Spoilers from season two of Yellowjackets ahead!
There’s nothing like Yellowjackets on television right now, and that assessment stands even with a wonky season. Season two of Showtime’s girls-gone-cannibal drama felt a little aimless and not nearly as compelling as the electric first season — even though it was in season two when those girls finally did go full cannibal — with some loose ends too neatly tied up, the lack of proper development with certain storylines (Adult Nat and Lisa … what?), and some out-of-left-field character choices. The season as a whole lacked a little, forgive me, bite. And yet, I’m already, forgive me, craving some more. Much of that is thanks to the season finale, which gave us — okay, last one — a lot to chew on.
Adult Natalie gets accidentally sacrificed to the Wilderness, which some of the survivors have now come to believe still has power over them, Adult Shauna miraculously gets out of her sticky murder situation, and Adult Lottie gets hauled back to a mental institution. Meanwhile, in the ’90s, the girls are embracing cannibalism by creating a ritualistic hunt around it. Poor Javi is their latest victim, plus Coach Ben has seen enough and makes a break for it in an underground shelter but not before (maybe) trying to stop the teens by burning them alive in the cabin that’s been keeping them from freezing to death. He fails in his mission, but the girls now have a problem other than where they’re going to get their next meal. In both timelines, Yellowjackets is setting up a ton of conflicts between our main group for season three, on top of its continued — and escalated — exploration of female rage and violence and its unmatched perspective on teen girl relationships. Nobody does it like Yellowjackets does it. So, while we wait for whatever treasures/horrors season three will bring, here are the seven biggest questions I’ll be contemplating. Contemplate with me?
What’s going on with Ben?
Oh, Coach Ben. You’re really in the thick of it now, aren’t you? No one’s had it easy in the wilderness, but Ben’s had it particularly tough. He lost his leg, had to fend off Misty’s weird obsession with him, and he’s the only adult in the group — not that he’s acted like any kind of leader at any point. Season two sees Ben’s situation get progressively worse. His deepening depression paired with starvation has him getting lost in hallucinations of the life he would have had if he had chosen to stay with his boyfriend instead of getting on that plane for the soccer tournament. He’s horrified when the teens go full cannibal. He almost kills himself, only for Misty to convince him otherwise, and just when he thinks he’s found a way to keep surviving this hellscape — he comes across the underground root/cave system that kept Javi alive for months — he learns that he’s truly alone, and there’s no stopping the youths from escalating their meal choices from simply staying alive to something much more ritualistic. All the time, his only real ally has been Natalie, but when he sees her take up the mantle of Antler Queen, he knows he’s truly lost her. When he sees what the girls have done to Javi, he knows he’s lost them all.
Is that why he attempts to burn them all alive in the cabin? Okay, fine, we never explicitly see Ben set that baby on fire as the girls (plus Travis) sleep, but it is heavily implied. The leap from Ben’s revulsion at Club Cannibal to being cool with roasting teenagers in the dead of night is wild, if that’s what actually happened, but it would set up an interesting conflict for season three. Does Ben now believe his mission is to stop what the Yellowjackets are up to by any means necessary? Once he realizes the fire didn’t work, will he try something else? Now that the team needs new shelter, those underground caves (that Natalie knows exist, by the way) would be a perfect solution — will they eliminate Ben in order to survive? Are we headed for a coach-versus-team showdown?!
How will the 1996 Yellowjackets regroup after the fire?
Let’s be real: The youths were going through a ton of upheaval before the late-night fire destroyed the shelter they’ve been surviving in the past few months. (That cabin was creepy as hell, but it was home, you know?) Their move from eating an already dead Jackie in a moment of true desperation to deciding to draw cards and hunt one of their own — to sort of quote John Green sort of quoting Ernest Hemingway — happened slowly, and then all at once. It’s been quite an alarming evolution! Their second human happy meal is Javi, who, sure, they don’t technically kill, but they do let him die right in front of them. It’s cold — literally (he drowns in a frozen pond). And we already know that the hunt only grows more sophisticated and calculated from there. Does that evolution to ritualistic cannibalism happen because of their new Antler Queen? That’s right, in the finale, we learn that Lottie, who does not want to take responsibility for what the team has turned into under her spiritual guidance, declares that because Natalie survived after originally drawing the card that marked who would be hunted, it means the Wilderness has chosen her — Natalie is the new Antler Queen.
