Yellowjackets – Death is around every corner.

Yellowjackets: 3x09 How the Story Ends.

 Surviving this was never the reward.

Regardless of what else you take out of this season of Yellowjackets – a frustration with the imbalance between the past and present storylines, a criticism of the fact that it no longer feels pointed like an arrow towards something (and it’s interesting to think about how much of the previous seasons felt like that because we were steering right towards cannibalism, and once we were there, the stakes felt lower), maybe even a sense of sadness that the young and adult versions of Lottie never quite lined up the way they should have – I actually like that we’ve arrived here now, at the point where most good shows about surviving some version of the end of the world (which, arguably, being stranded in the wilderness for that period of time is) end up at. Survival is insufficient, as per Voyager and Battlestar Galactica and Station Eleven and all the rest of it. The Yellowjackets have made it through winter, and they likely wouldn’t have, had they not resorted to cannibalism, but every person who has died since then has not died because it was existentially necessary. The spiritual interpretation of the team’s experience served them through a time where any kind of comfort was vital for community, but with the prospect of rescue, where all they’d have to do to all get out is walk for a few days, it is no longer necessary for survival (and useless for explaining reality, now that the mysteries are solved), it’s just taken on a life of its own and is hard to kill. At a point where everyone could just follow Kodi out of these woods, it’s no longer a question of if they can survive – these are choices.

A lot happens in this episode, but this is Van’s story, from beginning to end, and it ties in with the moral question of if the ends justify the means, of holding on to humanity especially when the stakes are so high. As Natalie cries and resigns herself to the fact that in spite of all she has done in her attempts to be a good, rational leader, they are facing another winter with no means of escape, the girls and Travis and we along with them already know that this will be much worse season for survival, in spite of their reserves of meats and their assumed preparedness. Earlier in the episode, Travis prepares the famous pit – as close to a Chekhov’s gun as the show has – with the intention of luring Lottie into it, to end the madness. It’s a desperate act, payment of sorts for having played along with her and having served up Akilah in his stead. It also doesn’t work – it seems that Lottie walks on it without falling in, the branches creaking under her soles, as the wind picks up and she tells Travis that Javi is still with them. Lottie would say that It doesn’t want her dead yet. Nat’s last ditch effort to undermine Shauna’s leadership by freeing Kodi and Hannah and sneaking away with the “Others” – this reorganisation of the group takes no time at all, the fall-out over their disagreement – fails spectacularly, with Hannah stabbing Kodi in the eye and asking Shauna to let her become part of the group (if this is just the desperation of a woman who knows she would die otherwise or genuine fascination with their impossible survival is hard to say). They are going into this winter under Shauna’s leadership, whose will is so entrenched in the group that she can decide for them even when she is outnumbered and doesn’t hold a gun. Tai is already reasoning with Van about it, who is so scared for what will happen: they’ve practiced with the cards, meaning that they both know that the hunt will begin again, but at least they’ll be able to make sure that neither of them will be the chosen prey. 

In the beginning of the episode, Van is in her hospital bed and her younger self appears to her, reminding her of the plot of the Goonies. It’s a classical hero’s journey, and now she must undergo one herself. X marks the spot. She seems resolved, determined, and there’s treasure waiting at the end of it. She’s evaded death so many times before, against the odds, that it’s hard not to spend the whole episode waiting for it to happen again. Tai, Misty and Van end up finding Melissa – who has escaped Shauna, after spitting that piece of her own arm back in her face – by the side of the road. There’s a traffic sign with an X on it. It’s how everything started with Lottie, magical thinking paired with the desperation of being on the brink of death. They drive Melissa back to her house, all of them having vague plans of having to clean up after Shauna again, who spends the entire episode covered in Melissa’s blood. After so many days of Dark Tai arguing that she is the only one who can save Van, and that the only way to rescue her is through a sacrifice, it’s Van waiting for the right set of circumstances to bring her own sacrifice, to save herself. We’ve seen young Van, horrified at the prospect of what they would have to do to survive another winter, so desperate that she has hidden the broken radio in the woods and is secretly trying to figure out how to fix it. We’ve not yet seen what does happen in the remaining months out there – but it’s enough that not all of them made it back, that we know about pit girl, to have a sense of how dire it’ll end up being. This adult version of Van has survived all of that while knowing that they had a moment where they could have just walked out, and Tai was one of the people deciding to stay behind. She has, presumably, in part survived because she was the one dealing the cards, protecting Tai from becoming the target of the hunt. Maybe she and Tai even chose between them who would end up with the losing card. 

