Yellowjackets – Fucking sacrifices and miracles.

Yellowjackets: 3x01 It Girl.

They could never go home again, because of what they’d done, because of what they became.

It’s such an interesting choice for Yellowjackets, after a long break, to come back to late Spring/early Summer. It may have only been three months in the 1990s timeline of the show, with the team now roughly six months off from being rescued, but in terms of vibes, this feels completely different from where we left off. When we saw them last, it was the depth of winter, and the season took its toll: first Jackie, then the elimination of all other food sources except Jackie. In the final scenes of the last episode, the cabin burned down, which left them all (except Coach, who legged it - sorry - to a hidden cave, seeing the writing on the walls) without shelter and in severe peril. Yellowjackets, in It Girl, doesn’t show us how difficult it was to discover from the loss – instead, it throws us right into the new routine of life in the wilderness.

The opening scene works as a perfect mirror image to one of the most famous moments in the show: the wintry, creepy hunt, the trapped pit girl. Everything else that has happened on the show has worked to recalibrate the viewers' sense of what the scene means: the confirmation of cannibalism in season two, the introduction of a self-made religious spirituality that relies on rituals. We know now that the girls (and Travis) hunt both for food and because they have created a system of belief that has mythologised the idea of sacrificing a chosen victim. The hunt that starts this episode cannot be that hunt, because it is spring, but it comes with the same adrenaline-spiked fear and sense of doom before it is revealed to be a game. In that sense, even the (mostly harmless) games carry undertones of danger and horror. This one is a kind of capture the flag situation (the flag is a bone) in which the Yellowjackets determine who will serve the other half during their Summer Solstice festival. It also features the pent-up dynamics that will surely dominate the season: Shauna is furious at Mari, the kind of feud that can happen in isolation because there is no way of escaping another person when you’re both trapped in the same situation. It is also a continuation of one of the elements that generally plays into how the Yellowjackets have organised themselves, and arguably survived out there so long: they (mostly) are a soccer team used to competition and success, and have therefore self-selected for taking any game they play a little too seriously, and falling back, on principle, into a hierarchy.

What makes this entry into the new season interesting is that it’s kind of a soft launch: the change of season has brought ample food, and through their differing talents, they have managed to build a self-sustaining community that actually, at first glance, looks pretty neat. Tai has made use of a book on shelter-building and created very solid-looking structures that look more fitting and less haunted than the cabin that used to be their home (that I find the circular entry to one of them slightly creepy is probably a me-problem, not a comment on A-frame architecture). There is game in the woods. The girls are keeping rabbits and ducks. Without the constant struggle to survive, they are back to filling their time with games. Their love for rituals persists, but it’s not really about figuring out the right input into the black box of the woods to ensure survival anymore, but to fill the time meaningfully to avoid boredom. They are, as much as that is possible under the circumstances, thriving.

The downside to no longer having the uniting demand of bodily survival with them at all times is that the pettier, smaller irritations of co-existing with other people that aren’t selected for compatibility become less bearable. There’s Mari – part of the group, but generally considered as annoying, so much that most of the girls comprehend why Shauna loathes her so much – and there’s Shauna, who has survived the trauma of losing her best friend, eating her best friend, and losing a baby. Shauna is isolated because she doesn’t buy into what everyone else is doing to pass the time, and so the show brilliantly contrasts Van’s vainglorious retelling of their survival, the introduction to the Summer Solstice, with her lonely and furious diary writing that contradicts everything that Van is saying about how brave and strong they are. It’s fitting that goalie Van has become the storyteller of the group – she seems more confident and at ease than she ever has (Liv Hewson is so great in these scenes and clearly having a blast). It calls back the old days of Van retelling the films that they can no longer watch, except now the stories are about themselves, they have become the heroes. Van is the one who has physically survived the most, who should be dead three times over, and yet is here now to tell the tale of impossible survival. She is also the one who might just be missing the least, unburdened from her drunk mum, supported by her girlfriend, with no more need to hide. Shauna, on the other hand, has lost everything, and has always been too removed from the group dynamics (Jackie was her connection) to now thrive in them.

Tai realises that the conflict between Shauna and Mari could spiral out of control especially because it so petty, because the reality of their situation means that even minor things can become thrown hugely out of proportion (“Maybe out here, it’s all life or death” she says, foreshadowingly). Natalie, their chosen leader, is ill-equipped to handle it – it’s exactly the kind of “dumb girl shit” that she has never cared about and done everything she could to avoid. It’s a reminder that Nat may have been part of the team but didn’t used to be friends with any of them. Tai is already playing the politics, but Nat has become their leader in part because she is so reluctant to. The only person that still talks to Shauna is Melissa, who, as Shauna says acerbically, didn’t even have a personality prior to now (I think this is the first time she’s spoken, but it’s great to see another background face becoming foregrounded, it’s always been weird to have so many unnamed characters just hanging out while stuff was happening). And Melissa, clearly aware of girl dynamics, knows that nothing binds more than having a shared enemy, and plays right into Shauna’s hatred of Mari. 

