Yellowjackets - None of this is who we are.

Yellowjackets: 3x05 Did Tai Do That?

I like that you’re not afraid of the bad parts of yourself anymore.

The most interesting part about the adult storyline in this episode is the blurring between past and present that occurs. There is, of course, a constant awareness of the past for these adult Yellowjackets: it haunts them in various ways, none of them have found healthy or sustainable ways of coping with what happened to them and what they did, and they are also still dealing with the very real fall-out from it. Since Travis’ death and Lottie reinvolvement in their lives, the past has been with them in an undeniable way, and I don’t think that there’s much of a question that Lottie’s death now connects back to it in some way. Misty mixes memories of past and present Lottie when she identifies the body and retrieves her affects through blackmail from the morgue, and her coping mechanism with that grief is to become a citizen detective again. There is no way that this was in fact an accident (if it was, it would be one of the great ironies of the show), as the police think, and nobody is better suited to uncover what happened than the woman who has trained for this her whole life. The other side to Misty’s immediate decision to investigate is that investigating a death is not that different from covering up your own involvement: it gives her opportunities to remove evidence and cover up clues, if we were still to believe that she had something to do with it - and follow the logic that she had a very good reason to want Lottie dead, considering how Natalie, as close to a true friend as Misty had, died. Misty suspects Shauna, and Shauna accidentally teams up Walter, who sees this as an opportunity to get back with Misty, who loves nothing more than a challenge (but perhaps he has underestimated how much Misty dislikes him now, for showing her the truth about her friends). The competition is comedic, but it leads to one of the most emotional moments we’ve seen adult Shauna involved in. The other way that past and present can mix in an irretrievable mess is in dementia, and Lottie’s dad – who lives in a penthouse, and apparently gave Lottie a home when she was released, opening up all kinds of questions about why Lottie pretended to be homeless to Shauna – can’t tell the two reliably apart anymore. As Walter, Shauna and Misty get to work on the penthouse to find clues, he wanders the halls haunted and confused, ending in a moment where he confuses Shauna for his teenage daughter. Seeing what must have been a very difficult relationship in the past, with Lottie’s dad cruel about her mental illness, or just ill-equipped to handle it, Shauna finally grieves the loss, and steps into Lottie’s life to give him a moment of closure. It's a rare act of kindness from someone who we see, in the scenes set after the conclusion of Coach Ben’s trial, act incredibly cruel. Shauna says “sometimes it’s hard to show love the way we want to”, which is an insight into her and a moment of connection that we’ve rarely seen from her (pertaining to her relationship with her husband, Callie, and maybe also Melissa in the past?).
The investigation doesn’t result in much. Misty finds a withdrawal slip for $50,000 in Lottie’s jacket, opening the question of who the money was for (I suppose we’re meant to guess it’s for the mysterious maybe Melissa, to be revealed in the future). There’s the mystery of Lottie’s pretend homelessness, which gained her access to Callie. Also, Walter retrieves one of Shauna’s hairs from her hat for future DNA analysis in case of crimes committed by or against her, which may or may not prove relevant.
Tai and Van are initially part of it, with Van reacting much more emotionally to the reveal that Lottie has died than Tai, which is interesting in contrast to each of their reactions to Tai drawing the card to become Coach’s executioners. We’ve seen Van’s devotion to Lottie’s whole thing in the past, but she’s definitely soured on it since, so it’s a surprise to see her so horrified by the meaningless death and to see Tai so emotionally distant, once again tasking us with asking what Tai we are seeing. Later, they go to meet Simone and Tai’s kid in the park, but in a conversation that Simone and Van don’t overhear, Sammy asks his mum if she is still herself and seems to come to the conclusion that she isn’t, with his fear of her a better indicator of what’s really going on than Van’s deliberate blindness. Van does ask Tai where she was in the hour she kept her waiting before their date, and from what we’ve seen in the past, it’s very possible that (other) Tai Did Do That.

