Yellowjackets is on a brief hiatus and will be back next week, so because I don’t have a recap to serve you today, I thought we’d try something else fun and play a game of: WHO IS THE ANTLER QUEEN?
By the end of last season, I was pretty convinced — as a lot of us were — that Lottie is the Antler Queen, but I’ve become less sure of this conviction as season two has unfolded. I think a lot of different arguments could be made as to the truth behind the Antler Queen veil, and I have accordingly put on my high school debate team hat to try to make several different cases at once. Please jump into the comments with any additional evidence you would like to supply for any of the below theories OR if you have a different theory altogether.
Before we jump into it, I do want to note: I indeed find it very fun to speculate, theorize, and analyze when it comes to this show, because it’s one that revels in ambivalence and as a result lends itself to many different readings. However! I also don’t love thinking of this show as a direct puzzle box to be solved. I don’t think all of its questions are answerable. The Game of Thrones-ification of viewing television through a lens of constant fan theories can be exhausting. I think both things can be true though: We can have fun discussing all these different possibilities together, and we can also just sort of go with the flow, letting the stories unfold in a way that’s complex, nuanced, and even a bit uncertain. I don’t know that I ever actually want to know who the Antler Queen is, something I’ll get into with the final theory presented here. Let’s go!
Who Is the Antler Queen: A Case for Lottie
Lottie as the Antler Queen has been one of the most popular theories since the second half of Yellowjackets season one. The first visual clue that this could be the case came when a shot in the cabin framed Lottie between a set of antlers hung on the wall. Omg this show’s coloring is often SO DARK, but here’s a slightly brightened screenshot of that moment:
More overtly, in “Doomcoming,” Lottie is seen placing a crown of antlers on her head after everyone’s mushroom trip turns into a Dionysus swirl of sex, violence, and group-mania.
But beyond these visual suggestions, Lottie makes sense as a cannibal cult leader. She has a Cassandra-esque quality in the first season, foretelling certain events but doubted by the others. By the end of the season, the group has begun to divide into two camps: those who do believe Lottie has some sort of mystical connection to the wilderness and those who do not. After she singlehandedly kills a bear and then offers its heart on an altar, it seems more than plausible that we’re watching the beginning of an ascension.
By the time we meet Adult Lottie in season two, the case for Lottie as Antler Queen firms up even more due to her status as the leader of an ~intentional community~ in the woods. Nat clocks her cult leader vibes right away. After Lottie gives her a tour of the compound’s bee colony, she tells Nat about about how queen bees will sting all the other potential queens to death. “I can see why you like them,” Nat replies. We also see Adult Lottie see her own shadow as the Antler Queen’s shadow when Nat is resting her head in her lap after their EMDR session. Tellingly, Lottie also seems scared of this shadow — is she scared of herself or someone else?
Still, even though a lot of signs indicate Lottie could be the Antler Queen, the more we’ve gotten to know TEEN Lottie in season two, the more I have doubts. She’s mostly out in the woods doing meditation circles and mindfulness exercises. She doesn’t know what she’s doing more than anyone else, and she also was forced to quit her anti-psychotics cold turkey, which the other Yellowjackets don’t know about but which could explain some of her behaviors. Finding out Adult Lottie does not give any credence to her visions also signals a potential fracture in this theory.
Who Is the Antler Queen: A Case for Shauna
My Case for Shauna rests entirely on two things: her status as the distributor of food as a teen and her hunger for murder and uncertainty as an adult. Shauna holds a certain power in the wilderness because she holds the knife. Nat is the hunter, but Shauna is the butcher. She rations food for the group and has control over when and how much they eat. This does call to mind the image of the Antler Queen in the pilot gesturing to the others that it’s time to feast. Shauna is also the person who gives everyone the initial permission to feast on Jackie, which also evokes the Antler Queen’s little head nod gesture in the pilot. Shauna would best know how to slice and dice a human body. During “Doomcoming,” she comes very, very close to slitting Travis’ throat after hallucinating him as a stag.
As for Adult Shauna, well, I feel compelled to just re-transcribe her entire monologue from season two’s “Digestif”:
Have you ever peeled the skin off a human corpse? It’s not as easy as you might think. It’s really, uh, stuck on us — skin. You have to roll back just the edges of it so you can get a good enough grip to really pull. Which again, isn’t easy. People are always so sweaty when you kill them, just like really oily. There’s a look people get when they realize they’re going to die. It’s that one. My hand wasn’t shaking because I was afraid. It was shaking because of how badly I wanted to do this.
