cellar door. we might as well be a symphony.: Yellowjackets

What an appropriate title Full Circle is for the third season finale! The double-mystery of Pit Girl and Antler Queen has been hanging over Yellowjackets since the beginning, and they are both resolved now. I would argue that they are both inevitable resolutions, and I don’t feel let down by the fact that both identities could have been easily predicted from the shape that this season has taken – there’s something pleasing about the puzzle pieces falling into place without any last-minute twists. It is an earned outcome, one that plays well with the general horror of seeing another winter begin under the new leadership of Shauna, who has hated Mari for a very long time. The show doesn’t need this particular mystery as fuel anymore, because instead of a who-done-it in the past, we are now entering a new phase with as much of a voiced mission statement as we have ever had: in the end, to truly be safe, there can only be one survivor. At the end of the episode, Shauna is setting out to reclaim what she lost when she returned to civilisation, and Misty and Tai team up to protect themselves from her. Melissa remains out there, unseen, but she’s without support (although it’s interesting that the show deliberately hasn’t committed one way or another whether there are more survivors – I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for Akilah), so things aren’t looking too good for her. We’ve arrived at the sharp end of the stick.

The smaller mystery of the season, the question of Lottie’s murderer, is also resolved within the first few minutes of the episode. It begins with a scene that is reminiscent of both Van’s hallucinations in the hospital and Shauna’s grocery store horror tale, twisted into something less legible through the eyes of Lottie. It’s as close to a Lynchian dream as we’ve seen, with adult Lottie waking up on the pathologist’s table confronting her younger self (a self that looks like it is either from before the crash or after the rescue, with bangs covering up her scar). It is unclear where this is situated in time, if it is a dream that Lottie has just before the confrontation that will cost her life, an event that she is scared to have missed – but we know that she makes all the preparations, that she likely knows what will happen, that the outcome is already determined.
I think that Lottie knew she was going to die when she set up the candles and waited for Callie to arrive. Callie must have been carrying around this horror this whole time without being able to tell, and it’s significant that she admits it to Misty first, not someone who cares about her or loves her. The DNA under Lottie’s finger was hers – mitochondrial DNA, matching Shauna’s. The picture that shocked Misty on Lottie’s phone was of Callie, wearing the necklace. Callie seeks out Lottie because she is so desperate for answers, and Lottie has stolen the tape that could provide them, knowing that Callie would come for it. In the end, the most heartbreaking thing about the escalation in their confrontation is the first and only question that Callie does ask – it’s not about the cannibalism, or the hunt. It’s not the sensationalism of figuring out who her mother was out there, and what she had to do to survive. She asks “Does she just not love me?”. All these attempts at the truth have been about uncovering why her mother seems to not love her, and Lottie is the worst person to ask that question of, because she does not care about placating Callie or coddling her feelings. Instead, in Lottie’s head, there is a version of reality where Callie is the product of everything that happened out there, all the horrors (Lottie calls it “all those thrilling and terrible things”, an eerie echo of how Shauna will describe it later). She is the product of It, because It is the coldness in Shauna’s eyes, “like looking straight into the earth”. In Lottie’s eyes, the wilderness took Shauna’s baby out there and Callie is the replacement, the culmination. It’s devastating because at this point, there is no question anymore that Lottie is suffering from an untreated mental health condition, that she has created a whole religion out of her interpretation of what happened. All of this turns around Callie being special, but apart from her tragic curiosity about Shauna, Callie has never been anything but a regular teenage girl who wanted her mum to love her. Callie snaps when Lottie tells her that Shauna will never love her because she’s jealous of her, because Callie is like her but more – and remember, Shauna snapped when Melissa hinted that Callie didn’t love her. Callie pushes Lottie, and that’s it. She could have died a million times out in the wilderness, most recently when she almost fell into the pit herself, but in the end, it’s a fall down some stairs that does it.
When Callie tells Jeff, he reacts with compassion and understanding. He is grateful that she told him, because Shauna was never so forthright about what happened out there. He tells her that she is nothing like her mum, confirming that something has changed here, that he is no longer the blindly supportive husband he used to be. Off-screen, they pack up the house and move far away to safety. “I’m sorry that I didn’t protect you from her. I should have done that.”

Tai blames Van’s death on Shauna, without whom Melissa would have never entered the picture again. Shauna blames Jeff and Callie leaving on Misty, who takes too much pleasure in gloating about it, still not fully realising what it means to poke that bear. Something clicked for me in this final episode that I should have fully realised much earlier – the particular way in which the present is in sync with the past is about remembering. The story of the wilderness moves forward along with the characters in the present remembering what they did. The link between the two has never been as clear as in this episode, as we’re working towards the reveal of Shauna as the Antler Queen – it couldn’t have come earlier, because if Tai, Misty (and Nat, RIP) had remembered it more vividly, they would have never reconnected the way that they have. It’s ironic that Shauna tells everyone to “eat and never forget this”: when they promised each other to never say anything about what happened, they must have already forgotten half of it. They are now realising along with the viewers what Shauna did in the past and what that means for her in the present – and they have already lost Nat and Lottie. Nothing changes for Shauna when she does finally find that letter that Melissa wrote her, in which she talks about forgiveness: without the context of Callie and Jeff, no longer a housewife or mother, she is set free, and her interpretation of the past scenes is radically different from everyone else. She begins journaling again: about how they lost their memories because they lost their capacity for self-reflection, but also with the deeply delusional interpretation that “we were having so much fun”. The only person who had fun during the hunt for pit girl was Shauna, nobody else was having a remotely good time. She is asserting her own reading of reality over everyone else. To her, it was the best moment of her life – when she was a warrior, a queen, not a wife or mother. And she wants to take it all back.

