The Yellowjackets may not be afraid of the bad parts of themselves anymore, but Yellowjackets should really reconsider the bad parts of this season, of which there are many.
Recap
We’re about halfway through Yellowjackets season 3, with this episode’s timelines dissecting the how and why of two different deaths: in the Wilderness, the Yellowjackets determining Ben’s fate; in the present, the survivors sifting through Lottie’s childhood home for postmortem clues.
The episode’s odd-pairing teamup is Shauna and Walter, after the latter tails her while tailing Misty. Everyone suspects each other of killing Lottie, but no one seems particularly worried about their respective safety with these established murderers. They’re all playing Citizen Detective at the same destination: Lottie’s dad’s hotel penthouse, where she lived for a while during her parents’ divorce. For Misty, it’s a nasty surprise to see Shauna and Walter masquerading as cable company techs, even though he seems to intend it as something of a love letter to Misty, challenging her and finding clues. Shauna, of course, is just continuing their stubborn feud and refusing to apologize.
Lottie’s father is suffering from dementia, so all three take advantage of his shifting sense of reality to sneak into various rooms and/or hack Lottie’s search history. After Misty calls Walter despicable (I guess they’ve broken up?), Shauna winds up having an unexpected heart-to-heart with Lottie’s dad, as he mistakes her for his teenage daughter. Shauna doesn’t really learn anything to help solve the murder, but she does get some emotional closure about her lost friend.
Aside from sitting down for Misty’s news about Lottie, Van and Tai continue to inhabit their own weird little orbit. They do have a brief playground meetup with Tai’s ex-wife Simone and their son Sammy, who apparently requested to see her. But when they make it to the playground, there’s just enough time for Simone to scoff at Van (“you’re her”) before a spooked Sammy decides that he wants to leave. We later see that he asked Tai if she was still his mommy, which would seem to imply that Other Tai is steering things. (Though in that case, wouldn’t he recognize her as the lady outside his bedroom window?) Van half-heartedly asks Tai her whereabouts on the missing hour before Lottie’s death, but she also doesn’t seem too invested in Tai’s denial.
These two are more interesting as their teenage selves, with Taissa drawing the king of hearts (“the suicide king”) to execute Ben by firing squad, and Van trying to help bring out Other Tai to do the dirty work. Her comparing regular Tai to Steve Urkel was a flicker of the excellent season 1 humor, but no amount of woodland orgasms can flip the switch, as it were.
Meanwhile, Lottie and Travis strongarm Akilah into descending back into the poison gas cave to see what else the Wilderness wants to show her. After a harrowing point where she seems as if she’ll wind up seizing instead, she wakes up and describes her vision of Ben, suspended over a gorge by ropes tied to each limb, and how climbing over his back she saw the lights of civilization in the distance.
Poor Ben gets a last meal of a whole fish (the luxury of not having to choke down random offal) but is too distraught to eat it. Having seemingly accepted his fate, he begs again at gunpoint for forgiveness, trying to appeal to the girls (“this isn’t you”) before calling them monsters as his dying words. Other Tai finally slips into the driver’s seat to pull the trigger, only for Lottie and co to avert the execution at the last second, declaring that Coach is their bridge home.
With Coach’s life spared, he (and we) were wondering what Shauna and Melissa could still want with him, as they ominously approach him that night. We get our answer when Shauna encourages Melissa to slash his Achilles tendon. As he screams in agony and disbelief, they clasp bloody hands in front of their teammates, then retreat to one of the huts—talk about a hard launch of this situationship. The Yellowjackets need Coach alive, but they don’t necessarily need him mobile.
Commentary
This season is just so ponderous. At one point while watching Shauna and Walter match wits, I couldn’t stop thinking, This is Elijah Wood talking to Melanie Lynskey; I wasn’t as invested in the characters as we should be by this point in the season. Lottie’s death coming so fast on the heels of Nat’s has diluted both losses; the mystery lacks the tension and urgency of Travis’ death in season 1. The present portions at the start of the series were animated by the adults’ fear that the truth about the Wilderness—their great shame, even as it ensured their survival—would get unearthed and ruin the lives they’d so carefully rebuilt. At this point, they simply seem to… not care? Not about being pariahs or being targets.
The Wilderness portions are similarly stretched out, with another whole episode drawing out what will happen to Ben. It was encouraging to see how distraught the Yellowjackets were about sentencing him to death, the first one where they have to face their own complicity. Nat fastening Jackie’s necklace around his neck adds to the murkiness associated with the symbol; he’s not quite a tribute, so was it perhaps meant as honoring his life regardless?
The one I really can’t wrap my head around is teenage Shauna. Despite the fresh losses of Jackie and her son that she’s still grieving, the math isn’t mathing to make her so despicable. She’s cruel in a way that transcends adolescent callousness; as Tai sneers at her in the end of the episode, she’s progressed to delighting in others’ suffering. But what makes her so untouchable to the rest of the group? Perhaps her ability to butcher, which they know they’ll need come the next winter. Perhaps her grief, which none of them can fully empathize with.
My most generous read is that this is a commentary on how the Wilderness transmutes the social hierarchy of high school, especially among teenage girls. It’s not that Shauna is the queen bee; she lacks Jackie’s charisma and the brute force apex predator appeal of a Regina George. But neither is she the outcast, because none of her teammates can really take the moral high ground considering their collective participation in the survival rituals. So maybe it’s as simple as, they’re too afraid of her to do anything but weakly push back and otherwise let her have her way. Melissa, adoring fan that she is, takes it further: “I like that you’re not afraid of the bad parts of yourself anymore.”
The shot in the opening scene, of teen Misty staring at teen Lottie’s corpse in the morgue, was very moving; I hope we see more of that in the adult portion, this visual reminder of the girls peering out from their older selves. It’s somewhat mirrored later by Lottie’s father seeing her in Shauna’s place, and in that case the actress does a fine job of communicating Shauna’s expressions during their conversation.
In fact, we’ve seen a lot of teen Lottie, but not actually gotten interiority from her in some time. It’s difficult to watch Travis offer up Akilah in his place as the Wilderness’ vessel; he seems unlikely to confess his real motivations and instead let Lottie continue in her deluded guidance. Akilah almost not waking up could have sealed his deception, but now the bridge vision has everyone doubling down on their beliefs. Even if that doesn’t pan out exactly like they expect it to, it seems as if the Yellowjackets have just let Lottie run with this conviction unchecked, up until it (potentially) got her killed. I wish the show would delve more into their complicity rather than having them just play Citizen Detective.
Fingers and Ears
- Anyone else laugh out loud at the antler coat rack at Lottie’s dad’s penthouse?
- Speaking of the late cult leader, Misty finds out that it was $50K that Lottie withdrew before she was killed. We already did blackmail, but she could be paying off someone—my guess is Melissa, going by the theory that she’s the one stalking them.
- Van’s microexpressions in the Wilderness were great, first her anguish over Tai picking the king of hearts and then her clocking Shauna and Melissa holding hands (before they went into the hut and made it obvious to everyone).
- Did anyone else think, when Akilah had her vision of Coach suspended over the gorge by ropes on each of his limbs, that the Yellowjackets were going to switch from firing squad to being drawn and quartered?
- The episode’s best line reading goes to Melanie Lynskey for “That was not murder… per se.”
Next week is Wilderness Thanksgiving—here’s hoping that another ritual puts things back on track. Also, Callie finally gives Shauna that damn cassette!