Um!!! Not only does she say All That, but a lot of helpful commenters on my recaps pointed out that when Shauna returns to her minivan after almost killing this man, her stomach literally rumbles. She was hungry for this, and she leaves unsatisfied.
Even more clearly than I can see Shauna as Antler Queen, I can see her as being the Antler Queen’s right-hand soldier. Perhaps she was the one who takes a blade to pit girl’s throat in the pilot but wasn’t the one in the antler crown.
Who Is the Antler Queen: A Case for Other Taissa
As we know, Taissa enters a dissociative state while sleepwalking, having whole conversations with others and doing things she later has no recollection of. In season two, her sleepwalking as both a teen and an adult has gotten worse, and we see just how fractured it makes her, her own reflection sometimes turning against her. I personally think this is a symptom of unresolved trauma — perhaps even something that predates the plane crash but is then activated/heightened by it.
In any case, it’s extremely plausible that Taissa would take on an Antler Queen role while in this Other Taissa state. Commenters also posited the theory that Other Taissa is the “friend” Javi references when he finally speaks to Ben after reappearing. She could have been helping him hide and encouraging him not to reveal himself as Other Taissa without Taissa fully knowing, which might also explain how Taissa was eventually able to locate him.
I have personally avoided using language like “evil twin” to describe Other Taissa. Even though I think Other Taissa often sabotages Taissa, I don’t think it’s as simple as a good vs. evil dynamic. On this note, I’ve increasingly come to see the Antler Queen as a much more complicated figure or symbol as the show has unraveled.
If we interpret Other Taissa as being the main force behind Taissa’s decision to stay in the campaign in season one (which is likely, given the presence of the eyeless man in that press conference scene), then it’s easy to draw a line between Other Taissa’s hunger for power and the Antler Queen. What is the Antler Queen if not the state senator of the wilderness, hMMM???
Who Is the Antler Queen: A Case for Nat
This felt like my biggest stretch — until recently. Prior to recent episodes, all I really had to go off of in terms of Nat being the Antler Queen were the facts of her power status as the group’s hunter, her struggle with addiction later in life would could be a psychological response and a desire to distance her present self from her past self, and something Shauna and Taissa agreed upon in season one: They say they owe Nat their lives. Is this lingering fealty?
But something about Nat’s EMDR session with Lottie in “Two Truths and a Lie” signaled potential connection to the Antler Queen. Nat reveals to Lottie her memories of the last time she saw Travis. She overdosed, and while on the brink of death, she saw a vision of the plane after the crash — only no one survived. Burnt corpses line the plane, and who should enter but none other than the Antler Queen. In the flashback, as Nat is regaining consciousness but still very out of it, things go in and out of focus, and there are a couple strange flashes of images that are impossible to really register if you’re watching the show in real time. In fact, it took me over five minutes to actually screenshot one of these flashes because it’s so quick, but here it is:
And look, it’s not like she’s wearing a full on antler crown here or anything, but her pupils are completely dilated, and doesn’t that netting behind her look familiar? Does it not look like the Antler Queen’s drapey veil thing she wears over her face? It looks like it could be an early prototype of the Antler Queen’s garb.
(BTW, as far as the hair woven into the Antler Queen’s gown goes, I don’t think that’s the Antler Queen’s hair but rather the hair of hunted victims.)
Who Is the Antler Queen: A Case for Jackie
Okay, yes, we know Jackie is DEAD dead. This theory will tie a bit into my final and favorite one, but it basically posits that the Antler Queen is a group hallucination. I became immersed in this theory after a friend texted it to me and linked the Vanity Fair article that digs into it. The piece takes us all the way back to the first episode, when Coach Martinez said to Jackie about her role as team captain: “When things get tough out there, those girls are going to need someone to guide them.”