Shauna’s claim that this was “fun” should colour and add meaning to everything we see unfold in the past. Misty secretly inquiring about the progress of the transponder and Van thinking that maybe it is beginning to work. Akilah coming to an incomprehensible truce with Lottie that is one of the hardest things to swallow in this episode: she kills all of her beloved animals, her worst nightmare coming true, so that the hunt begin again (the only way I can interpret it is that in Akilah’s mind, it presented a chance to kill Lottie - she almost does hit her with a rock - but that’s very thin evidence). Lottie is desperate for the hunt to resume because she thinks that the wilderness is unhappy with them, but ironically, it’s Mari who says they have to sacrifice something that is meaningful, something that hurts. “It’s not a sacrifice unless we cherish it”. This is deliberately far removed from the necessity of food: it’s a spiritual necessity for Lottie, but for Shauna, it’s a pure power play, the ability to control the group. Instead of walking to safety, they are hunting each other again. None of this would be happening if she hadn’t stopped them from leaving. Tai and Van discuss what they will do now that another card draw decides who lives and who dies, and they decide – very much to Van’s chagrin, playing through a version of the trolley problem – to give it to the outsider, Hannah. The tense draw begins, but Shauna notices that something is off from the start, and eventually inserts herself in a different place, guessing at what Van and Tai are trying to do. It’s not entirely clear but I think Shauna knows exactly what it means to move in right before Mari, I think she guesses that Hannah is the intended target and that throwing the count off by one means that Mari will be the sacrifice. She’s been meaning to kill Mari for a very long time now, and the way in which Shauna’s reaction to Mari’s annoyingness is the willingness to kill her shows how far gone she is (compare this to Van’s very genuine grief when she sees her in the pit: it’s Mari, their team mate, who they’ve been with for more than a year now). Mari is defiant and furious, saying that they deserve everything that’s coming to them. She takes off all her clothes to try and create a diversion but then runs towards exactly the same pit she’s already fallen into once, all of which are very Mari things to do. Her last words are “oh my god, fuck off”. Pour one out for Mari, the greatest hater, true to herself until her last moment.

In the background of the hunt, all the divisions in the group play out, and it’s fitting because Mari was also the decoy in the play-hunt that started the season! Hannah is all too willing to don Natalie’s costume because she wants to be part of it, and she thinks that the more she is part of it, the longer she will survive (little does she know that she was almost the chosen prey). It might be a decision she regrets once Shauna, thinking she’s Natalie, tasks her with butchering Mari for the feast. Gen spends the hunt trying to save Mari, her friend, by diverting others. Melissa tries to take her revenge for the first time but can’t go through with it – it opens up all kinds of alternative universes, if she had stabbed Shauna, with the moment reverberating forwards through time to Melissa stabbing Van (Shauna just says “I knew you’d turn out to be boring”). And Natalie sneaks off, unseen by all, carrying the radio up into the moments, desperately pleading for help, until she hears a response. “I can hear you”.

Random notes:

The very beginning of the episode before Lottie’s vision is of Natalie’s cabin being searched under Shauna’s orders, and Nat confronting Misty after realising that she was the one who destroyed the original transponder, both the reason for everything and the possible salvation. Misty asks her if she’s going to tell anyone – and knowing Natalie, she probably never did.

It’s an episode with a lot of disturbing scenes, but I think the most shocking – because we’re prepared for pit girl and what happens to her – is Tai burying Van’s body in the woods, but not before she cuts out her heart and takes a bite out of it, mirroring what Travis did to Javi’s (and very likely attempting to achieve what appears to have happened to Travis after, which is feeling Javi’s presence at all times with him). It’s set to Marianne Faithful’s The Mystery of Love, a harrowing scene. There is a marked contrast between what Shauna is trying to accomplish by killing and eating Mari (and what she tried with Melissa as well): domination, a show of power, and what Tai does here, which is a kind of homage, a consummation, an ultimate act of love for someone that she cannot be without (I don’t know what it says that Shauna tried to do the same with Jackie’s ear, because there were always those additional layers to her love for Jackie that made their relationship so fucked up). Tai promises to “remember all of it, all of you, and all of me”.

Sarah Desjardins does some great work in this episode. I wonder what Jeff’s and Callie’s role will be in the fourth season.

And talking about the fourth season, which hasn’t been announced yet: I think it’s fair to say that four seasons would be the perfect amount, rather than the originally planned five. I am also wondering at the end of the season about what the plans may have been going forward and to what extent Juliette Lewis leaving early impacted on it. It feels like this would have been a very different season if adult Nat was still around, especially considering the role that young Nat plays in the wilderness.

I think one of the best signs that this is a very different winter is that they never moved the head, instead using it for target practice: now that they’re no longer walking out, any attempt to hide what they did has ended.

“I know that neither of them would know how to contact the phone company” made me lol.

What is Walter's deal?

Travis, now surviving only through constant drunkenness (there must be heaps of berry wine to keep him in this state so consistently) throws a little bombshell: he’s been wandering into everyone’s dreams, and his favourite is Jackie’s and Shauna’s: slumber-party make-outs, jealousy, betrayals! It’s funny how low-key everyone has their interpretation of what exactly was going on with Jackie and Shauna.

“When it’s done, bring me her hair”. WTAF, Shauna. Also the hat with the eye-holes, arguably the least inspired costume choice.

Misty’s little smile after Shauna furiously screams was life-giving. It’s a whole episode of Shauna being incredibly cruel and completely in control, including the moment when Melissa can’t go through with killing her: but this whole time, Misty and Natalie played her. In fact, this is the only moment of “fun” everyone except Shauna is having.

Monday, 7 April 2025

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.

Monday, 31 March 2025

Yellowjackets – What are you doing alive?

Yellowjackets: 3x08 A Normal, Boring Life.

Tai: Our futures would be fucked, this will follow us for the rest of our lives. This place will follow us for the rest of our fucking lives.