Melissa ends up closing the flue on the fireplace, knocking out Tai and Shauna in the process. After saving both Tai and Shauna – with Tai having a hallucination of a cave, where she picks up a phone and speaks to herself, and ends up battling with other Tai, emerging as herself for the first time in probably a long time – Van returns to the house, intending to bring the sacrifice. She is going to kill Melissa, and maybe, if Tai is right, surviving. Maybe this is what the wilderness wants after all, and maybe she will be spared. But she can’t bring herself to do it. This is the same Van who, after Shauna nearly shoots Melissa in frustration (“You’re nothing”), in front of everyone, venting her anger that people are talking and plotting behind her back, goes to Melissa to comfort her.

Van: Why can’t I be that? Why?
Melissa: You don’t want to be.
Van: No I don’t.

Melissa can be that person, because she has spent all these years scared of Shauna and the group of people that sided with her. Shauna turned on her so fast, and so few of the others made it back alive. Van, the storyteller of the group, gets the agency here to tell a story about herself: who she wants to be, in the end. She pays for it with her life – Melissa stabs her, and Van finds herself in the plane, with her last moments playing out on the big screen in front of her, with young Van refusing to spoil the ending of everyone’s story for her – but in the end, she is still herself, and the treasure that she was promised is saving the love of her life – because Tai is herself again. Surviving this was never the reward.

Random notes:

Seeing Lauren Ambrose and Liv Hewson finally act alongside each other, with each other, is a gift. I’m sad about Van’s death, which has been in the cards this whole season, but it’s a revelation to see them share scenes. On the meta level, the journey from Liv Hewson’s performance ensuring Van’s survival and the subsequent perfect casting of Ambrose is such a fortuitous present from the television gods.  

Other shout-outs: Kevin Alves portraying Travis’ desperate decision to do something about Lottie, Sophie Thatcher (who has had an outstanding season) and Nat’s horror at seeing a vision of what will happen to her charges now that Shauna is in control, Jenna Burgess playing a betrayed Melissa so that your heart breaks for her, in spite of what adult Melissa does later in the episode.

I’m not a hundred percent sure if the thing that Misty secretly removed from a box buried in the woods is a part of the original plane transponder that she’s been hiding this whole time or a component from the radio that Van has hidden, but in any case, Misty is convinced that this is another way out after Kodi’s death, it might just take them two or three months to get there.

Dark horse Hannah! I was wondering what exactly kept Shauna from just killing Kodi when she could – maybe she knew that it would be a transgression too far even for her supporters – but Hannah definitely solved that conundrum for her.

I feel for young Melissa in this episode, who seemed so attached to Shauna before but is faltering now. Hannah tells her about her daughter and she sympathises with her, emotions that Shauna mocks her for, and then Shauna just goes full-on cruel beyond belief (“why can’t you just be a nice person”, Melissa says, who made the unbelievable choice to kiss Shauna when she had a knife to her throat), with every intention to scare and humiliate her. It explains why adult Melissa did what she did, but not at all why she decided to send the tape. It’s also interesting that from the moment that Tai and Misty start talking about Adam in front of adult Melissa, it’s pretty clear that they will have to choose to kill her eventually – the same way that they knew they’d have to get rid of Kodi and Hannah, if they wanted for their crimes to not follow them forever.

I think I’m also wondering a bit about why Tai and Misty would be so eager to bail Shauna out after everything we’ve seen now: the second season leaned heavily into Tai and Shauna’s connection when Shauna was pregnant, and it worked, but that’s so long gone now that it’s hard to remember why any of them would care what happens to her, beyond mutually assured destruction.

Misty gets picked up by Walter in a helicopter, and they talk about the DNA evidence since Misty now knows that Shauna extremely unlikely story about going to the city to get a replacement cat checks out: she steals Lottie’s unlocked phone from him, after finding some kind of evidence that shocks her. There’s theories out there that Walter may be Lottie’s killer because he thought that a mystery would bring Misty back, and I think it’s not looking too unlikely at this stage.

Jeff and Callie are having time to themselves to process, smoking weed together, with Callie asking him if he was serious about the things he said about Shauna (she seems to agree with what he said, but it causes him a whole existential crisis to think about it too much). On the plus side, sans Shauna he’s gotten the Joels contract and I’m sure this will all work out just fine in the end.