Natalie’s racked with guilt over letting Javi die in her place, so maybe taking on the Antler Queen position — something that seemed so unfathomable for the Natalie who got on that plane — is her way of distracting herself from processing what she did. But as everyone knows, that distraction can only last so long before the guilt and the pain find other ways out. All of this is to say: Do we really think Natalie’s reign is going to go smoothly? Since Nat knows about Ben’s underground shelter, she might be able to assert her power by leading everyone to safety, but will Lottie’s diehard followers really be okay with a new woman making decisions? Will Natalie actually want to make those decisions? Like everything happening in the woods, it seems a bit messy.
I’m sorry — were the 2021 Yellowjackets actually going to kill Shauna?
The adult counterparts of hungry wilderness teens are also going to have to do some regrouping after the events of the finale. Natalie’s death is a tragic turn for the group. The show quickly tries to link Nat’s choice to protect Lisa, and thus take the brunt of Misty’s phenobarbital needle, to Teen Nat letting Javi die, but it’s not exactly fleshed out, and it certainly doesn’t make the situation any less horrible. Misty, especially, might become unglued after killing yet another person she believed to be her best friend. But even before Nat’s death, things amongst the women were becoming disconcerting. And I’m not talking about Other Tai making a powerful comeback, although I’m not not talking about that. My top concern, in a long list of concerns, is how that little hunt exercise — which was supposed to be to placate Lottie until the mental health crisis team could arrive to take her away for her own safety and the safety of others — seemed to turn very, very real. The audience knew that Tai and Van had called off the crisis team, but no one else did, and regardless, the moment Shauna drew the Queen of Hearts, the other women wordlessly walked over to grab weapons and masks — if they were acting, they should be winning Oscars. When Shauna, who had come up with the idea to stall for time with a hunt, finally ends the charade and fearfully asks if they’re being serious, no one answers! When Lottie tells Shauna she can do this the easy way or she can run, and she runs, Misty, Nat, Tai, and Van all chase after her! Not one of them gives her any kind of wink or nod to let her know that she isn’t actually going to be killed by her friends in the woods in order to appease the dark powers of the Wilderness because the most mentally unstable one of the group said they should. If Callie hadn’t shown up and shot Lottie (she hits her arm), would Shauna be dead now? And if things continue to unravel in 2021 as they have been, does Shauna pulling the card but surviving while Nat does not mean that someone like Van, or Tai, or some yet-to-be-known survivors are going to declare Shauna the new Antler Queen? And regardless of that, Shauna’s going to have to deal with this near-death experience at the hands of her friends. None of these women has really dealt with the trauma of what happened to them in the woods as teens, and here they are, heaping piles and piles of fresh, new trauma. I’d say they’ve hit rock bottom, but I don’t think that’s true at all — and that’s chilling!
What is Walter’s deal?
Sure, season two of Yellowjackets was uneven, but it did bring us the gift that is Elijah Wood’s performance as Walter Tattersall, and for that, we’ll forever be grateful. Walter is another citizen detective who connects with Misty online and almost immediately shows us, and Misty, how skilled and perceptive he is — he almost immediately deduces that Shauna and company killed Adam Martin — but he doesn’t reveal everything he’s capable of until the finale.