We’ve spent the last few seasons watching the Yellowjackets divide over questions of faith. Lottie’s followers have waxed and waned, depending on how useful an explanation her mythologising of the wilderness was. A conveniently personified wilderness asking for sacrifices helps dealing with the reality of cannibalism. A belief that It can be called on, its intents interpreted, makes the helplessness of survival and the loss of friends slightly less unbearable. Them’s the Brakes and Croak have removed most of the mystery, the inexplicable that was left for Lottie to interpret as a sign of something greater at play – but what happens in A Normal, Boring Life is the next logical step. The prospect of rescue creates a new dividing line between those who see a return home as a relief, who eagerly embrace the trivial joys of regular, civilised life, and those who have fully transformed in the wilderness and imagine a return home as a potential loss of that new self or at the very least as a problematic process, considering that there are now witnesses to what they have had to do to survive.

The dream that begins the episode shows the trivial: Shauna is working in a grocery store, a menial, boring, repetitive job. Instead of butchering meat with a knife, she’s scanning pre-packed cuts for a customer, who turns out to be Jackie, once again haunting her and taunting her about her lost potential. “You really did not pan out”, she says, indicating that the grocery store is where she ends up instead of going to Brown. When Shauna looks down, the meat turns out to be decisively human cuts: what she’s done out in the wilderness will follow her home. Shauna tells Jackie to stop calling her Shipman, that she has always hated it, but Jackie reminds her that she never said anything about it: a reminder of exactly the kind of inertia that will lead seamlessly to her marrying Jeff and staying in Wiskayok, where she bottles up her rage and uses it on neighbourhood rabbits (the same rabbits that, in porcelain form, amass in her home whenever Jackie’s anniversary comes around). Then she sees moths, trapped in the overhead lights, drawn to the light, a symbol interpreted easily enough: the false promise of escape just leads into another kind of trap. The sequence of the dream indicates that this is adult Shauna, dreaming in front of Alex’ house, but I think that this makes a lot more sense as a dream that teen Shauna had after the prospect of rescue emerged: it’s what’s marinating in her mind as she comes to a decision, with one of the moths reappearing right before she makes the jump.

A Normal, Boring Life is Shauna’s episode. It’s the first time that the Yellowjackets have a genuine chance at getting out and leaving, with nothing but a six-day trip through these woods under Kodi’s guidance dividing them from a return to civilisation. But we know that they spent at least another two or three months out there, that they, or at least some of them, had to make it through another winter before they returned for good. What went wrong? When they are getting ready, later on, to set out, and Lottie makes the call to stay, Natalie is ready to leave her behind. When Tai makes that decision as well, along with Shauna, it looks like the three of them will stay behind together. But then Shauna is the one to make a choice for everyone: she will not let them go. She has been anointed their new leader, and she makes the decision for everyone in that position. We don’t know yet how she has the power to enforce it, but the episode reveals what she is capable of, and how Shauna, driven by the idea that the life she would return to is trivial, boring, decides that the version of her who rose to power in the wilderness isn’t someone she can sacrifice, even if it means that everyone else has to suffer.

When adult Shauna finally gets out of the car with her sharp, sharp knife, she walks into a funhouse mirror of her own life. It’s a beautiful, light-filled house, with tasteful furniture (I can see Jeff nod his head approvingly), children’s drawings on the wall. When she hides, she witnesses a practiced and loving morning routine: Alex packing her child’s lunch before taking her to pre-school, lovingly bickering with her wife. We can see the love, even before Melissa professes it, because it’s clear in how they interact with each other. I’m not sure Shauna picks up on it, because all she sees – shocked – is that reverse cap, that undeniable proof that the house she has walked into belongs to a woman she thought has been dead for years. She jumped to the conclusion so quickly that a stranger she has never met, the daughter of a woman she helped kill, is the one behind all the things she has interpreted as personal attacks, but with Melissa there, it immediately makes so much more sense in her head. The way she arrives at the decision in her head that this is an enemy to confront: how much of it is coloured by having been Jackie’s friend, by having been in this complex, emotionally entangled relationship with her best friend for so long that was defined by being undermined and made small, and by the revenge betrayal of sleeping with her boyfriend? Misty has called her a “bad friend” so many times up to this point, but it’s more that Shauna can’t even imagine a relationship that isn’t potential betrayal, that isn’t just one small step removed from adversity (which is why it’s perfect that this is also the episode in which Jeff, for the first time, throws her under the bus). Shauna is incapable of trust, because Shauna can never be trusted. And Melissa – honed by the same experiences – knows there’s an intruder in the house, and picks up a knife straight away, and she immediately recognises Shauna, regardless of how many years have passed.

I’m so glad that we get to see this play out, because after last episode, I thought we wouldn’t. It’s perfect that the first time they see each other again, they both have knives, because, as Melissa points out straight away, there is no way that she is going to talk to her with a knife in her hand and no knife in hers. Remember the first time they talked (first time because Shauna was so surprised that Melissa could even speak) Shauna also had a knife in her hand, and used it straight away to threaten Melissa, and Melissa reacted to that with desire and admiration. It’s a beautiful symmetry, and all those 25 years have added is that Melissa, in her new life that she has literally died to get to, recognises that she needs to wield a knife to make things even. The entire teenage Yellowjackets timeline this episode is about how they will return to civilisation without all the things they did hanging over their head, and here’s a woman who faked her own suicide to get rid of her history, only to then end up marrying the daughter of a woman they killed, who has no idea. Even with her new name, her old pattern of problematic trauma bonding - even if it has led to a normal, beautiful life of love – is still right there. To be fair, Melissa admits that this might be the case, but I don’t think it diminishes the reality of her life in any way. She has done exactly what teen Melissa, with such hope and excitement, said she would do once she got back, even if it took some extra steps.

