnant woman, and Javi the traumatized child from being drugged against their will.
Everyone starts to trip balls and Yellowjackets stays just the right side of surreal with its camerawork. It doesn’t resort to hallucinogenic clichés of rainbow hands and instead goes for muddy ground that bleeds when scratched. Jackie convinces Travis to have sex with her while outside a pack is formed. The use of music here is perfection, in sync with the performances that are getting increasingly primal. As the girls burst into the cabin to find post-coital Jackie and Travis, they have devolved into folk horror monsters with tangible adrenaline coursing through their veins. Despite the terrifying dilated pupils and bared teeth, it’s hard to not feel deep satisfaction at Lottie cutting Jackie down to size, turning to her and growling “Don’t you understand? You don’t matter anymore,” before locking her in the closet.
The girls gather around Travis and begin to all kiss and writhe against him (Van and Taissa decide against it and sneak out to have incredibly romantic sex bathed in the moonlight). But soon things take a turn, kisses turns to bites and the girls become increasingly monstrous, viewing Travis as a stag to hunt. Shauna grabs a knife and they chase him through the woods, virtually indistinguishable from a pack of wolves that hunted Van and they soon land their prey.
And the moment we’ve all been waiting for finally arrives. Lottie puts on the veil and antlers! She encourages Shauna to slit Travis’s throat, whispering “It’s ok, it wants us to.” Shauna begins to slice through flesh when Nat bursts in to save him at the moment. Thrilling stuff and thankfully, we know this won’t be the last time Lottie leads them in a hunt.
Stray Observations
- I love Coach Ben. When Van and Taissa came out as a couple at the dance and he told them how proud he was of them, it was one of the show’s loveliest moments to date.
- I’m also extremely worried for Coach Ben. He told Misty he was gay and she seemed furious. If she was poisoning him when she thought he liked her, what is she going to do now?!
- The merging into “No Return” by Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker in the hunt scene was phenomenal.
- I think Misty was right the first time, she is a winter.
- Given the bump size and her feeling kicks for the first time, I’m going to say Shauna is four months pregnant. And assuming she got pregnant the night before they left, that’s also how long they’ve been in the wilderness.
- Next week we’ve got to be heading into the much foreshadowed reunion, right? Potential for a new adult Yellowjacket to join the crew.
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As always, I want to have something profound to comment but in reality I’m just reduced to incoherent screaming.
out of xanax?
You deserve an applause
Great name (שקט בבקשה):)
What? There’s no book club?
Melanie Lynskey actually tweeted this weekend: “In tonight’s episode Warren Kole delivers my favorite line of the season.” I assume it had to be “Wait, there’s no book club?!”
His line about watching Dateline was pretty damn good too, as was Shauna’s deadpan about being out of Xanax.
she plunges a knife into his heart. Adam is dead and theme music plays.my immediate reaction was screaming, “call misty!!!”
Hilariously, he seems most upset that there is no book club.lmao like 75% of memes are about this part.
Ella Purnell does her season-best work in this episode by fully leaning into Jackie’s inner mean girl.Misty isn’t taking any chances though and resolves to put ’shrooms in his drink.why did she want coach high on shrooms? she wanted him out of his mind so she could take care of him? she made a hugeass batch for one person.The girls gather around Travis and begin to all kiss and writhe against himI’m also extremely worried for Coach Ben. He told Misty he was gay and she seemed furious. If she was poisoning him when she thought he liked her, what is she going to do now?!she’s totally killing him.so how did they hide every ounce of all the bodies out there? it seems like they were rescued but when asked about the ones who didn’t die immediately from the crash but “disappeared,” they all agreed to say exactly nothing. i don’t see how that holds up. didn’t people go there to retrieve whatever was left of for example the ones who were buried?this was greati’m really happy that the show is gaining viewers.i was thinking that if they do past scenes for all 5 seasons, the actresses will be in their 30s playing 17/18-year-olds but then again, that’s totally normal for high school shows anyway. also living in the wilderness will probably age you fast too.
so how did they hide every ounce of all the bodies out there? it seems like they were rescued but when asked about the ones who didn’t die immediately from the crash but “disappeared,” they all agreed to say exactly nothing. i don’t see how that holds up. didn’t people go there to retrieve whatever was left of for example the ones who were buried? I was thinking a couple things here – maybe they buried everyone at the plane in the wee cemetery? Don’t have to look for anyone, they’re already there. But if they can figure out which dinosaur bit which before it became a fossil, I’m pretty sure they would be able to recognize knife and axe marks on brand new bones.Second – they have a year and a half out there but only so many girls to eat. When Jessica said, “You ate each other, right?” I was like, oh shit. Maybe they didn’t just eat each other…
There was a second during the shrooms orgy scene where I thought they were all going to get pregnant by Travis and eat the babies. That’s way too dark for Showtime, though.
Earlier Lottie had said “Something’s coming” and the camera immediately cut to Shauna’s baby bump. In the moment I thought it was definite foreshadowing of Shauna miscarrying and the girls eating the fetus…but yeah that’s hella dark.
I’m glad it wasn’t just me!
I had that same dark thought and it haunted me all night! Also, maybe Jackie is the Antler Queen? She knows cannibalism is inevitable, so she’s starving herself because “don’t eat me! I don’t even have that much meat!” I know it looks like it’s Lottie, but that could be a swerve.
Hmm. High school eating disorders: you have less fat to survive on in the wilderness, but you also have less fat for others to consume.Now I’m just reminded of the trivia that at the end of the Donner party’s cannibalism run it wasn’t even doing anyone good because the lack of fat (on both the living and the dead) meant no one could absorb the nutrients.Babies are mostly fat…blech.
That is too dark for anything!
There was also that rotisserie chicken baby dream, which I kind of forgot about until yesterday. I do think that the baby eating is likely to be a fake out, but the show is full of red herrings pointing in that direction.
I feel a little bad for Ella Purnell, because most of the attention is getting lavished (rightfully so) on the actors playing characters with old and young counterparts. It’s almost unfair, because you have two people working together. Ella is by herself because we don’t know what her precise status is. But episode 9 is a total showcase for her, how she continues to needle Shauna, to cause her guilty, and frankly self inflict more pain as she sees Shauna continue to lie to her face, how she comes to grips with the prospect of ending her life without having really lived, and finally when she realizes how truly powerless she has become.
Why did Misty use the shrooms? The key is her conversation with Jackie while having her makeup done. I think she takes Jackie’s well meaning encouragement the wrong way, and figures that if she can dose Ben, it will loosen him up a bit. It is after that conversation that she goes to fetch the shrooms, suggesting she got the idea then.