With detectives Kevyn Tan and Matt Saracusa closing in on Shauna for Adam’s murder, Walter swoops in to help Misty, who would surely also be implicated, by making a surprise visit to Lottie’s place. He breaks absolutely no sweat poisoning Kevyn with a cup of phenobarbital-laced hot cocoa and tricking Matt into carrying on the cover-up Walter’s fabricated — that Kevyn is the one not only behind Adam’s murder but also Jessica Roberts’ death (Jessica, you’ll recall, is the investigator Tai hired — to make sure none of the Yellowjackets would be political liabilities — who Misty chained up in her basement before killing her). The whole thing is a little too neat and tidy to be believable, but dang if it isn’t fun watching Walter work his psycho magic, if you will. Walter singing “Send in the Clowns” as he mixes his fatal batch of cocoa? Absolutely unhinged. I love it so much. I don’t know if Walter or Misty are able to feel actual love, but it seems like these two crazy kids are going to try. Even if it works for a while, there’s no way a Walter and Misty team-up can last long term, right? After getting a glimpse at where Walter lives, it’s clear that he has the means and the lack of morals to do whatever it takes to get whatever he wants. He has so much blackmail on Misty, they are certainly not starting out on equal footing. Misty isn’t a particularly sympathetic character; still, I worry for her!
What does Lottie mean when she tells Van, “You’ll see”?
This moment toward the end of the finale feels like it’s not only clueing us in to some season three plot developments, but also perhaps giving us a sneak peek at some major character reveals. After everything goes down in the woods and the authorities arrive to deal with the fallout, Lottie has some parting words for her friends before she’s carted off to another stint at a mental institution — “It’s pleased,” she tells Van and Tai. By sacrificing Natalie, no matter how “accidental,” they gave It what It wanted, and they’ll reap the benefits. “You’ll see,” Lottie adds, looking pointedly at Van. Does this mean Van will somehow be magically cured of her terminal cancer? Van tries to hide a little smile, so it seems like she’s making the same conclusion. In fact, if you look at a lot of Van’s choices upon arriving at Lottie’s cult farm, it starts to seem like perhaps Van was hoping for this all along. She’s the strongest opponent to the women’s plan to get Lottie committed, even going so far as convincing Tai to call off the crisis team so that they can “handle it” on their own. She’s also the one pushing the drawing of cards ceremony along while Shauna and Misty obviously try to stall as long as possible. Van seems super into the hunt, is all I’m saying. Never forget that Van was pretty much the first of the teen Yellowjackets to drink Lottie’s Kool-Aid, basically installing her as their mystic leader before anyone else was on board. Maybe she’s just as deeply a Lottie believer 25 years later. All of this is to say, watch the Van space in season three — something is brewing.
Does anyone else find out about Misty and the black box?
Maybe this isn’t the most pressing concern at the moment — we’ve got murders and rampant cannibalism to deal with — but I can’t stop thinking about what a wild moment it will be whenever — past or present — someone else learns that Misty destroyed the plane’s black box back when they first crashed, therefore sentencing everyone to trauma that will haunt them for years. I mean, we saw what happened the first time she told someone: One of the most shocking moments of season two is when Misty tells her kindred spirit Kristen/Crystal about her big secret, thinking her new best friend is the perfect person to confide in, that she’ll get it, and almost immediately, Kristen does not, in fact, “get it.” She reacts like any normal human being and is enraged. She plans on telling everyone else, of course, and since Misty can’t have that, there’s a tussle, and whoopsie, Kristen/Crystal stumbles off a cliff and falls to her death. Since that didn’t go at all how Misty planned, she might be keeping that secret locked up from here on out. Plus, not one of the adult Yellowjackets brings it up, and I’m sorry, but if it were me, I wouldn’t be letting the person who ignited this horror show off the hook any time soon. I’m giddy just thinking about what Adult Shauna might have to say if Misty finally lets that bombshell slip.
Who’s next?
Sorry for being so blunt about it, but who else is on the menu? We know the Yellowjackets aren’t rescued from the wilderness for months, which means we for sure have several hunts ahead of us. And since we don’t know exactly how many survivors there are in the end, who knows how things are going to escalate? We still haven’t caught up to that season one flash-forward in which the team, now performing what seems more like a ritual, chases one of their naked teammates into a well-dug trap. The girls are hungry, and things are getting grisly. Season three should be a real hoot, huh?
Maggie Fremont is a freelance pop culture writer with a focus on television. You can find more of her writing on Vulture, Entertainment Weekly's EW.com, and TV Guide.
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