Let’s catch up with what is happening back in the wilderness. Travis has an interesting arc in the episode that I think ties in perfectly with everything that’s happened since he’s escaped Lottie’s grasp and watched what happened to Coach. It’s not said explicitly, because we haven’t really seen any of his interactions beyond trying to his best to look after Akilah (it’s sad that his relationship with Nat doesn’t exist anymore), but something has definitely been simmering. His visions may have never been real, but he definitely has a premonition of what would happen if he staid out there much longer under Shauna’s leadership, and it’s not good. He makes the decision to trek out with Kodi and Akilah, and without the others, but Akilah is leaving breadcrumbs for the girls to find, and they end up capturing Kodi and taking him back to camp before making a decision about what to do. Misty finds her glasses again and is also one of the drivers behind the concerns about what Hannah and Kodi will tell everyone once they get rescued. She suggests they kill them, and the suggestion must be pertinent enough that someone else takes her up on it eventually (Shauna, in the driver’s seat, wouldn’t hesitate). Natalie tells everyone to pack for the trip, and they go off to have wildly different experiences with the prospect of rescue. Misty, Mari and Van have vivid daydreams about the creature comforts of civilisation – a toilet, a slushie, a feather bed that mirrors adult Van’s hallucination of her hospital bed in the woods eerily. They discuss what their first meal will be once they’re back. On the other side, there’s Akilah with a sad and haunting vision of her plants and animals dead – she’s been a guardian of sorts of this tamed wilderness, and she has a deep connection to nature. She’s also been primed by Lottie to believe that these visions mean something (which makes it interesting that she doesn’t join Tai, Shauna and Lottie when they decide to stay, and also opens the question of what ends up happening to her in the end, since she doesn’t seem to have made it out). Travis insists that it’s not real – he admits that he only served her up to Lottie to escape her himself – but it’s hard to deny that her vision of Coach being the bridge came true to an extent, and her vision of her animals dying is so viscerally upsetting that they must affect her deeply. Tai has a conversation with Van about what a return to civilisation would mean for their relationship, because regardless of how long the time they have spent away may feel, the world probably hasn’t changed enough for them to live openly. The haunting thing is that she’s right: 1997 was not a great time to be queer in New Jersey, and it wouldn’t be a marginally better time for a long while, and they did end up breaking up. As much as they have had to do unimaginable things out there to survive, in the sense of being able to live openly within a community that didn’t judge them, the wilderness has been a better place. Along with what happens in the adult timeline here: Tai struggling to bring a sacrifice to save Van, something she believes to be necessary but can’t go through with, shows that Dark Tai shows up whenever Tai deeply wants something but can’t cross a moral threshold to achieve. I think that’s enough to come to the conclusion that the Tai who steps up next to Lottie and Shauna is not entirely herself, it’s Dark Tai taking over to do what she thinks needs to done (a vision of Tai next to the Man With No Eyes all but confirms it). Lottie – who nobody has really talked to since she’s killed Edwin, who still hasn’t even washed off his blood – was always going to stay behind, because she has become someone who can only meaningfully exist out in the wilderness. Back in civilisation, she would be medicated again, her condition interpreted as mental illness rather than visionary (until adult Lottie finds a way to exist as a cult leader in the context of the wellness industry, which has always been one of the great ironic twists of the show).

Lottie: If I go back, nothing will be well. I won’t be well. I won’t be me. The me that was made out here. And that unwellness that I feel, I feel it so deeply in my bones. We’re safer here.

These three (well, four) characters haven’t thought about what they will do once they return, because all they can see is what they would lose: power (“are you the captain, of the team?), the ability to live and love openly, being a spiritual leader. The wilderness has provided for them in ways that it hasn’t for the others (and it’s interesting to think about the fact that Misty would always have turned out to be exactly herself, regardless the circumstances – she can go back and continue without a break, there’s no conflict, as long as the issue of Hannah and Kodi dabbing them in is removed). The most interesting one among them is Nat though: who sees something in the plane, when she says a final goodbye to Ben Scott, but denies that it has any power over her. “We are leaving whatever you are behind” she says, a statement all the more tragic because she no longer has a mirror image in the present time. Nat may have been removed as leader but she is still responsible for everyone, and wants to make sure that they’re safe.

The verbal showdown between Melissa and Shauna is a little like a fucked-up therapy session in which Melissa diagnoses Shauna, and summarises what has been happening ever since they all reconnected after Travis’ death. Melissa is living the boring life that Shauna was so fearful of, but like the fully realised version of it that doesn’t look like a sad approximation of normalcy, but the real thing. “I have a good life. I have a decent job, I have a great kid. I go to church.” Melissa faked her suicide because she was scared of what it meant to no longer be “one of them”, scared of what Shauna would end up doing. This makes it even more bewildering that she chose to send Shauna that tape in the end, a tape that Hannah asked her to give to Alex, but that she had to hide because it would have blown up her life: even with the explanatory note attached that has gotten lost (Callie? Lottie?), it’s hard to see how Shauna would have interpreted as anything but a threat. Melissa explains that it was an attempt to exorcise a haunting, but she also seems to have a solid grasp on Shauna and what she is willing to do. It’s a small kernel of doubt in the whole beautiful symmetry of their confrontation (a kernel of doubt that allows Shauna to continue believing that Melissa was responsible for all the things that could be more easily explained as anything other than an attack on her, but also one that maybe allows the viewers to retain a measure of doubt about Melissa’s intentions here, and her truthfulness).

Shauna: We can make all the pacts, and vows of silence that we want, but if you really think about it, the only way to truly be safe, to be 100% fucking certain that nobody is ever going to spill your darkest secrets is to be the only one left.