I first interpreted this as a foolish inflation of Jackie’s power. Jackie always seemed more powerful in theory than in practice. Like, I’m not blaming her for her own death, but she was godawful at survival in the wilderness. But what if Coach Martinez’s words were actually prescient? What if Jackie’s death immortalizes her as a sort of divine and deranged compass for the Yellowjackets to follow? After her body is inadvertently cooked as a result of the girls building more of a barbecue grill than a pyre, Shauna tells the others “she wants us to,” essentially giving Jackie power and authority over them even in her death. If they construct in their minds a force that is guiding them and give it shape, it allows them to cling to something in their survival — and to potentially place the blame of any questionable actions they take elsewhere. You know like, “Sorry I slit your throat; my dead best friend made me do it.”
Yes, we “see” an Antler Queen in the show’s pilot, but it wouldn’t be the first time we see something from the characters’ perspective that might not really be there.
Also, with the exception of Ben and Javi, the whole group has now consumed parts of Jackie, which means she’s inside all of them, which connects this theory to this last (and imo very likely!) one…
Who Is the Antler Queen: A Case for EVERYONE/NO ONE
This has become hands down my favorite theory ever since season two started making me doubt all prior Antler Queen theories. Early in season two, when I realized cases could convincingly be made for multiple characters, I shifted the way I thought of the Antler Queen. It’s important to remember that this “Antler Queen” term was invented by fans and not introduced textually. Giving her a name made her more real and therefore resulted in a bunch of theorizing about WHO she could be. And even though this entire piece has been an exercise in indulging that instinct, I think it’s much more plausible that the Antler Queen is no one at all. She is all of them; their fears, their darkest desires, their pain, their detachment from reality when their reality becomes too terrible to bear.
While creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have made it very clear that Yellowjackets was never meant to be an adaptation of Lord of the Flies and is intrinsically different in its approach to storytelling, there are obvious thematic parallels. In the 1954 novel, the stranded boys’ paranoia and distress leads to them mentally inventing a “beast” that represents all their basest impulses. It’s easy to see the Antler Queen as a similar symbol: something that exists in each of the Yellowjackets and is a result of their shared fears but also the feral states they’re transitioning into the longer they’re away from the form and structure of their past lives.
If any of the adult versions of the Yellowjackets were the literal Antler Queen in the wilderness, I think it would have come up — maybe not explicitly but more overtly in the ways they interact with each other now. I think someone would be blamed more for the violence in the woods. Instead, they’re all aligned rather firmly together — not friends exactly but almost like a family that protects its own no matter what. They have mutually assured destruction. If the Antler Queen were a more abstract figure and more symbolic, then it’s possible their memories of this presence are hazy, contradictory, confusing. They all would have their own unique relationships to “her.” And it’s possible a lot of the unhealthy patterns they still have as adults is a result of not wanting to look this imagined “beast” in the face, of not wanting to accept what it would mean if she never existed in the first place.
“Two Truths and a Lie” seems to have been a real turning point for this theory, if the comments on the Autostraddle recap are any indication! Between the fact that different folks are making different cases for different individual characters and the fact that a lot of commenters have latched onto this “the Antler Queen is all of them” theory, it indeed seems like the consensus is that this is not a straightforward mystery to be solved but rather a complex tapestry. If it could be any of them, then it is likely it is none of them. Because I also don’t think the show is being purposefully obtuse with this ambiguity. I think the “truth” of the matter is one that’s difficult and uncomfortable. The characters have a hard time seeing the truth, so we do, too. Unspooling endless Antler Queen theories is almost like a viewer coping mechanism, a way to try to make sense of some of these characters’ actions and to absolve them of any potential harm they may have inflicted on each other. But this increasingly does not seem like a show all that interested in drawing lines between good and evil; in fact, it revels in ambivalence even more than Lord of the Flies does.
“Antler Queen” as a term implies an enforced hierarchy or a rule of order, but the show itself has shown that power is in constant flux. In the wilderness, the Yellowjackets have constructed a way of life that doesn’t look at all like the social structures of society (if it did, Coach Ben would have more power). They’re inventing their own societal structures, and the Antler Queen could be a way for them to more easily make impossible choices about who lives and who dies for the good of the group. After all, we’re not out of the winter yet. They’re going to need to find more food. And that might require choices none of them want to make on their own, choices more easily digested if they come from an imagined ruler.