Hiding bodies out in the wilderness isn’t that hard. You just let the animals do their thing, the scavengers. It’s why serial killers like the Green River Killer got away with their crimes. They’d dispose in the woods, and by the time the bodies were found, they were just scattered bones, and you couldn’t even determine an identity or cause of death, let alone gather evidence of a crime. The survivors could simply say, “We buried them in the woods, but don’t know where.
I think the aging factor will work here, because the wilderness is so harsh and unforgiving, it will make things all the more stark, if you start off with these youthful looking characters who, by the end of the planned 5 seasons are much older (looking) and worse for the wear. I really hope they’ll double down on this by the end. Hairy unshaved legs, sores from bugs, rotten teeth.
Yeah but at this point, Natalie barely has visible roots. Her hair should be growing out a good 3-4” by now.
feels like they’ve made a few token gestures towards showing the girls looking more haggard but at the end of the day they’ll probably stick with “hollywood ugly” not “ugly ugly”
that show Alone I’m always surprised at how clean and the perfect complexion on those that wash regularly look. I think as long as you have access to water and something to scrub yourself and teeth with, it’s not that hard to stay looking fresh (aside from Nat’s hair colour, which like whatever)
Yeah, I can buy that they might look pretty clean, since they’re living next to a pretty clean lake. Clothes might be another story. There’s no detergent or stain remover so I feel like we’d be seeing way more blood/dirt/grass stains. Also everyone’s hair looks way too good considering the lack of conditioner/product out there. And they mostly have long hair and wear it down most of the time. Also are we really supposed to believe these girls prioritized body hair removal when they’re stranded in the woods?
Thank you, thank you! Like in THE WALKING DEAD all the leads have “perfect” haircuts!! And Lori’s toe nails when she was with the Governor were perfectly manicured. No hair under their arms. Unreal and unrealistic.
I think it’s a little intentional to keep the girls ethereal looking (especially with the woodland fairy hair), to play with some of our assumptions around femininity. That somehow it’s more shocking that a group of girls would resort to cannibalism than a group of boys in the wild. Even in the wild and based on survival there are different standards for men and women.And I noticed some have body hair.
I know I’m super late to the game, but this was bugging me too. Any chance she’s a natural blonde and dyes her hair black at times?
But the grown ups who eventually find them in 1997 or early 1998 would have surely been skeptical that there are bodies missing. In this show, though, it’s a whole other universe, so apparently that won’t happen. In this universe, law enforcement, government, and adults in general are really really dumb. The Internet would have figured out what happened to the missing as soon as Facebook and Reddit were live, before 2010.
I feel like I’m the only one who actually likes Jackie, and thinks she’s sympathetic. Yeah she’s clearly not endearing herself to the other girls, but she just found out her best friend betrayed her trust and has been lying about it for months, even as they both face a cold, miserable death in the woods. Like, she clearly loves Shauna more than anyone else and is way more hurt by her betrayal than she is by Jeff’s. I also don’t see going after Travis as particularly mean or vicious. He and Nat “broke up”, Jackie and Nat weren’t close and didn’t even particularly like each other, and if she was rubbing it in anyone’s face it was Shauna’s (reasonable, considering), not Natalie’s. Also she doesn’t want to die a virgin and Trav is kind of her only option at this point.
Oh I don’t think you’re alone at all. Here’s the thing…I don’t think there’s a single character on this show that I hate, nor even dislike. They’re all so complex and well acted and fleshed out (sorry, I can’t avoid these puns). Even Misty, poor damaged, demented Misty, is so fascinating and heartbreaking. Jackie is that person who is equipped for a very specific kind of situation. In the high school universe, she’s a leader. Not because she IS one, but because she’s popular and pretty and has all these qualities that draw people and translates to influence in that world. But you take them out of that world, and they wilt. Jackie in the wilderness, not only ceases to be a leader, she becomes one of the weakest members. It’s not her fault, she’s just not equipped, and no one is helping her, because they don’t see her as needing help. I think we all knew someone like this. I sure did. I went to school with a Jackie. She was head cheerleader, and a perennial candidate for homecoming or prom royalty, and popular and dated the cutest guy in school. The she graduated and went to college, and got herself killed in a drunk driving accident in less than a year. She was just not at all equipped to function outside of high school. It was really tragic.
And as you note, Jackie has suffered real hurt. Perhaps the greatest betrayal one could suffer at that age, to have a boyfriend taken by your best friend. The boyfriend. you were supposed to lose your virginity to. Her whole world is coming down, and the one ally she has left is lying to her. She absolutely has a right to be hurt, and even her machinations with Travis I can understand. I wish she’d been a bit more open. I think Nat might’ve been okay with it, if Jackie had said, “Look, I don’t want to die a virgin. Could I ask Travis?” I don’t know. But she strikes me as really tragic. She may be THE tragic character in all this.
See, I don’t even think Jackie’s the “only equipped to do well in high school” type. They’ve done a pretty good job establishing that she’s actually smart and great with people under remotely normal circumstances. Jeff even implies that she would have eventually broken up with him after high school because she was too ambitious and destined for “bigger things” than ending up in her hometown with her high school boyfriend (as was Shauna, but her priorities understandably got rearranged a bit post-wilderness). She *is* a natural leader, but only if she has some control over the situation. I think she would have do well in college, be elected president of her sorority, and eventually have a successful career in sales or something where it helps to be a people-person. She just ended up in the exact situation she’s least suited for.I do appreciate not being the only one who feels for Jackie. Twitter seemed pretty hard on her after the last few episodes.
But what does that mean, that she’s a natural leader, when she hasn’t been much good at leading? For me, Jackie doesn’t seem like somebody who was just good at high school in that she’d have been unable to deal with even college. But it really seems explicit that she’s a person that everyone *saw* as ambitious and better than average because she was so successful in the high school environment, when she actually isn’t all that special. That seems like where a lot of her insecurity came from. Why she’s with a guy she doesn’t care about and was constantly putting down her best friend so it was clear she had a higher status. (Also re: Travis, he and Nat didn’t just break up – Jackie had a hand in breaking them up on purpose.)
He came across as so sweet and guileless in that scene, for a second I thought he was going to confess that his big secret was he had been going to strip clubs occasionally and we wouldn’t learn the real blackmailer’s identity until the season finale.
That so reminded me of Britney Murphy in Drop Dead Gorgeous when she shouts, “Mom, Dad Peter is gay GAY GAY GAY”
I loved Nat and Taissa’s reactions to the death. Yeah, a little shocked but then like “well, now what?” It’s so funny, yet so revealing. So Lottie is 100% the Antler Queen.For the last few episode I’ve been wondering “where are the rest of the Yellow Jackets”, you know, the ones who sometimes appear in the background. There they were and then there they weren’t. I wonder if we’ll see some background Yellowjackets come into play in season 2? So far, it seems like “The Pack”(minus, Nat, Jackie and Misty) was the focus, so will next season focus on their pray? Will we get some other cast members as young/old? I know we were worried about “five seasons” but it seems like this season has done a great job of pacing, and next season things will get CRAZY.I really hope next episode is the reunion and it isn’t just like a minute thing and then cliffhanger. But it very well could be. What a wonderful first season this has been!