What is that, if not a declaration of intent by the character whose most natural instinct, in any situation where she perceives a threat, is to go for the jugular? There’s a version of the story where this is exactly what happens in however many more years of Yellowjackets we have left. Shauna is desperate for control, and suspicious of everyone. Adam is the best example: he had nothing to do with anything, he was entirely harmless, but she created a version of reality in which he was threatening her, and killed him for it. Melissa tells her that she creates her own problems, stirs the pot just to feel alive. “You hate to be alone, you hate yourself, and you want everyone else to feel just as miserable as you are. You want your life to explode. It’s fun for you. It lights you up. You want to burn it all down just to watch.”

It's this that makes Shauna snaps, not even the moment when Melissa taunts her by telling her that she is lying about Callie loving her. Shauna lunges at her, they struggle, and then Shauna takes a bite out of Melissa’s shoulder and asks her to eat it, or else she will tell her family who she is. The only way to be truly safe is either if everyone is equally implicated, or if everyone else is dead. The beautiful voice of Corin Tucker provides the coda with Dig Me Out.

Random notes:

We love a double bluff! I’ve been thinking about how it works, on the meta level, because it would have never been a bluff in the first place if we hadn’t known, in advance, that Hilary Swank was going to show up eventually (which makes it even more perfect that the thing that proves it, even before the subtitles spoil it, is that cap).

Sophie Nélisse and Melanie Lynskey perfectly adjusting their characters to match each other as current Shauna begins aligning with past Shauna - these two performances deserve all the recognition.

Van’s “Did Mulder and Scully get together” as the first question she asked Hannah was perfect. I too would have a small section of my brain exclusively dedicated to all the television I was missing out on if I was in a survival situation. How did she end up feeling about Agent Reyes?

Jeff finally losing it in this episode has been a long time coming. He is, in a way, practising what his life would look like without Shauna in the episode, in his two attempts to make up for the failed meeting with “The Joels”. It coincides with Callie coming to her own conclusions about Shauna.

I’m getting emotionally invested in the idea that Akilah somehow made it out alive. Nia Sondaya shines in this expanded role, and whatever bad things that will eventually and inevitably happen will be heartbreaking.

Tai’s little hopeful “Does that count”. UGH. I think it’s clear where we’re going with Van this season and it’s heartbreaking, and Tawny Cypress is really delivering in this episode.

Melissa mentions in the conversation with Shauna that she started having daydreams, visions, after reading about all that was happening with the Yellowjackets and Lottie’s cult (“it was more of an intentional community”) and Natalie’s death: but instead of assigning some kind of mystical value to it, she talked about it with her therapist and came to the conclusion that it was mental baggage that she was holding on and had to process, the way a well-adjusted person would do. A lot of the catalyst for everything that happened in the past is, I think, the fact that the Yellowjackets connected with each other again, that it turned into a mutually-enforced shared delusion with nobody to reality-check. Melissa was insulated from it all, and so her path was radically different.

I think as much as it is difficult to take anything that Shauna in this super-heightened state does or says at face-value, it did make me firmly believe that she didn’t kill Lottie – and there’s a tiny moment between Jeff and Callie in the motel room that gave me a spark of suspicion that Jeff may have done something (but hard to really rely on it, since he was in meltdown – a great performance by Warren Kole, by the way).

“Freaky little four-eyed mushroom.”

This is the first Sleater-Kinney song used on the show, and fittingly, because it was released in 1997, it’s the titular track from Dig Me Out – a whole album about a break-up that miraculously didn’t lead to a band break-up, and also added drummer Janet Weiss to the mix, like all the puzzle pieces falling into place finally. There couldn’t have been a better choice for the end of the episode.

Monday, 24 March 2025

Yellowjackets – It doesn’t want them here.

Yellowjackets: 3x07 Croak.

We just need to find these people so we can go home.

Three seasons into Yellowjackets and it looks like the show is completely committing to the idea that what is haunting our survivors isn’t in fact a spiritual emptiness, isn’t the personified wilderness, but a combination of natural phenomena that they haven’t fully understood and mental health problems that have escalated out there, for a variety of reasons. What gets me the most about Croak is the proximity of everything – the fact that these bumbling, excited scientists under the guidance of their “mountain man”, who may be good at his job but doesn’t seem like an outstanding survivalist with any particularly impressive skill, have made it to just a few kilometres away from the village armed with nothing more complex than a map and a compass, and an emergency sat phone that they’re passé enough about that they break it in a tussle while high. The wilderness, over these past twelve or so months, has felt so remote, so inescapable, but it turns out that civilisation has never been quite that far away, and could have been reached if there had been a concerted effort. Instead, the two groups – and all the accrued histories and prejudices and baggage that come with them – clash. One group is a scientific team – successful in an attempt to record the Arctic banshee frog, a (entirely fictional) species of frog that goes into hibernation for seven years to emerge for a mating event that explains the screams and screeches. The other has succeeded in surviving horrible ordeals, has built a village out there, has organised around a shared religion. It’s a culture clash, in which one side comes armed with all the skills of seasoned hunters, and the other with one guy and a crossbow.

I like the opening of the episode, which follow one cute little frog like a Planet Earth episode. It seems like nothing, too small to have much of an impact, until it begins to scream, and joins hundreds of other frogs in a chorus. There is something infectious about Hannah and Edwin’s excitement to have captured them on their DAT recorder, to be the first to have done it, after dedicating their academic career to them. They’re in love with each other, and they love the same thing. Kodi watches, disaffected, like he’s watching a nature documentary about two weird humans, and he’s ready to demonstrate his survival skills (killing a rabbit with a crossbow) but reluctant to share anything else substantial about himself, making him suspicious to Edwin, who also doesn’t like Hannah’s attraction to his rugged manliness. In any other story, a character like Kodi would be associated with potential danger – the stranger who doesn’t provide details about his backstory, who is the only one bearing weapons and who is the only one who can get them out. In this story, we know that there are much more dangerous things lurking in these woods, and that this danger hunts in packs.