There is a certain light-heartedness and comedy about the two investigation teams trying to thwart each other in their attempt to find the truth that is very much in contrast with what happens in the past, which again, with the exception of Shauna’s moment with Lottie’s dad, carries all the emotional weight of the episode.
With the verdict of guilty that they arrived at last episode through Shauna’s manipulation, the question is now what to do with Ben, who they all seem to agree can’t just keep being a prisoner in the animal enclosure forever. Shauna (and Melissa, of course) want to burn him as a fitting punishment for his alleged crime, an idea so beyond the pale that it horrifies everyone else: it shows how far-gone Shauna is, but also what Shauna is capable of. Lottie thinks that Travis’ little sketch of three dead that he showed her after the trial (from the title we know he was drunk the whole time) is what the wilderness wants, not the kind of horrifying and deeply sad musing of a boy who comprehends what is happening to the group and how they’ll go further into the darkness. Natalie, who is carrying the burden of leadership heavily and is closest to Coach (along with Misty), argues that a firing squad would be more humane. They draw cards, with Van naming the King of Hearts as the “suicide king”, and Tai ends up with it. This is an interesting episode for Tai, who seemed very happy to step up as prosecutor but now doesn’t want to bear the consequences of if, the very real difference between trying to have Ben convicted and being the one chosen to kill him. Van seems less conflicted but wants to create a scenario in which Tai can psychologically cope with killing someone, and comes up with the genius idea of awakening Other Tai to bear the burden – which, regardless of whether we think that this is a wilderness-influenced real thing that is happening to Tai or mental illness is such a bad idea! It’s a very real, perceivable mental coping with an impossible situation, literally splitting yourself in half and outsourcing the (necessary or unnecessary) evil parts like some kind of Severance procedure. They try to do it through sex, because that’s worked before (what a great idea, to mix the two – I guess these are the seeds for why they ended up splitting up, eventually), they try to bring a “mindful” blood sacrifice when Tai kills a trapped rabbit, but nothing works. Misty delivers a last meal, crying and grieving, calling Ben kind and decent, “first boyfriend and amputation”, then Coach is taken away with a hood over his head and tied to a tree, pleading for his life, pleading for their souls (“What kind of monsters have you all become?”), asking how they could have turned into this. 

In the meantime, Akilah has acquiesced to Lottie’s intentions of using her as a medium. They return to the cave with Travis, to induce another vision. Akilah passes out and almost dies, and upon waking (and it really feels like a close call that Lottie deliberately made, willing to risk Akilah’s life for that supposed connection to the wilderness) retells a vision of a giant Coach, tied up across a cliff, providing a bridge to the shining lights of civilisation beyond. It’s such a clear, easily interpreted vision that I would once again ask if it isn’t a little too convenient, and if it was, what a genius ploy by Akilah to save Ben from his fate. At the last moment, when Other Tai, who does end up emerging at the decisive moment, shoots, Lottie saves Ben, because he’s their bridge home. He has purpose. Although in the end, maybe a quick death would have been an easier out for poor Ben, because at nighttime, Melissa and Shauna come into the enclosure with a knife, and Shauna dares Melissa to cut the Achilles heel in his one leg so he can’t make a run for it.
There’s something happening between Shauna and Melissa that very much mirrors Van and Tai’s attempts to bring out Other Tai: Melissa is also dealing with something dangerous that she can’t possibly fully understand, talking about how awed and impressed she is by Shauna no longer being scared of the bad parts of herself. She’s a conduit for whatever Shauna is becoming, because Shauna has always needed someone else along for the ride: but now she’s the one in control, and Melissa is reflecting back to her whatever she needs to see, the same way Shauna used to prop up Jackie. Again, how scary for Melissa that she seems to comprehend this and yet is running towards it instead of away. 

Random notes:

Rid of Me is my favourite PJ Harvey song from my favourite PJ Harvey album, and it was very much used in the perfect way at the end of the episode. Notably, Juliette Lewis did a cover of the song a while ago (using it would have been too meta, I’m guessing)!

Coach offering to handfeed the little baby goat, to rehumanise himself as much as possible in a situation that he knows will end badly, was such a quiet moment of sadness. He’s self-flagellated for not providing for the girls and leaving them, and he’s trying to prove that he can nurture something, to make up for his past mistakes, but only Akilah can see it. It’s fitting that Akilah inadvertently saves him in the end with her vision (we see the vision, but it’s also a very handy vision to have had if you didn’t want to see him die…). I would love for Akilah to have found a way to claw back agency in that fucked up relationship by manipulating Lottie in this very effective way, but it's just a hunch.

Van likening Other Tai to Stefan Urquelle is both hilarious and fitting and horrifying, considering how serious the idea of playing into what’s happening to Tai to avoid the mental consequences of murder is.

I noted that Lottie has pictures of the Yellowjackets in their uniforms on her nightstand, which now makes her only the second person apart from Misty to have the keepsakes out in the open, indicating she may have had a very different relationship to the past than Shauna and Tai.

Before Tai lines up for the shot, Nat puts Jackie’s necklace around Ben’s neck – I wonder what Lottie meant when she said that it doesn’t mean what you think it means. If Lottie thought that Ben had to do with them being saved, it’s not necessary about being a sacrifice, it just means that it indicates someone essential for survival, I guess? The same way that they would have probably died if they hadn’t eaten Jackie.

I loved that moment between Shauna and Lottie’s dad, and it’s great to see Melanie Lynskey shine through all the facets of it. Also, jfc Liv Hewson.

Van definitely clocks Melissa and Shauna, maybe more than anyone else, but will adult Van ever bring this up? Did everyone eventually realise but just never thought to mention it? I think it’s also very interesting that Shauna and Tai have been shown to be close in the past (even though the show hasn’t gone there for a season at least), considering how far removed from each other they seem to be in the wilderness now. Are they still remembering things selectively?