Believing that this show is about a group of teens resulting to cannibalism to survive being stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash is wild enough, but this show is so much wilder than even that. Not since the days of Lost and Twin Peaks has there been a show so rich in mysterious possibility and, after watching episode seven, I feel like my eyes are just loosely rolling around in my head as I attempt to make sense of all of the numerous hints, clues, and symbols served up in what we’ve been shown so far. But as I’m playing Citizen Detective, spending countless hours thinking about the mysteries of Yellowjackets which is, hands down, my favorite show of the past untold number of years, I have to remind myself that the fun comes primarily in the wondering. There are mysteries we’ve been presented that I hope won’t get solved easily. And some that I hope I get to wonder about forever. Honestly, I haven’t been this excited about a show since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that’s something I didn’t even think was humanly possible.
The thing I obsessively loved about Buffy, which I’m finding myself loving just as strongly in Yellowjackets, is the continued showcasing of strong women characters and how they held onto that strength regardless of flaws, hardships, and impending doom. If you were to ask me how many times I re-watched the scene from this episode where adult Taissa and Natalie chase down their blackmailer through racks of clothes, pool noodles, and art supplies, the answer would be an embarrassing amount of times. And I’m not entirely over it yet, so there are more viewings of that scene to come. Not since the first Charlie’s Angels movie in 2000 has pop culture put a Prodigy song to better use.
Taissa, Natalie, and Shauna are getting closer to finding out who has been blackmailing them, and they use a tracking device purchased on Amazon to help them out. Hiding the device in an empty chip bag, they place it in a duffel bag that Shauna’s daughter Callie made for her dad, Jeff (when she was “still cuteâ€), along with a stack of hundred-dollar bills from Natalie totaling the $50,000 the blackmailer requested. After dumping this in a clothing-donation box, they sit in the car making small talk, sharing a bottle of booze that Natalie brought along because, of course, she did. Once the tracker starts to move, they follow it and end up face-to-face with the driver of a truck who Natalie threatens at gunpoint. While she’s doing so, a guy in a ski mask jumps out the back, and this is where we get to see the level of foot race two former champion soccer players are capable of. They’re after this guy like two wolves in a cornfield, and it’s not long before Taissa tackles the blackmailer, but he elbows her in the face and gets away. Not before tumbling over a huge tub filled with glitter, of all things. A tickle in my brain tells me we’re going to end up seeing this glitter on something that Jeff is wearing down the line. He’s having money problems, keeping odd hours that, I don’t think, are occupied entirely by cheating, and he has open access to all of the secrets they’re trying to hide. Plus, he kinda just seems like a shitty little worm.
This episode jumps back and forth between timelines, even more so than the previous episodes, as the Yellowjackets’ past and present collide. We flashback to them stuck in the wilderness and witness Taissa’s decision to split off from the group in search of help or, at the very least, more resources. Misty says that she thinks the animals in the area are migrating, and that’s why they haven’t been able to hunt down anything other than that maggot-filled deer we saw last week. Speaking of that bloody horned ghoul, Lottie does some Lottie stuff and digs around in its charred remains to pull out a perfectly un-singed bone to present to Van as a talisman as she sets off with Taissa on her journey. Misty, Mari (Alexa Barajas), and Akilah (Keeya King) tag along as well. This segmenting of the larger group is another comparison that can be made to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In the book, which is about a group of boys becoming stranded after a plane crash, things start to go south when the two main characters, Jack and Ralph, become leaders of two very different groups. One group wants to peacefully self-govern until they’re rescued, and the other wants to raise hell. None of the Yellowjackets are trying to raise hell just yet, aside from maybe Misty and Lottie, but you can see it coming.
The girls are starting to look to Lottie as a sort of all-seeing figurehead, and you can all but see her planing her antler queen outfit. Everyone is stressed, low on sleep, eating weird things, and shit’s gonna get real weird. Even weirder. Real soon. After Lottie gives Van her weird bone, she tells her that she had a dream about red smoke and a river of blood. The new group comes across both of these things down the line when they encounter a red-tinted stream, and then, later, Taissa uses a flare gun to scare off a wolf that was chomping on Van’s face, clouding them all in a plume of red smoke. We don’t know if Van is dead or not, but since you can now see her teeth through her cheek, it’s not looking great for her.
The compass the new group is carrying starts mysteriously going round and round, and they’re reminded of what was said before about the woods not wanting them to leave. If that’s the level of mystical mysterioso we’re headed towards, then everything else is on the table, too, in terms of time travel, witchery, and whatever else. I love not knowing where a show is headed, and this all has me pretty deep in the weeds, which is beyond exciting.
Back at the main camp, Jackie forces Shauna to tell her what she’s been hiding, and she makes up a story about getting pregnant after losing her virginity to some guy named Randy. Jackie later sneaks into Shauna’s journal, which was hidden up in the rafters, and based on her sobbing, we can tell that she now knows who the real father is. Javi seems to also be after Shauna’s journal, but when she catches him going through her bag, he says he was looking for the hunting knife to work on a project. At the end of the episode, Shauna finds a little wolf figurine that he’d carved out of wood for her. Can Javi see the future too? The timing of the wolf carving and the wolf
attack at the second camp seems a bit close. The one to really keep an eye on here is Lottie, though. Like Taissa said, “If this was a horror movie, she’d be the villain.†I think there’s more truth to that than we know right now.
Buzz Buzz Buzz
• Just like I bet we’ll see some glitter on Jeff down the line, I bet we’ll see the ring that Travis had Natalie pull from his dead dad’s hand to give to Javi on Adam or in his stuff somewhere.
• Am I the only one who thinks Shauna and Jackie have major gay energy for each other? I mean, I know from experience that girls/women have intense friendships, but there’s another thing I know from experience, and it’s that sometimes girls seem like great friends because they’re experiencing inner gay.
• If Adam is in fact Javi, what if Adam was the one who killed Travis (his brother) and cleared out his bank account? Maybe he has blamed him for something all these years and got revenge?
• The fake reporter tells Misty that she was at Travis’ house right before he was killed, and she seems to imply that she knows who did it. Hopefully, Misty comes up with something better than fentanyl-filled chocolates to get her to tell what she knows, if she knows anything at all.
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