You know that distinctly melancholic feeling you get when Thanksgiving—or really, any food-centric holiday—is over? Everything has been gobbled up, and nothing but the shreds of an entire bounty remain. You’re regretting going for a third plate, because you’re sure that every single bite has sent your internal organs on a collision course, like a reverse Pangea. And, in your state of recovering gluttony, you realize that all of the excitement and mirth of the holiday is already fading away; soon, you’ll have to return to normal life.
Now take all of the shame and sadness you feel in that moment, and tack on the realization that you ate someone’s face. Taissa is lucky she only vomited. I would’ve simply disintegrated on the spot.
We’re three weeks into Season 2 of Yellowjackets, and already, the team in the Canadian woods has suffered a new, unimaginable dose of trauma that will alter the course of their lives forever. Beyond their initial plane crash, feasting on Jackie’s medium-well, popular-girl corpse is the series’ next big turning point. All of the surviving members living at the hunting cabin in the ’90s have awoken to realize the horrors that their Bacchanalia wrought. How they process the decision they made in a state of hopeless hunger will define everything going forward, all the way into the present.
Tai might not feel much remorse for what happens when she sleepwalks, but hearing that she knowingly chowed down on human flesh the night before, at least, ignites the appropriate response of shock and disgust. We’ve seen Tai carry these feelings into her adult life, reacting with the same horror every time one of her blackouts results in her doing something similarly appalling. Still, you’d think all of that swirling, awake-or-asleep mayhem would push her to be a little more proactive about getting some serious help.
So far, we’ve only seen one glimpse of what happened to the team immediately after their rescue, when Lottie was put on an involuntary psychiatric hold. But in this episode, we can surmise that the other Yellowjackets were likely met with a similar apathy toward proper care upon their homecoming. Tai, Lottie, Nat, and Misty are all extremely reluctant to ask for any outside help in the present. And though they’ve had time to address their problems just enough to sweep them under the rug, everyone is starting to unravel at an unprecedented pace.
That means that, yes, this episode finally gives the adult characters something to do! Unfortunately, it’s to varying degrees of quality. The less said about Misty’s muddled, confoundingly unfunny subplot—secondhand-interrogating a witness to Natalie’s kidnapping with her new pal, Walter (Elijah Wood)—the better. It’s far beyond me why the writers think that any casual Yellowjackets fans will immediately remember who Randy (Jeff Holman) is, when he was only a small part of three episodes of the first season. A brief glimpse in the “Previously on Yellowjackets” compilation would do wonders here, people!
But no need to be filled in on what’s going on with present-day Taissa. We know that she’s still coming down from the Nespresso binge that tangentially caused her and Simone to get T-boned in traffic. With Simone in the hospital, Tai’s mental state is worsening by the minute. She awakens from a standing sleep (impressive in its own right; wish I could manage it) to discover that she wrote the hunting cabin symbol on Simone’s hand while she sleeps. When a nurse asks what it means, Tai shrugs it off as being “for protection.” That sentiment is echoed back in the ’90s, as they debate why the cabin’s owner was surrounded by the symbol when the girls found his corpse last season.
If that symbol—which we really need a proper name for—was for protection, it likely wouldn’t be directly attributed to death and mental destruction. Not only does teenage Tai find it on another tree while sleepwalking in this episode, but teenage Lottie inscribes it on a baby blanket that she gives to Shauna, during the world’s worst baby shower. As the Yellowjackets bicker about the blanket, Shauna’s nose begins to bleed, her blood soaking onto the blanket’s stitched insignia. Seconds later, a cacophony of thumps lands against the cabin roof, in the form of birds falling out of the sky. Lottie perceives this as a godly bounty, manna from heaven. But rationale says Shauna’s baby would be safer swaddled in Jackie’s muscle tissue than that blanket.
Teenage Shauna tells Lottie that, after eating Jackie, she’s experiencing a dread unlike she’s ever felt before. Her maternal instincts have already kicked in, and Sophie Nélisse continues to do a fine job at wearing Shauna’s fear and desperation on her face in equal measure. We see both of these reflected in present-day Shauna, after she and Jeff have their minivan stolen at gunpoint. Though Shauna subdues their assailant and snatches his gun, he still makes off with the van, thanks to Jeff’s misplaced machismo. Has Jeff not heard the phrase, “Never send a man to do a woman’s job when she was forced to fend for herself in the woods for 19 months” before?
After two whole episodes—a lifetime in Yellowjackets years—Melanie Lynskey gets to showcase the covert viciousness that earned her an Emmy nomination last year. She’s hit a wall with Jeff’s nonsense, and god damn it, that minivan had all of their quarters in it! So, Shauna Ubers over to a chop shop with a finger on the trigger of the stolen gun. In turn, we’re treated to Lynskey’s 2023 Emmy reel.
Despite having the gun pointed in his face, the shop owner berates Shauna for her threat of violence. This is a mom, looking for a minivan. What’re the chances that she’ll pull the trigger? And then, Lynskey hits us with the brilliant interjection: “Have you ever peeled the skin off a human corpse?” From there, both the shop owner and every viewer are her captive audience. “It’s really stuck on us, skin,” she continues. “You have to roll back just the edges of it, so you can get a good enough grip to really pull. Which, again, isn’t easy. People are always so sweaty when you kill them…There’s a look people get, when they realize they’re going to die. It’s that one.”
A cut to the chop shop’s proprietor, who looks like he’s already soiled his slacks, doesn’t even give one second of comic relief, thanks to Lynskey’s gripping mini-monologue. “My hand wasn’t shaking because I was afraid,” she says. “It was shaking because of how badly I wanted to do this.”
An electrifying score, which interpolates the shop’s background noise of buzzsaws and chain metal clanging, weaves through blasts of screeching, crescendoed synth to amplify the tension. Shauna decides not to shoot and leaves with her minivan. But that one scene alone makes me think, maybe being so frustrated with Shauna’s lack of momentum so far this season was just a red herring. Maybe she is simply a pressure cooker turned on high at all times, and all she needs is her lid removed.
One final cut back to Lottie’s holistic compound in the present day closes the episode, with a reminder that no one on this show is remotely well-adjusted. We know that adult Lottie has been professing her naturalistic approach to healing, and looks to have it all figured out on the outside. She even seems to be fooling Nat just a bit, despite Juliette Lewis’ look of perma-suspicion. But a stirring scene set to Tori Amos’ “Bells for Her” kicks dust all over that facade.
Lottie approaches her center’s beloved hives, to find all of the bees dead, with the honeycomb dripping in deep-scarlet blood. Simone Kessell gives Lynskey a run for her money with her amount of disquieting facial expressions alone. Lottie pours over her blood-stained hands, before one of her pseudo-cult members interrupts her: “Il veut de sang.” My four years of high school French have left me rusty, but it hasn't been so long since then—or since Season 1—that I've forgotten that translates to, “It wants blood,” which Lottie repeated during Episode 5's seance.
Of course, this is all in Lottie’s mind. The hives are fine, and the words uttered by her companion were in English, asking if Lottie would be joining them for lunch. In spite of Lottie's attempts to bury her own dismal visions, it would seem they’re returning with a force, now that Natalie is back in her orbit and Travis is dead.
What “it” is, and why it's so bloodthirsty is the question that still remains. But that probably won’t take too long to reveal if the descent keeps going at this pace. Reality is merely a suggestion for most of the Yellowjackets now. Let’s just keep that baby blanket away from Shauna’s poor, dry nose.