It escalates during the festivities: Shauna, deeply resentful of having been on the losing side of the capture the flag and having been chosen to “serve” the others (plus, she’s also still the only capable butcher of meat, which must hurt every time she has to do it, and remind her of her trauma), spits in Mari’s venison stew. Maybe it’s also not the best idea for the others to recreate the set-up of their first feast so faithfully and make Shauna attend, considering who the centre piece was last time. Mari runs off, and right into a “bambi” trap that Coach, now roaming the woods by himself, has built. Will Mari survive long enough to be the girl in the pit twice?

Yellowjackets continues to be a show of two different paces across the timelines, but hopefully, the balance will work out a bit better this time around. The adult timeline focuses on the fall-out of Nat’s death last season, and how it reverberates through everyone’s lives. Taissa and Van (who are living together to but in separate rooms – and not fucking yet, the show wants us to know) and Shauna are attending a memorial service that serves as a stark reminder of legacy for all of them. It’s deeply depressing: Nat’s mum gives a short and loveless eulogy that time-travels all the way through the years, a summary of Nat’s unhappy, horrible childhood. Shauna considers how pathetic her own legacy is – a bad mum, a bad wife, nothing much apart from her survival in the woods. Taissa is the first State Senator who impeached herself before assuming office. Van is dying of cancer. Misty is absent – because, it becomes obvious, nobody has bothered to check in with her, and the only person looking after her is Walter, who has given her a key to Natalie’s storage unit. Misty was the one who spent so much energy on trying to save Nat only to end up being the one who killed her – everyone else seems fairly unaffected by the loss, save for how it reminds them of how their own eulogies would be written. It triggers something in all of them, but only Misty’s spiral is a form of genuine grief and tribute to Nat. She goes through the items in the storage unit and steals Nat’s leather jacket (which she promptly puts on over her cutesy cat-sweater-outfit), then drinks seven whiskeys in the bar, gets into a fight with some harmless dudes, and tries to set them on fire. It feels like what Nat may have done while grieving a loved one. In the end, Walter is the only one who comes to rescue her, and we know Misty isn’t one to easily forgive grudges or being kept on the sidelines.

Everyone else’s reaction to the loss is about self-reflection, or mitigating, in a really fucked up way, what they perceive as shortcomings in their eulogies. Shauna ends up connecting with Callie (who seems to be in the process of becoming a focus point of the season) when she reacts to her Carrie-esque revenge for some “dumb girl shit” with awe instead of reprimands. It’s a very different method of parenting than Jeff would probably propose in light of everything that Callie has come to find out about her parents, and done herself in reaction to it. It’s intriguing though as an insight into what comes natural Shauna, who was never very good at traditional parenting and is now maybe finding a way through it by focusing on what she has in common with her daughter (who seems less disturbed than figuring out who she is herself, which is definitely interesting).
Taissa convinces Van to go on a fancy date with her. I’ve always found adult Taissa the least like her younger version – it’s a deliberate choice for a character who was so driven to be successful that she had to deny everything that happened. There are also hints here that the split between her and Van happened because of that ambition (Taissa having started her career in politics where it may have been difficult to be out). The attraction between the two is powerful because it calls back the Tai that used to exist, the free and capable person back in the wilderness, who didn’t have to hide herself (and is celebrated for being the "handy lesbian") – Van knows who she is at her most transgressive, and still loves her. The question is if that is the best or the worst version of Taissa that Tai is trying to get back by pulling Van into it with her. It’s also something to consider that Van – who seems to be flourishing in those sunny months in the woods, who seems to have found the perfect place – ended up moving away from it all into a very solitary life that was deeply nostalgic about the past through videos, but disconnected from all the other survivors. It’s an imaginary past of stories, not the real thing. Lauren Ambrose’s performance here is perfect because she is so cautious and reluctant about Taissa, but the second that she sees a glimpse of the old Tai coming back – when they dine and dash at the fancy restaurant – she’s right back in those woods with her first love, and it becomes impossible to resist even if it’s already so clear that it’ll end badly (Taissa’s hallucinations return right on cue).

Mari’s in the pit, but not in that pit yet. Callie intercepts a videotape addressed to her mum that was left at the door, and she hides it. The woods emit unnatural sounds in response to a ceremony for the dead, and now everyone can hear them.

Random notes:

The song choices in this episode were excellent as usual. Cat Stevens for the beautiful little village in the woods where rabbits are frolicking in their enclosure, Bush for Van and Taissa being fucked up together, the Runaways’ Cherry Bomb for Misty grieving the loss of Nat in the only appropriate manner, Cake's (a band for people who grew up loving Daria!) I Will Survive, uncensored.

I kind of like the gendering between the survival of the team vs the survival of Coach, who is building traps in the woods and stumbles over a cache of essentials that he turns into a trap straight away – you wouldn’t think that keeping ducks and rabbits ever even occurred to him.

In light of everything, it’s interesting that Misty’s room has Yellowjackets memorabilia visible – everyone else was so busy covering up what happened, Misty is the only one actually proud of who she became in the woods. It’s too meaningful for her to hide.

In season three, things continue to not come up Randy for Randy, who is now delivering intestines for a version of DoorDash.

We find out that adult Lottie is now in a facility in an aside – young Lottie, in the flashbacks, continues to be reluctant about her role as a spiritual leader but is trying to at least help Travis, who is very much in the deep end after the loss of his brother and everything else.

I think the waiter having a heart attack after chasing Tai and Van is a clear case of horrible, unintended consequences following whenever the past is evoked – they’re not even aware of the damage, but it follows them like a curse.