The proximity goes beyond the presumed closeness of a way out that must have been there this whole time, it’s also the moment when the three enter the camp, attracted by the scent of barbecue (oh Ben), to find something so overwhelmingly strange that they have no clue how to react. It’s the closeness to safety and home summarised by Van’s hopeful “we’re going home”. Ben’s head is right there on a table but if everyone stayed calm, they could probably just go home from here by following Kodi out of these woods. They’d have a lot to explain, and what would follow them around after the return from the wilderness would be much worse than the rumours that the surviving Yellowjackets have had to deal with, but all of them would have made it out alive at this point. It’s so close – but then there’s Lottie, screaming “no”, burying an axe in Edwin’s head. “They don’t belong. It doesn’t want them here” she says, after months of nothing but silence from the wilderness, after having had to use Travis and Akilah as a conduit because her own perceived connection to it was severed. I don’t think that there can be much doubt here that this is a psychotic break, the result of her meds running out all these months ago and something upsetting her balance so much that this violence that diminished any chance of all of them just walking out of there is inevitable. Kodi and Hannah run, and the girls immediately give chase, because even their harmless games have been practice for the hunt. Kodi gets one bolt away and hits Melissa. Instead of staying behind with her, Shauna tells Mari to look after her or else. Instead of staying behind as the group’s designated medical expert, Misty joins the chase.

It goes on for a while. Everyone splits up. Van and Tai stumble over the tent and Van has a heartbreaking, immediate instinct to call her mother from the sat phone before realising that it’s broken. Tai says that at least these provisions will help the village, and Van, again, heartbreakingly, pleads that they don’t need it because they can go home now. There is an immediate and obvious split in terms of what everyone thinks is happening going forward, a divide between considering the village home and trying to still get back to their actual home. They’re such obvious ideological splits that I kind of wish they had carried through more strongly into the adult timeline.
Misty loses her glasses in the chase but directs Akilah and Travis to try and push Kodi towards the cliff where, if he did fall, he would join the still missing Crystal – but they end up pulling him up instead, which, considering that with the sat phone broken he is the only tenuous link to the outside, is the correct decision here, but maybe not one that will work out, considering their rescue is still three months out. Hannah gives herself up, and Shauna seems to very much consider killing her, before Hannah mentions that she knows where some first aid supplies are stashed (and with Mari and Gen eventually realising that the only way to remove the bolt from Melissa is to push it all the way through, some antibiotics would definitely help).

In the present timeline, Shauna listens to the DAT again on her own and focuses on the part we haven’t quite witnessed yet, Hannah’s very personal spoken letter to a child, trying to explain herself, like someone who knows she is going to die. She has already put the pieces together in her head, and she is about to do something drastic about it, but then Misty, Tai and Van join her in her mission. Tai evades questions about why she went to see Lottie on the day she died, but Van’s concerns are visibly growing. Once they’re all in a car together, Shauna explains that Hannah had a daughter when she was a teenager, a daughter Shauna has managed to track down (that she does this in the short span of time she is given here is one of the least believable things that have happened on the show). That daughter, Shauna is convinced, is the one who sent her the tape, meaning that someone must have brought it back from the wilderness, because as we learn later from Callie’s snooping, none of the three strangers ever made it back alive. They’re headed for Richmond, Virginia, but before they can make it, Misty gets a phone call from Walter telling her that the DNA under Lottie’s fingernails matches Shauna’s. There’s a hilarious sequences of everyone in the car frantically texting each other while Shauna drives, but it’s cut short by Van coughing up blood!
They drive Van to the hospital and it is not looking good. While Misty confronts Shauna about the DNA, leading to Shauna just driving away on her own (not beating the bad friend allegations), Van begins hallucinating in the hospital bed: first she sees herself in the bed transported back to the wilderness, and her younger self sets the bed on fire (poor Van, with the fire), telling her that every time she survived the impossible, it was an even trade. That very much plays into what Tai has been telling her this whole time, becoming more and more insistent that they need to bring more sacrifices – and in a second hallucination, Van tells a fully Dark Tai that she wants to speak to the real Tai, that she needs her instead, even though Dark Tai keeps insisting she is the one who can help her. It’s not looking good for the annoying patient in the next bed over.

And back at the motel room, Callie talks to her father, telling him she has found a record of the disappeared scientists online, that they disappeared very close to where Shauna was lost, and that maybe Shauna isn’t a good person that bad things happened to, but straight up a bad person. Jeff is scratching and scratching, because the walls are closing in and it’s all too much. Shauna reunites with her knife and brings it to her calm and reasonable conversation, so I’m sure this will all end well.

Random notes:

RIP Melissa theories. I think I’m a little bit sad that we don’t get to see that particular reunion play out, because I for one would have very much liked to see the version of Shauna confronted with it.

This episode is full of little bits of information: the stash that Ben came across was from an earlier scientific team, Melissa and Gen never made it out alive.

Very in-character for Jeff to complain about their “poorly furnished” motel room! Also, “I appreciate that secrecy is your love language”.

Misty: I’m not family but we have a very intense trauma bond.

Lottie after killing Edwin has fully descended into herself, smearing herself with his blood, trying to commune with the wilderness. It’s horrifying – but Mari’s “go fuck your blood dirt, Lottie” still made me chuckle. With all of that, having Blood Bitch by the Cocteau Twins in the end credits is certainly a choice.

A bunch of options here for the DNA reveal: Walter could be straight-up lying, it could be one of those things where it’s familial DNA and this was actually Callie, Shauna may have fought with her but not killed her. Melanie Lynskey plays Shauna’s reaction as completely inscrutable, so very hard to tell.