So now thinking we could get a reveal of Jackie showing up at the reunion, but if Lottie shows up shit will really get real. (Maybe both?? And they are teamed up??)There is much that I do not understand currently, but why Jackie isn’t eating in the flashbacks is certainly one such thing, though it kind of paid off in this episode
Everyone, at least, assumes Jackie is dead, as her parents sure think so.
I feel like 85% sure Jackie is going to show up in the present, it offers too many plot possibilities not to
I don’t think Jackie could still be alive. Like, clearly, her parents, Jeff, and Shauna all think she’s dead, so she either never got out of the woods (seems likely at this point) or she did and then died sometime after (probably not too long after, as I can’t imagine Shauna and Jeff would have gotten married if she was still around. And she’s not much of a survivalist, so I kind of doubt she’s been living in the woods for 25 years, waiting to enact her revenge at a high school reunion. Maybe she made it out, faked her death, and changed her identity, but that sounds like a difficult, stressful, and lonely life and we all know by now that Jackie doesn’t thrive under those conditions. If anyone pulls a “surprise, i’m not dead!” next episode, or actually at all, I’d guess Lottie. She seems like the only one who might have gone completely feral and survived on her own for 25 years, but if any of the rest of them were still alive I can’t imagine that the 4 adults wouldn’t have mentioned her by now.
My two Jackie theories are 1) she made it back and then died because the stuff in her bedroom like posters were for things past 1998 and something I can’t remember in her diary also seemed wrong for the timeline of her dying in the woods. or 2) that was just a production error and she dies in the woods. I don’t think it is conceivable that she got out of the woods and faked her death to her family. I think she will die shortly before the baby is born and Shauna names the baby after her who later dies years later because Callie said in reference to Jackie “you never talk about her” and that would be Callie’s older sister. The baby should be 25 and Callie is still in high school.
Yeah unless Jackie’s whole personality changes in the woods, she’s not the “fake your own death” type. I honestly don’t think any of them would have faked their own death just to torture the other survivors- that’d be a level of vindictiveness that wouldn’t make sense, because it would require that person to hate the others more than they want to return to the safety and comfort of their old life. If any of the others are surprise!alive after all this time, I think it would have to be because one person or group got separated from the others, was never rescued and is presumed dead, and has been living feral to the point that they don’t remember who they used to be. Like, once she ran out of teammates to eat and came across lost hikers or forest rangers, instead of asking them for help she’d just kill and eat them instead, and then run away on all fours.
If I have one fix to suggest for Season 2, it will be that the show figure out what it’s going to do about the other half dozen or surviving YJs who have heretofore been erstwhile Redshirts. Because they’re going to be more important as rival groups form and the hunting begins. I hope maybe they’ll do some retconning to perhaps show what they were doing at various points, and then further integrate them into the plot.
I think Lottie is AN Antler Queen, but it’s hard to say if she’s the last one. I think this could possibly be a situation where there is more than one. For a while I thought Jackie could possibly be a candidate, as her meanvicious side began to really emerge, but Episode 9 showed her to be really feckless and totally at odds with everyone else. I’m not sure how she’s going to regain enough prestige to actually become a leader.
I was really confused at first when so many red shirts appeared in the early party prep scenes – I thought something fishy was going on and even freeze framed and asked lady vadasz “who’s she? who’s she? who’s she?” I had assumed we were down to about the three guys and 8 or 9 of the girls.RE, the possibility of Jackie still emerging as a key player and possible antler queen, she did have sex with “the stag,” and on the full moon no less. There are some deep pagan ritualistic aspects to something like that, and while the girls might be angry that “it wasn’t hers to take,” there could also be some forced respect to such an act, creating an interesting tension? Or maybe not.
I’m so back and forth on Jackie’s ultimate role and fate. Her stock with the group is so very low right now. For a while I thought she would be the AQ, but now I think if anything she may wind up leading a rival clan of some sort.
Ah, I dig that idea!
Seems odd that anyone would choose Jackie as a leader of a clan at this point. Not because her stock within the group is low, but because she’s so explicitly clueless about how to live in the woods.
Courtney Eaton did an interview with Vulture where she implies that Lottie is the antler queen we see in the pilot at least. She said they pieced it together from what Sam Hanratty knew from filming the scene
Yes very true. The one hitch is that while they have the general series outlined, they don’t have the scripts, and the actors haven’t been privy to them. Apparently only Lynskey knows the whole story, because she pretty much demanded it as a condition of signing on, because it’s part of her process as an actor. She needs the whole story to hone her character. We don’t know precisely when the Antler ceremony takes place. First winter? Second? It’s hard to say. Eaton left the door open on whether or not she’s the ONLY Antler Queen.
My guess is that next season we’ll switch the adult characters. We’ll see Van, Mari, Lottie, the other unnamed girls, maybe even Travis/Javi(?) as adults. I’ve been assuming the girls split at some point, and maybe the four adults in S1 we’ve been following are one group (with Jackie who died?) and the second group is the focus of Season 2?Either way it’s built a lot of mystery and it’s on my list of favorite new shows.
I love that idea. Could almost be a Roshomon approach where we see some of the same events from different viewpoints.
When they said five seasons I was irritated but if they do a split perspective over seasons it makes a lot more sense.
Between the split perspectives and flashbacks through their entire ordeal in the wilderness plus adjusting to life after they return (which I would love to see) can definitely fill multiple seasons.
lol yes I love that all the girls are kind of living up to Jackie’s line about how she can’t believe she cared about winning a soccer game a few weeks before the plane crash. They having different ideas and responses to to what would be stressful events.
I am starting to think that this show & all of its characters are sort of fucked up (but I really like it).I would totally confess to murder for Melanie Lynskey too Nat’s apology scene to Misty is my favorite scene so far between Juliette Lewis & Christina Ricci, which is saying quite a lot Not hard to imagine why Travis tried to disappear after 19 months stranded with a bunch of high school girls who alternately keep trying to seduce and murder him
On a related note, I’d totally help Christina Ricci dispose of a body.
Also it is just obvious if you have a body to dispose of you would call Misty. Surprising that Nat was the only one of the three to immediately realize this
Either A) Jeff knows he married a cannibal and, you know what, an affair is probably the least-bad thing that could happen from his perspective; B) he’s going to live up to the reviewer’s assessment of him next episode and try to drop a body on his wife.Hell of an episode. My wife and I were both clutching our knees on opposite ends of the couch by the end of it.RIP Coach Ben.