My partner and I are both lamenting about the lack of episode this week. Seems like it might be a good time to revisit the pilot and let those images really sink in. She is a huge fan of the Other Taissa-Javi connection theory, and the Other-Tai-as-Queen theory sent us. I do think it is more of an everyone-is-queen situation, but this was a very fun read and fulfilled the Yellowjackets hole this week. I love that an argument can be made for nearly everyone. Thank you Kayla!
I think the last theory is the most likely. They probably draw cards for who’s going to be the Antler Queen each time (and possibly who’s going to be the victim). I do think Shauna is always the butcher, though.
This is also my theory! The queen card with the scratched out eyes for the person who is queen, and I’m not sure what card for the prey but it’s probably the same one for poop bucket duty.
I was just gonna say: Ok I’m now convinced, they draw cards for Antler Queen as if it’s one of their chores!
What i really want to know is, does misty ever tell anyone else that she destroyed the plane’s transponder?
If she never told anyone ever again i think that really explains a lot of adult misty’s actions/quirks/hobbies/deeply embedded trauma. She got into citizen detectiving because if she has a deep dark secret then so does everyone else, right?
To relate this back to the antler queen theories, i can also see misty having told the antler queen and her court she destroyed the transponder but framing it as the wilderness told me to do it. Especially as a way to ‘fit in’ so to speak. Everyone that’s an antler queen candidate has had some kind of vision now. Maybe misty gets in with them by lying about this.
Misty is the only one we know ISN’T the antler queen and yet she’s a part of that group. Teen misty doesn’t currently seem to have that clout yet and adult misty seems to be trying to recapture that feeling. Does she ‘find’ her friend’s body and tell them she wants them to eat her? Does she start proselytizing on behalf of the antler queen the way she was the team’s biggest fan?
Misty’s reactions to the adult characters really makes me think of this two ways, she’s trying to maintain friendships with adult tai, shauna, and nat because one of them is the antler queen or she’s afraid of lottie because lottie is the antler queen and knows her deep dark secret.
I’ve also been considering an antler queen adjacent theory, that shauna isn’t the antler queen but that she’s the one who choses the next victim when the antler queen decides it’s time to eat someone. Shauna has the heart necklace now and she was the one to say that jackie wanted them to eat her. Maybe shauna bestows the necklace on to the next victim each time as a way of releasing them from guilt, they’ve got the necklace if they die they wanted us to eat them, jackie told me so.
Just wanted to add that my shauna chooses the victim theory is not only based in possession of the necklace but that shauna straddles the line between life and death. She’s pregnant with a new life but she talks to her dead best friend. Wouldn’t take much for some traumatized teens to give that power.
I have a theory about the necklace too. Jackie was the first real “gift” to the group as they were starving. In the pilot we see an unknown girl running. I did frame by frame of this scene and we haven’t “seen” this girl yet. She’s clearly wearing Jackie’s necklace. She’s running from the “tribe of hunters” that we can hear chanting and hooting and making animalistic sounds in the background like they did when they thought Travis was a stag. I do believe this necklace is given to the next victim and the games begin.
I may be wrong, but when Adult Nat shows up at Adult Misty’s house in the first (?) ep (maybe it’s the 2nd?), she calls out Misty in a way that made me think she knew about the Black Box situation. I think she calls her a fucking psycho?
So that tells me that the truth comes out at some point. Maybe I’m wrong here, but!
“what is the Antler Queen if not the state senator of the wilderness” asdfghjk
very compelling stuff! I like the theory that she’s all of them and perhaps they all take turns donning that costume, as a symbol.
however…
– I disagree about the hair sewn on her outfit. that looks way too uniform to be from a bunch of different people. it looks to me like it’s all from one girl who has dark, long, wavy hair…
– apparently in the pilot script the person we call the Antler Queen is just called “the shaman”. so that definitely makes me think that if it’s anyone in particular, it’s probably Lottie! and Shauna is at her right hand as the butcher, and potentially Natalie is at her left hand as the hunter (she’s the first one to appear at the top of the pit, looking down on her prey)
I think the person at the top of the pit is Van – she has Van’s build and is wearing her Coed Naked shirt.
I had a similar thought to your Jackie theory last week, but about Laura Lee? Why is she still around so much this season, why are we still going into Lottie (both teen and adult)’s connection with her? It seems like a reach but it’s been on my mind
Oooh that’s an interesting point. I also think there’s going to be more Laura Lee and have been surprised how much she is present this season!