Monday, 17 March 2025

Yellowjackets - Someone is trying to kill us.

Yellowjackets: 3x06 Thanksgiving (Canada).

We’re at the halfway point of the season, so it’s only fitting that the episode ends in a shock, a complete turn of events. This is also a point where, as emotionally wrecking as events in the past are, things in the present begin to coalesce into a more cohesive narrative – and they do with a change in dynamics, where Tai and Van’s story begins to intersect with Shauna’s.
Thanksgiving (Canada) is written by Libby Hill and TV critic royalty Emily St. James, and the title opens up a few questions about the timeline for our stranded Yellowjackets. I had previously thought that we were somewhere between late Spring or Summer, but either that’s incorrect, or poor Coach Ben spends a lot more time in captivity than is shown on screen. His first days after Melissa’s cruel act of cutting his heel begin Natalie’s daily ordeal of delivering food and being asked, over and over, to kill him. He pleads and begs, he tries to get under her skin by saying he laid the fire to make them suffer, which Natalie reads as the desperate lie that it likely is. It’s horrifying, both the despair on his face and the effect it has on Natalie. It’s one of the greatest acting showcase – both Steven Krueger and Sophie Thatcher – that she show has provided, and the repetition wears Natalie down, the prospect that they will have to continue doing this for however long it takes until Akilah’s vision eventuates (a vision that Natalie, ever the pragmatist, doesn’t believe in – she appreciates it because it gives everyone hope, but I don’t think she derives any hope from it herself). I wonder if the task has been assigned to her, as a kind of punishment for having kept his secrets for him, or if she volunteered because taking on burdens, even the heaviest and most unbearable ones, is what Natalie has always done, and would feel to her as part of her responsibility as leader. In any case, in the end she cracks and resigns, putting “feeding Coach” back on the chore wheel for someone else to take on.
Van and Tai talk about how the nights are getting colder, and how that means they will probably spend another winter out here, with all that implies. Tai is hopeful that they are better prepared this time (it’s interesting how they talk around the idea of having to resort to cannibalism, how neither of them directly addresses it), but there is also a sense of resignation here, as if the group collectively has decided that the wilderness may save them if everything falls in place but that beyond extracting visions from Akilah, and trusting that her vision about Coach is accurate, there is nothing much else they can do to affect their own rescue. We know that last time they tried, so early on in their ordeal, it was almost like a curse descended on them for it – Van still bears the scars – but it’s an odd dynamic for a group that feels so changed since they managed to survive the last winter. They are better resourced and knowledgeable about the wild, they have structures in place that utilise their skills. They could try, by themselves – before the weather changes – but they don’t. Beyond the title of the episode, there’s nothing definite here about enough time passing to bring them into early October, but if that is in fact where they end up – the time to get themselves out of the woods has definitely passed. What’s staggering about this passage of time is to think that Ben suffers, mostly alone, filthy, without any kind of comfort, for so many weeks.

After Natalie passes on the job, Mari realises that Ben hasn’t been eating his meals. He is trying to starve himself to death. There is no way that any of this can end well, or that the inevitably won’t happen one way or another. Misty delays it by organising a team to force-feed him, a scene that is almost as cruel and violent as those that show the Yellowjackets actually hunting someone, and worse somehow because in Misty’s mind, she’s saving Ben again. Akilah forcefully tries to induce more visions, which feels like her version of trying to find an out: maybe, if there’s something more concrete, they’ll at least know when, or how, they’ll be able to tell Ben and give him hope, but all she comes away with is memories from before, and a weird, almost comic version of a bear. It’s clear that everything amounts to Natalie making a decision, once again something terrible that she will have to bear, both in terms of what she actually has to do and what the fall-out will be from taking away the only hope that the group has found. She takes a knife to the animal pen, where Ben is suffering. When she hesitates, he guides her hand. There’s no doubt here that he wants to die, or blames Natalie for what she does, but the amount of psychological suffering Natalie is going through – what it does to her, to have to do this – explains why Natalie was the most broken among them in the future. I think it explains it more than Travis’ death – but Travis (who comes very close to telling Nat that he served Akilah up to Lottie out of self-preservation) is the one who understands her reasons, and keeps a look-out while she kills Ben.

The fall-out of Natalie’s choice feels like the final puzzle pieces falling into place for what we know will happen in these woods before some of them (but who else, except the ones we know?) are rescued. Natalie was a rational, pragmatic leader, capable and always weighing different options and making the best decision. After killing Ben, some of the girls suggest just getting rid of her outright as vengeance. Tai proposes another trial. Instead, Lottie decides that Shauna should now lead them – Shauna, who has changed in these months too, as observed by Tai and Van, as if her relationship with Melissa has crystalised something in her. Shauna decides that they will give the wilderness what it wants, and it isn’t a trial or a murder: instead, they will have a feast to honour Coach Ben. There is a dividing line between survival and ritualistic cannibalism, and at this stage, there is no reason to carve up and consume the body for food. This is a purely ritualistic act, disguised as a connection to the wilderness, but also in a deeply fucked-up ironic way the exact thing that drove Ben away from them in the first place. Instead of punishing Natalie physically, Shauna assigns her the task of butchering Ben – and Natalie can’t exactly refuse, both because her options have run out and because Shauna isn’t asking her to do anything that she herself hasn’t done for the group before. It’s always been clear that having to carve up Javi has damaged her, and inflicting the same cruelty on Natalie now is probably what Shauna would comprehend as justice. She isn’t even particularly cruel about it, instead teaching Natalie what to do and how to make it more bearable, in a first act of leader as the group that almost feels measured if it weren’t about the consumption of Ben.