I really hope Coach Ben defies our expectations and survives like 18 1/2 months. It is too fun having him as the hapless voice of reason
I had him pegged for dying for sure, but more and more, I love the idea of him making it out. If he DOES somehow survive, not only will it be a surprise, but it might lend itself to the idea that at least a few retained their decency, enough to protect a disabled person who would seemingly be the first one they’d eat.
I could see the creators, even if they planned on killing coach Ben, changing their plans due to how great the actor has been & how much everyone is enjoying his performance.
I could see more and more of him getting eaten until he’s just a head complaining about everything and making quips about not having the stomach for cannibalism a la Santa Clarita Diet.
He’d be a good surprise character to show up at the reunion.
He shows up to the reunion, and shows that his dancing days are in fact NOT behind him.
To paraphrase the episode, Misty’s going to be so mad!
How freaking priceless if Coach survives, shows up to the reunion, and Misty Fucking Quigley is there, ready to rekindle their “torrid affair.”
I wonder if the girls have done much publicity after they were rescued. The word reunion just sparked all the television appearances they have probably been asked to do over the years.
-My favorite line: “There’s no book club?!”-Who the hell lunges at someone holding a knife pointed at them?
“I wouldn’t have fucking killed him, I was going to hit him in the knees!”Never change, Nat.
great line delivery by Lewis.
Somebody who assumes he can handle the suburban housewife holding it.
Stray observation: Travis couldn’t get it up with Nat, but had no problem with Jackie.
it was the shrooms!!!speaking of which, i found Travis’ post-coital musings pretty hilarious “We’re invisible right? are any of us even here?”, especially with sober Jackie’s confused reactions.
Nat was right: “He wanted a different kind of girl.”This makes me wonder if the bond we know they come to form is actually one of friendship.
This episode pushes the show a little farther into standard Showtime territory – a friend I was watching with said “there’s no way they’re going to avoid Dextering this show by the end of S2″. As the past becomes clearer the unknowns of both it and the present become less menacing. Not knowing what happened during the 19 months is what makes it so ominous and sinister.It feels to me as though the show is winking at the audience when it describes these women as “traumatized”, or at least implying that the word is woefully inadequate / implies qualities we know they don’t necessarily have. We know they’re a force to be reckoned with. Shauna from episodes past caught and cooked a rabbit in her suburban neighborhood and then immediately crushed her daughter’s attempts at domestic politicking. Where was that Shauna this episode? She just drifts into bad decision after bad decision. If the loss of her journals threw her off that much, she would have recovered when Jeff spilled the beans.
It’s always Jeff.I like the teen psychology this show dips into in some ways more than others. My take on Jackie is that she’s not actually become a nihilist, she’s just feeling hurt and powerless and she’s lashing out at everyone, which is what teens do. She’s manipulative enough to be the antler queen but her heart’s not in it Lottie, though? I’m guessing they’re going to officially bring Lottie from gloomy-but-lucid into full psychotic break mode; powerful hallucinogens can do that to at-risk people but mushrooms… I don’t know. Acid or DMT, sure. It can’t help but feel a little contrived.Anyway, points:* That has to be the quickest stabbing death ever put to film.* There is a version of this show where nobody lets Jackie out of the closet and it becomes its own kind of bleak horror film, perhaps the closest the episode comes to explicitly referencing Climax, whose plot is very similar.* Obvs my theory about Adam being Javi / the ghost-from-the-past who’s going to make the survivors answer for their transgressions is dead in the water. One theory that was floated over at Vulture is that Adam was one of Misty’s “citizen detective” friends who she threw into the mix – Ricci has talked about how Misty’s arc is in part about how she wants to be “in” with the girls, in the past and in the present – and the possibility that she might engineer a crisis to get back into the good graces of the gang, at the cost of someone’s life… it’s really not implausible, given what we’ve already seen her do.* Misty could also be the person who “killed” Travis and knows about their symbology… but I think it’s going to be someone else. I still think the only person who would be able to get Travis to break his promise to Nat – and more importantly, to empty out his bank account through legitimate means – is his brother. I definitely expect the end-of-season stinger to be a reveal of whoever unexpectedly survived. Someone who reintegrated into society secretly, having never given up whatever whacked out social Darwinist ideology developed in the woods.* Season 2’s gotta be the actual depictions of Captain Cannibal: Civil War in the past and tracking down / dealing with a rogue survivor in the present, right?
Regarding Shauna, I think your question is a good one, and my answer would be that Shauna is really good at reacting in a split moment. She had nothing for dinner and was pissed at her daughter? Feeds them a rabbit she kills. Callie threatens her marriage? She threatens to ruin Callie’s life. She feels threatened by Adam? She gores him right in the kill zone. She’s great in the clutch. But she’s NOT great at long term strategizing. She can kill but can’t cover her tracks. She can’t plant a tracking device. She can’t come up with a decent lie to a hotel desk clerk or PRATT’s office of admissions. She, all the Yellowjackets, really are in a state of arrested development, acting like teenagers – impulsively. Oddly, it’s Misty who seems the most well-adjusted, because she IS aces at planning and executing.
I think Adam was more or less exactly who he said he was, and is a victim in all this, and this will eventually come out, as holes emerge in Shauna’s story.
I don’t think Misty killed Travis, both because I don’t think she had the time or opportunity, being with Nat the whole time. Personally my theory is that all the survivors originally belonged to the Antler Cult, but at some point they decided to make a break for it, and to escape. They found rescue, but didn’t tell about the others, leaving them for dead. I think whoever is targeting them now, is someone who was left behind in those woods, who suffered and came out much, much later, and upon discovering the others made it out, and did nothing, is seeking vengeance for their betrayal, for leaving the cult. It could also be Jackie, as there is compelling evidence she survived until at least 2000, and perhaps longer. It is telling, in her diary, she expresses fondeness for Titanic’s Rose Dawson, a woman who survives a catastrophe, and then fakes her death.
I like that theory, though Jeff reading the journals and not bringing up the abandonment would be psychopathic… otoh, it’s Jeff, never attribute to malice, etc.Likewise it would be very Dexter-like for the five of them to have escaped, have these signs show up, and never discuss or even personally consider the possibility that people they left behind might not be dead.
It could also be as simple as maybe they left one person behind who they truly thought was dead. Or maybe Jackie faked her death and is now the one seeking vengeance.
Yeah at this point i feel like Javi is a decent guess for the murderer, being younger feels like he might be more likely to be “Someone who reintegrated into society secretly, having never given up whatever whacked out social Darwinist ideology developed in the woods”. although i guess the next trailer somewhat contradicts this theory (although not entirely)
They could absolutely wrap this show up in one more episode and be done with it. What mystery is left, who took Travis’s bank account and killed him? It was the girl on the team whose leg Taissa broke. She has harbored ill-will towards the survivors of the plane crash for years since she missed out on the drug-fueled cannibalism, a secret fantasy she’s had since she was a tot. She comes forward and tells them this at the reunion, and then Taissa, Shauna, Nat and Misty kill her and eat her. They then start a book club and have some laughs. The end.Everyone else from the plane crash 25 years ago is dead. You know how you know this? Because not one single person from the present has mentioned anyone else. No “maybe so and so killed Travis” or “Have any of you talked to coach since” or “Lottie can’t be blackmailing us, she’s still in the nuthouse” or “Do you think —— is still alive” or “did you send postcards to all 8 survivors, Jeff.” Nothing. Not a peep.The only way any of the other survivors can show up in the present is if magic exists on this show. The place they crashed was cursed, and so the women have been mind-wiped from remembering if other survivors still exist, or a specific girl gained control over some supernatural powers there and has been keeping her existence secret from the others. Otherwise, how would you explain Jackie or anyone else showing up at the reunion? “Oh hey, Jackie. Sorry bout leaving you tied to that tree out there all those years ago. You were being a bitch. We just told your parents you were dead. And get this, my daughter wore your old uniform for Halloween, still had your blood on it. Crazy, right? So whatcha been up to these last couple decades?”
That’s not *entirely* accurate – when Nat, Shauna and Taissa are going over the postcard and wondering who could know about the symbol, Shauna says something like “it must be someone from the team”. But she’s not accusing Nat or Tai, or even Misty.
Then they all hug it out, and Tai says, “The real Nationals were the friends we made along the way.”
“Everyone else from the plane crash 25 years ago is dead. You know how you know this? Because not one single person from the present has mentioned anyone else. No “maybe so and so killed Travis” or “Have any of you talked to coach since” or “Lottie can’t be blackmailing us, she’s still in the nuthouse” or “Do you think —— is still alive” or “did you send postcards to all 8 survivors, Jeff.” Nothing. Not a peep.”This is a really great point that I had thought about but didn’t realize how concrete it is until now. They checked in with each other, why wouldn’t they check in with the others that are alive? Or at least discuss the possibility. I do feel like there is some mention of other survivors being out there though but it just complicates why they only discussed within their group of 4.
they definitely mentioned “others”, and it seems some have gone off the grid or they have reason not to suspect them. I think it’s just something we should eat as not bad writing, but just not wanting to give too much away.
Yeah, it being an intentional “leaving the audience in the dark so as to not give too much away” was always a possibility in my mind, I just think it’s stretching the suspension of disbelief to its limits if it happens over multiple seasons. We’ll see what happens.And I don’t remember them mentioning “others.” I’m not saying you’re wrong or it didn’t happen, I may just not remember right, but I’d still find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t try checking in with them and asking if the reporter contacted them or if they were being blackmailed as well. Even if they’re on the outs with that person, that what happened 25 years ago hasn’t gone public shows that no one has talked to the press yet, and so you’d probably really wanna know if they’d gone back on the whole no talking to the media thing and were about to open up about it.There’s also the possibility that I’m just overlooking something, and the finale will give me a big “oh yeah! Duh, why didn’t I think of that?”
When we get to the phone conversation where it’s revealed that Jessica is working for Taissa and contacting all the survivors, Jessica says to her “Some of you guys just love living off the grid.”
The writing on the show is very hit and miss, in that prestige TV way where they give the characters Big Moments but fall back on vagueness and tropes to connect one scene to the next. It’s possible that the writers have a plan for which of the girls survived, and they’re intentionally withholding the information. But it’s just as likely that they haven’t really decided which supporting characters they’re going to introduce in the future.
I watched this entire episode through my fingers. What a ride.
This was my favorite episode so far, for reasons that the rest of you have already outlined, and I won’t bother to restate. Perhaps one of my favorite things was all the new questions that were raised.
1) Shauna flashes back to the fire ceremony seen in the Pilot episode, which implies she was there to witness it, ergo because she was one of the participants. It goes to the idea I’ve held, that our protagonists are in fact all villains who belonged to the cult, and participated, and that perhaps the postcard sender is someone who was harmed by them, or betrayed by them.
2) Jeff’s knowledge of the journal’s contents has surprising implications for Jackie’s fate. A few weeks back, I posted a screengrab of a diary entry from Jackie’s journal, that had a list of films including some released in 1997-2000, implying she made it out of the woods (another possibility being that perhaps Shauna made them out of some kind of ideation of what Jackie might have done had she lived). I think the evidence is growing stronger that Jackie survives at least in the short term. Because if Jackie died, had been murdered, I feel like there would’ve been record of this in the journals, and Jeff would’ve reacted with far less acceptance when he secretly read them, he having loved her. Something happened to Jackie independent of the woods.
3) There is a new question surrounding the journals. Who took them at the end of episode 8, and returned them? Because it wasn’t Jeff. He’d already read them years earlier. Why would he take them now, and put them back. I think Callie may have gotten into the safe as well. She’s proven she’s a snoop already, and after her failed attempt to extort Shauna, maybe she’s looking for more leverage. The contents of those journals would do just that. Could she have copied them, and hoped she put them back before they were missed?
4) Javi’s fate. His pose in the woods, lying on the ground, flying high, looks like a corpse in repose. Foreshadowing ? In photos released for the season finale, he is nowhere to be seen, and there is a pile of meat visible on the table in the cabin, with everyone sitting around it in contemplation. I wonder if he didn’t get lost after Shauna told him to run, and unable to find his way back, succumbs to exposure, or a predator, and his corpse becomes the first, unintended victim.
Predictions for the finale:
I believe we’ll meet another survivor at the Reunion, and I think it will be Van. Her repeated survival seems to underline her status as a fighter, and given that Tai is at her most vulnerable, her marriage with Simone on the rocks, that it would be a perfect time for Van to re-enter her life. And I am all about Lauren Ambrose playing her as an adult.
I think we might also learn how MANY were known to survive, even if we don’t learn their names. But I also believe others survived uncounted, living in the woods far longer, only now to emerge to seek revenge.
To wit, I think we may discover that the survivors abandoned some to the woods, left them for dead, and may now be wondering if one of those is the one sending the postcards, who killed travis.