So much about the decisions that have been made by the young Yellowjackets has been about moving the boundaries of what is thinkable, and this feels like the final transgression before the hunt begins again. They eat, together, but not at a banquet table like they did for Jackie. Lottie begins to evoke the wilderness, to scream at it for a response, and finally, there is one: as they all scream together, there’s rustling in the woods, and two strangers (I think it’s two, although it’s difficult to make out) walk into camp. The first thing they see is Ben’s head. Oh boy!

In the adult timeline, Shauna returns home at night after her day of detective work. Jeff is up and quizzes her about where she was, and then Shauna remembers that he doesn’t know yet. Callie overhears that Lottie is dead, and is devastated and horrified – and remembers the intercepted tape that was addressed to her mother, and hands it over. For all the suspicions about cut break lines and the phone that was left for her at the bar, this is the first piece of concrete evidence that someone is following her. Shauna decides to evacuate the house and move her family to a motel, and she contacts Taissa to talk to Van, the only person conceivably able to play obscure and obsolete media. The phone call finds Tai and Van in a luxurious hotel room, receiving a massage, awaiting a many-coursed room service meal, and it also falls right into a crisis of conscience for Van, who realises that this is not a normal or healthy way to cope with what has been happening (“Lottie’s dead and Shauna is melting down, and you don’t seem to give a shit about anything but self-care!”). As she tries to retrieve the DAT player buried deep in the boxes of belonging she packed when she moved in with Tai, she has further doubts – a mysterious, ancient and very much disconnected phone rings in one of the boxes and she seems to hear Tai’s desperate voice through it, asking for help, and later that night, Tai wakes up from a nightmare screaming for help, and then visibly and horrifyingly changes back to the calm, collected Tai we’ve seen most of this season. The implication here is that Dark Tai has fully taken over and violently suppresses actual Tai – but it’s even more horrible to think that Van has deluded herself this whole time about who she is in this new and blossoming relationship with. Shauna secretly meets Tai and Van in their car to listen to the tape (it’s much longer than what we get to hear), and it’s someone testing the tape, and then girls screaming at the end. “The only people that even know about this are either us or dead.” All we have to explain this now are theories.
Meanwhile Misty is still on her own and still reeling from Walter and Shauna teaming up on her to take the investigation away. She gets someone to analyse the samples from under Lottie’s fingernails (DNA results that are worthless without something to compare it to – but we know that Walter has a sample from Shauna, at least). Walter has a limousine deliver the two bin bags from Lottie’s apartment to her and some kind of making-up gift, which yield a Chinese food container from a place that Lottie wouldn’t have been caught dead eating at. In casing the place, Misty discovers that – Lisa! – is doing delivers for them (I was so excited to see the great Nicole Maines again)! Lisa, who we last saw when she narrowly escaped the syringe of fentanyl that ended up in Natalie. In character, Lisa agrees to have a chat with Misty, in spite of the fact that she tried to kill her (she was also very forgiving of Natalie stabbing her). This solves one mystery: she was the recipient of the $50,000, along with a “sorry” note from Lottie, presumably for having taken her money and recruiting her into a cult. It’s the kind of gesture you would expect from someone who is trying to right her past wrongs, but doesn’t answer if Lottie’s fall was accidental or not – but Lisa does tell Misty that Natalie was meeting with Taissa that day, the same Taissa who is now very clearly no longer herself.

Random notes:

Emily St. James debut novel Woodworking was just released, and sounds amazing. Reading her television reviews at the A.V. Club was a formative experience for me, and I’m excited to see her make the jump to writing for one of my favourite TV shows.

Vulture interviewed Steven Krueger about Ben's character arc here.

I think this episode was another great showcase of how closely Lauren Ambrose’s performance mirrors Liv Hewson’s. This has been such perfect casting!

Another shout-out to Sam Hanratty, who also achieves a small beat of perfection with Misty this episode. She grieves Ben deeply, steals a final kiss from him (that is very much in character inasmuch as it’s good nobody watches her do it), but then has a moment where she very consciously composes herself, almost becoming the Misty that we know, the version of her that Christina Ricci plays so perfectly. It probably didn’t come down to just one moment, but it’s still awesome.

Callie has learned so much from her mother. She hugs her, which surprises Shauna, but only to put a recording phone in her bag before the meeting with Van and Taissa, a recording that Shauna doesn’t bother to delete before returning the phone back to her. Callie says she is doing these things to understand Shauna, and this would also fit in well with what has been established about their dynamic – the only way to get close to Shauna is to adapt her strategies of deceit.

So… that Digital Audio Tape. It’s a format that would have been a great technological advance on analogue cassette tapes in terms of audio quality but then obviously never went anywhere in popular uptake because it was overtaken by CDs. Narratively, it feels like it was convenient to have an obscure format in there because it ties Van into the story and it means that Callie definitely had no way of figuring out how to play it for herself (I think at a pinch she would have figured out a simple cassette tape). My wild theory about this is that it feels like the kind of medium that, say, someone who goes into the wilderness to investigate birds or other animals may use to record them at a high quality, the same kind of someone who may stumble across a group of teenagers lost there. If that is the case, it doesn’t look good for these two strangers. I can’t quite work out the timelines here (are we at the 19 month mark yet? I think we’re still at least 3 out), as in, is this the rescue rescue, considering that pit girl hasn’t happened yet? And what exactly did they record on there, what part of their experience out there did they want to document? Or is this simply a recording that the strangers made as they approached the camp, documenting what we did actually see on screen, but not really incriminating them in any real way? That would open all kinds of other questions, like, maybe someone from that research team is the mystery person following them around, and it’s not Melissa after all. The Hilary Swank mystery continues.

As a side-note, this little plot about obscure recording formats made me sad that we never got a second season of Archive 81. I could watch hours of seeing tape lovingly restored by someone extremely capable.

Tuesday, 11 March 2025

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?

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Sunday, 13 April 2025

Yellowjackets - Table of Contents

Yellowjackets - Do you remember what we promised?