I’m on the fence as to Jessica Roberts’ fate. I think she’s clearly playing Misty, but I think Misty may also be playing her, and now that she has seemingly confirmed cannibalism took place, I’m not sure she CAN let Jessica go. It would be fun to see her remain a captive, but I suspect she may not be long for this world. Could we learn that Misty STILL has a taste for the rarest meat?
To end on an upbeat note, for all the rightful praise heaped upon that priceless line, “You mean there is no book club?” let’s not overlook some of the other doozies,, like when Jeff announced he was going to turn himself in, because “he’s watched Dateline” or when Shauna deadpans that they are “out of Xanax” before taking a swig from the bottle. Or Misty musing if she’s a spring or a winter. So, so good, this show.
Regarding Shauna’s journals, my initial thought was that she imagined they were gone when they were right there in the safe the whole time.
Same. Between Shauna, Taissa, and Lottie, there’s a real precedent for trauma-/stress-altered perception at this point.But now that I write that down–CALLIE TOOK THE JOURNALS!!! OMG, of course!!!!
I seriously wonder if one of the Season finale cliffhangers, is the reveal that Jackie’s journals have been leaked online. One possible long term plot I have wondered could be in the offing, is some sort of investigation or trial of the Yellowjackets. There’s no statute of limitations, so they could certainly be legally culpable, though I suppose that would involve extradition to Canada since that’s where the crimes took place.
I’m not sure I’d buy any legal consequences for the Yellowjackets, even if people found out about the cannibalism for sure. I can’t think of anything they could have done that would stand up to “they were traumatized teenagers starving and freezing in the woods and were therefore not in their right minds/did what they had to to survive.”It would end Taissa’s political career for sure, and Misty might lose her job, but I don’t think they’ll end up in legal trouble unless people find out about Adam or Jessica.
There is a long history of people being acquitted for famine cannibalism. The South Park guys even made a movie about it.
If it was just post-mortem cannibalism, that’s one thing. This is what the Andes crash survivors resorted to, and they of course were not charge, and found a good deal of sympathy and support for their choice. But if they committed outright murder for food? I suspect there would be a trial of some kind, but on diminished charges. I’m not sure if they’d be charged as minors, since that’s what they were at the time of the crime. I think you’d definitely see wrongful death lawsuits. Particularly if the survivors have settlement money which could be obtained in a suit.
It does make sense, if he read them years ago why would he have taken them out for a few hours one random day.
A few weeks back, I posted a screengrab of a diary entry from Jackie’s journal, that had a list of films including some released in 1997-2000, implying she made it out of the woods (another possibility being that perhaps Shauna made them out of some kind of ideation of what Jackie might have done had she lived). I think the evidence is growing stronger that Jackie survives at least in the short term.At one point Jeff says Jackie would have broken up with him. It doesn’t seem likely that she came back, stayed with Jeff, saw Bring it On and then died.
It’s possible Jackie made it out of the wilderness and then committed suicide later – it might explain why her parents still seem so shellshocked
But wouldn’t she break up with Jeff in the fourish years she was back and alive to watch a movie that came out in 2000?
Not necessarily – Kevin hadn’t seen Nat since before the crash. The survivors might’ve gone into isolation after coming back
This is my theory as well.
I thought the girl hunted down in the pilot was shown wearing Jackie’s necklace so it was assumed she’s dead
That’s one of the big questions, just how all that shakes out. Shauna marries him after she gets back, of course, but when? Right after? Callie is born in 2004, so it seems like they get married before that. Maybe Jackie and Jeff DO get back together, but then she dies (or is thought to have died) and Jeff and Shauna marry instead. Or maybe Jeff and Shauna hit it off out of the gate, and it pushes Jackie over the edge. This is all assuming she survived the woods, which I think she does. I feel like, if she hadn’t, Jeff would’ve had some issues to raise.
For what it’s worth in the original pilot script they have another daughter, Molly. who could just be away at college. I suspect they removed her to keep the cast down though.
For what it’s worth in the original pilot script they have another daughter, Molly. who could just be away at college. I suspect they removed her to keep the cast down though.Forest baby?
I almost died after watching Bring It On though. So it is possible.
I’m glad you made it!I saw an article the other day that the journals were not a mistake. Which I maintain is weird. But I’ll say no more as I’m not sure how far into the series you are.
I assume Jeff needed to review the journals in order to correctly draw the symbol that he texted to the others.
Lauren Ambrose as adult Van: Yes!
Random: Misty has a guide to medicinal plants that she’s been hiding from her teammates.
I had been thinking in past eps that maybe Adam wasn’t anything but who he seemed, in part because Shauna rear-ended HIS car which made it unlikely he planned it. If there are no more revelations about Adam, I’m glad the show fooled people who are always expecting every character in a mystery to be up to something. There was another premium cable show earlier this year starring an Oscar winner that pulled the sam not-twist after too many viewers were certain a character was shifty. As Freud said, sometimes a loving boyfriend is just a loving boyfriend.I was a little annoyed that the show was doing the Idiot Plot with Coach Ben not immediately telling Misty he was gay, but then we wouldn’t have gotten that sweet and funny scene when he does in an exasperated and rousing for him way. But I fear he won’t make it out of the forest since the adult women have not mentioned him at all, plus he would have tried to stop his students from the cannibalism and all.A terrific episode, very well done.
In 1996, there’s no way he would’ve told her he’s gay so readily. The fact that it took shrooms is pretty great.
yes, he’s definitely the first to die, but I’m happy he at least had some idea of freedom in telling the world he was gay.I’m assuming Misty’s line to get a mans attention is through his stomach is foreshadow around his death, but any sympathy the present Misty has gained from me is going to be hard to keep.
I don’t think Misty would actually kill Ben. People are overstating the severity of the poisoning; she’s just trying to keep him weak and reliant on her. It was the same as her sticking her foot out and tripping him.She might, however, let him die when she could easily save him.
So had we seen the hidden notebook with the shrooms in them before? I don’t recall it if we had. Where they Misty’s, or did she find them and hide them?
i dunno, but pretty convenient she packed a book on “medicinal plants” for the trip to nationals. I mean is fine but perhaps would’ve made more sense to have the girl scout who identified poisonous plants earlier somehow give some indication to Misty earlier that there were shrooms around
the book was in the cabin they found.
i missed that, thank you!
Ah, thanks.
I guess I am in the minority that I don’t feel like Jackie needs to be “cut down to size.” I mean she is going through a traumatic event, starving, and found out her best friend was sleeping with her boyfriend. (And don’t give me the “don’t blame the other woman” that only works if the other woman is a stranger. Not your friend who you have been friends with since elementary school).
I am not saying she doesn’t need to get it together and her treatment of Nat is terrible and if Nat wants to tell her off that’s works but coming from Lottie felt…wrong to me. Not everyone thrives in emergencies and she was actually really sweet towards Misty (though I think her encouraging Misty is wrong I don’t think it was coming from a bad place).
I think Jackie is an alpha in “civil” society, and she is readjusting appropriately to not just the trauma, but the loss of respect she normally had. I also feel she’s the most skeptical and the least likely to give into the supernatural beliefs(unless it benefits her, but she’ll never be a full believer), so she’s more necessary than the girls realize.
I’d completely agree with you if she didn’t emotionally assault Travis by pummeling the notion of love for Nat out of him just so she could get her rocks off. While the show is very well-written and did a good job setting it up with Shauna’s betrayal, it was still an unconscionable thing for her to do.
Disagree with even that. Jackie had no idea about Travis being bullied by Nat’s ex. It was completely unintentional and she was really just trying to make him feel better. Travis did not break it off with Nat because of anything Jackie did or said. He was intimidated by her experience and his lack of it, and then finding out she screwed his bully was too much for him. Plus, he is the only non-gay guy around that is an adult and got screwed over by her best friend and now knows she is going to die and did not want to die a virgin, especially when her friend tore her heart out. And travis was no longer with Nat and they are not even speaking..so I do not even get how she was “mean” here, except for it being completely understandable
I literally mention Nat in my comment. lol
But you are right about Travis but he didn’t seem high at that point and he needs to take responsibility for his actions too.
Also, Lottie was cutting Jackie down to size…only to kiss Travis herself?
So glad to see this comment. I’m binging the show now, and the tone of the reviews when it comes to Jackie makes me feel like I’m watching a completely different version of it. This is an episode where the other girls have gone murderously insane and try to rape Travis, and the takeaway is “yeah Jackie totally deserved that” like wtf.
A lot of people also seem to like Shauna’s take down of Jackie too but all it showed was how weak Shauna is as a person. They haven’t shown Jackie to be a bully in any way, yes, she likes to have her way but its really in that harmless teenage girl sort of way. Like in the first episode when Jackie tells Shauna how to dress Jackie immediately backs down when Shauna says no. If anything it shows how a lot of Shauna’s perception of Jackie is sort of in her head. Shauna let Jackie take the lead in the friendship and now she doesn’t like it but…that’s on her? You can’t be mad at a person for not knowing you want the dynamics of your friendship to change.
Exactly! I think people see Jackie as the trope she’s actually made to deconstruct. We’ve seen a million versions of the angelic mousy best friend coming into her own when she rejects the evil popular girl, but that’s not what this is.
I wonder how the girls are going to process their trip. I assume Misty isn’t going to just come clean about having a stash of mushrooms, so at least some of them probably won’t realize that they were drugged. Lottie already has visions/prophecies and will likely assume this was just another one.Also, Lottie breaking out into “Kiss From a Rose” for the Doomcoming slow dance showed more leadership than anything Jackie has ever done.
Let’s not forget that Adam’s license plate is the same license plate on Misty’s bug. In a show so dedicated to small details, that CAN’T be a miss. Travis was able to get it up for Jackie because he doesn’t love her. I’m a dude; I get that (don’t judge – happily married for 15 years). Marriage goals: covering for your spouses after she admits to cheating – sharing Xanax and having such funny quips: ‘there’s no boom club?’We will definitely see more survivors in the next episode and seasons. There were about 8 extra Yellowjackets who we don’t know in this episode. (Same as the episode when they buried the dead and went to the lake). Lauren Ambrose MUST PLAY ADULT VAN! I am checking her IMDB daily! Lol Mysteries left to solve:What was Nat right about (per the note from Travis) Who killed Travis and sent the postcards Who survived the crash aside from who we know All about Jackie Javi Coach Why was Travis and Javi’s mom mad at their dad when they left?All about Misty So much more. I was really disappointed when I heard this would be 5 seasons. Talk about immediate gratification – I am working on it. But I know Juliette Lewis has said that she was disillusioned about the trajectory of her character as she got more scripts – makes me scared for the fate of adult Nat should Juliette decide she doesn’t want to participate anymore. Selfishly, I somehow wish that there was a clause in their contract that said that if picked up, the actors are obligated to the future seasons. Okay, time to get offline and stop reading YJ and Dexter reviews and get back to work (my dining room table) for the first time in 2022. And as an Executive Assistant, I have 478 emails to get through (wish me luck) – I’ll be listening to podcasts about this sh*t all day!
I think people are overstating Juliette Lewis’ anger at the scripts. She seemed annoyed but not “I’m quitting!” annoyed. I mean, she’s on the most talked-about show of the season, likely to see many acting awards thrown her way. And she just got back on twitter, so that’s fun too. Why would she leave..
I was glad to see all those tweets about the show by Juliette Lewis this week too, they made her attitude toward the show seem pretty good
lol yah I watched the clip expecting something major, and she might have just walked off because it felt a little triggering to talk about Nat’s relapse arc etc. Didn’t feel like she was angry at the show runners at all.
I’m liking the series so far but all the prepping up to push as many seasons as possible is losing focus on what made it great for me
And I’m pretty sure Laura Lee can come back if the show keeps going
I’m absolutely stunned how few people seem to realize that this first season was always going to culminate with Jackie’s death. This last episode only confirmed it. She needs to die that early in order to become the spirit of vengeful guilt which rips Shauna out of Lottie’s influence.
Some disorganized thoughts about where things might be goingWe should find out in the finale who killed Travis, or at least get a hint. His younger brother might be the person who most is angry toward him, for failing to protect him. But also Lottie is a crazy b*tch so there is that. And maybe Jackie felt that he spurned her Might another group show up in the flashbacks, maybe connected to the dead plane guy who, who did weird rituals with him. I do not think these “others” would be friendly Apart from everything else, if Nat & Misty actually become BFFs in the present it will make me really happy
I think it is amusing that everyone is piling on Jackie who has every reason to be mean. She seems like her role was to be the supporting person with advice and inspirational speeches to the girls, and she was horrible betrayed by her best friend, who is pregnant with her BF’s baby. Jeff was screwing Shauna probably because she offered him the sex he was not getting with virgin Jackie, now she knows she is probably going to starve to death in the wilderness. She did kind of cause Travis and Nat to blow up, but she had no idea about Travis’ relationship to Nat’s old BF and was really just trying to make him feel better. Plus, Nat is kind of a screw up, she is like 16 and is on drugs, drinks and had numerous sexual partners. That is hardly a recipe for popularity with other girls. And Nat called it here where Travis was clearly intimidated by her experience. (notice he had no um, performance issues with Jackie and clearly felt way more comfortable with someone also a virgin) She also admitted she has no super survival skills, because why would she? She is a pretty 17 year old high schooler.And what has she got? Her team turning on her and siding with her cheating lying pregnant friend. She did not take the mushrooms and can see they are all acting completely insane.The “yellowjackets” grown up are all rotten people and they are antiheroes. Shauna just murdered a guy for something he did not even do. I used to see think pieces about how guys could love the antihero Don Drapers and Tony Sopranos and Breaking Bad when they were so “BAD”. Um, see this show now that it is full of female antiheroes.
This whole season has been messy. It’s been full of implausible moments. But it has been mostly fun. For a few seconds, I was mildly disappointed that the answer to one of the biggest mysteries is “drugs.” Maybe that will be elaborated on. But basically drugs unlocked an alter ego in Lottie, and she has emerged as a leader of a new faction. Okay. I think the Partnership for a Drug Free America would have dug that plot point 30 years ago.
This episode was gorgeous! The colors, the Autumn flowers and feathers they found, the music, the plot…….I’ve seen Heavenly Creatures so many times, and I love that I will forget I’m not looking at a young Melanie Lynskey. Sophie Nélisse, in her absolutely enchanting, frightening marauding forest creature finest was so wonderful.
They went from Woodstock to the Wicker Man in no time flat. Our vocabulary word for the day: Maenad (aka Bacchae) Female followers of Dionysus who wore animal skins and were known for tearing animals and people to pieces with their bare hands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maenad
I did enjoy the possibly intentional Battlestar Galactica/Vancouver-based actors joke that was Rekha Sharma’s character saying she knew “the folks who worked on that sex slave pyramid scheme”.
Why aren’t we discussing adult Shauna’s awesome “Yo La Tengo for President” t-shirt? Best part of the episode for me.
The merging into “No Return” by Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker in the hunt scene was phenomenal.I’ve been listening to the first few That Dog albums for much of the past year or so, and somehow I never caught that Anna Waronker does the main title theme. “Boo”, me…
People have some really weird takes on this show. Shauna hallucinated that the journals were missing? Callie took them, despite that Jeff cops to it in the episode? Jackie was “just helping out” by telling Travis that Nat was sleeping with everyone? Lottie wearing the antlers means she is the one wearing the antlers in the opening? Y’all are weirdos.
btw, it appears to me that what this show is about is development arrested by trauma. All of the girls, despite the traumas or challenges they already have at the beginning of the show (Nat and her habits to deal with her dead dad, Shauna avoiding responsibility and lying resulting in her impending pregnancy, Taissa being type A as fuck, Misty being fucking crazy, Jackie’s queen bee neediness) which they might have worked through otherwise, due to the plane crash they all got stuck in them, so we are seeing young Nat become the eternal-spiral Nat (lamely through going boykrazy, which at least the show called out in her pre-shroom talk with Coach), Taissa the resentful second-banana undermining Jackie becomes stuck as Taissa the bossy selfish person with a chip on her shoulder, Misty hopefully not killing Coach just because he’s gay, and Shauna stay the same reactive deceptive Shauna she literally becomes again when the younger actress is subbed in for Melanie Lynskey when she stabs Adam (if someone ever pulls a knife on you: run away btw). They are stuck and it doesn’t matter if they stayed put (Shauna), got away and did all the things they had planned to (Taissa), or got wasted and faded to try to escape (Nat). That’s why I hope Juliette Lewis sticks around next year, because if this show is to have a satisfying arc that could be these women getting their shit together and finally growing up.Misty is definitely a winter.
Okay, I get why you find the other things weird, but why would it be weird to think that Lottie being the girl who’s shown first standing beneath antlers as if she’s wearing them and then putting on antlers to guide the others to cut somebody up like a deer means she’s the person who later on will be wearing an antler headress and a veil and presiding over a ceremony where someone appears to be cut up like a deer?
The reviewer seems to think this DEFINITELY means Lottie is the Antler Queen, I’m only saying there is no reason to think they have shown us that definitively. I haven’t watched the finale yet so maybe that’s the case maybe it isn’t, but it isn’t a done deal.
I think it’s well within the show’s MO to set up one person as the leader and then reveal it was someone else. My money’s on Shauna as the leader from the opening sequence, just because it’s unexpected (although it would make more sense if she was the one in charge of bleeding).
So, am I the only one that thought the sex scene with Jackie was incredibly stupid because it was her first time and she enjoyed it and even seemed to have an orgasm? She must have had a hell of a vibrator at home or something.
Other than that, I am LOVING the hell out of this show.
That bugged me too, but then immediately afterwards she acted completely underwhelmed? Which was it?
Here’s my shot in the dark:At the reunion either Lottie or Van are going to show up, so we get the adult casting reveal on one of them. They are going to think that this person has to be the one that killed Travis, but instead this person will tease that Jackie’s been stirring shit up and possibly killed Travis. And I don’t think season 2 is going to switch to other adults perspectives, but I do think something might happen that puts uson a road to a cliff hanger where our main 3 or 4 will have to either go on the run from or the hunt for Jackie. The biggest let down for me at this point would be for the new adult reveal to just be very brief at the end of the season and have the mere presence be a cliff hanger. They obviously need to set the stakes very high on the present story line to get us properly hooked for season 2.
Just a thought, not saying Jackie isn’t the girl in the pit (although I still think she’ll show up at the reunion alive and well—otherwise it’s Van), but I don’t think we’ll find out who got cut up into a yellowjacket sandwich in episode 1 this season. If it’s 19 months out in the wilderness, and they are planning for 5 seasons, well that’s about 4 months per season. That seems to fit with the current weather in the woods and Shauna’s baby bump. Ep 1’s opening scene was a winter wonderland (minus the cannibalism). Ep 9 looks more like September or early October, which fits, assuming that nationals were in May or June. Nobody’s even complaining about being cold yet. Another 4 months (i.e, another full season), brings us to January or so, which looks more like the opening episode. So season 2 will be about hunger and tribalism, culminating in the big dinner scene reveal at the end.
Re: Jackie’s potential as AQ, I have a really hard time buying that could be where she’s going. It seems like the whole thing with Jackie is how separate she is from the group – like she’s having a completely different experience because she’s still in some way in the life she left behind. Sure she can be manipulative, but in the ways of civilization. I can’t imagine her sustaining an AQ persona. There were plot reasons she didn’t eat the grubs, the mushroom stew or the fermented berries in this ep, but it seemed pretty symbolic as well. Theories where she was left behind, went feral, turned AQ or is puppet master seem like they rely on changing everything that defines her. Like she spends the first season unable to shed being suburban prom queen and then decides Suburban Prom Queen isn’t working, so she’ll become some Misty/Lottie combo. If she could do that she wouldn’t be in the situation she’s in now, imo! And she would have no reason to be separated from the other characters we see as an adult!