Yeah, it was weird that Laura Lee was in Lottie’s hallucination but Jackie wasn’t.
My current favorite theory is that it’s all of them, and the antler queen becomes the next victim.
My other theory is that it is Lottie, but she’s put there by the group as an embodiment of the wilderness, a conduit or voice, that gives them permission. So she might wear the outfit but it’s not actually her. I could very much see Shauna as a force that sets the hunt in motion. Besides being the first to eat Jackie and then giving the rest permission she’s also right now a respected member in the group of teens but doesn’t actually have her own sect – and doesn’t feel that she has the friends she thought of (namely Tai). That sort of distantly respected but not friendly social standing could lead to a lot of weird dynamics.
But mostly I’m just interested to see how it all plays out. May have woken up with the theme song in my head and then thought how sad it was that there wasn’t an episode and then thought I’m sure Kayla will bless us with some Yellowjackets content to hold us over.
I also can’t stop thinking about the woods meditation scene in the last episode, where the camera was prowling the outside of the circle, behind branches half the time. It reminded me so much of that other presence that is always associated with the wind in some way.
I hadn’t thought about the last theory before, but now that might be my #1 guess! I can totally picture a social structure specifically about shared power developing, and everyone sharing the Antler Queen outfit as a symbol of that. Maybe it is a position that is passed around every time they run out of food and need to kill someone new, and then that feast’s Antler Queen chooses who they hunt.
My case for Lottie is that she’s the head of the cult. So much so that Mari’s belief in her borders on fanaticism. When Nat and Lottie are getting ready for the hunt competition, Nat is simply putting on her clothes while Travis stands there, but Lottie is being adorned by the others, notably Mari.
As time passes, more and more are being drawn into her cult. Van, Mari, and Travis are true believers. Misty and Crystal want to belong. I haven’t gotten a read on why Gen is there. Akilah is simply fulfilling a need for ritual, as she tells Tai later. Tai…Tai initially says that she’s just there for Van. Later she tells Shauna that she really is getting something out of it and, she’s going to keep going. All of them, for different reasons, are slowly being drawn under Lottie’s spell.
I’m going out on a limb here and saying Van is the antler queen. Why? I took a freeze frame of them at the fire. Crazy, sure. I can tell by their eyes which actress is sitting on the logs. I see Shauna, I see Lottie (just her hair but that hair in undeniable), I see Tai, and we know Misty is delivering the food, because at the end of the pilot she takes off the face cover that was the face cover delivering the food. There are 8 people. 2 of them male (we assume) with Javi and Travis. So that leaves Nat and Van as possible antler queens in the pilot. If you zoom in on the antler queen, you can see her eyes under the sheer cover. They are soft and shaped like Van’s. Call me crazy, I did have a gummy or two and started watching the show from the beginning again at midnight last night and stayed up all night. Insomnia sucks and I’m off work today so…😁
Aside from Sammi Hanratty (Misty), none of the actresses that were in the show were involved in the Feast. Those were all extras brought in for that scene. I don’t know if the producers did it specifically to prevent us from doing this sort of thing, but regardless, you can’t tell who’s who by physical features.
The only one that can you make an educated guess on is pink hood (the girl to the left of the Antler Queen). She’s Shauna because she’s the Butcher.
Duuuuuuuude way to be a buzzkill man. This is fun. Not life altering. I was having fun until the NO FUN POLICE came around and totally ruined it for me. Now I know NOT to comment here any more. Thanks.
I started watching the show sometime after casting for season 2 had been announced, and before I found out what Kristana said about none of the actresses being involved, I was 100% sure it was Van because I thought the person looked kind of like Lauren Ambrose, and I knew she was going to be playing the older version.
So I was very It Is Definitely Lottie especially given that her adult self is a full-on cult queen, but I’m definitely starting to consider Shauna as a candidate. I’m currently hugely pregnant (and ergo about to start having my husband pre-watch and censor anything particularly dark about birth/babies) but I kind of wonder more and more about the effect of postpartum on teen Shauna ESPECIALLY if something dark happens with the baby. Pairing with her extreme comfort with violence and extreme actions as an adult I’m curious about what happened in her past, especially with the intensity of pregnancy/postpartum hormones and emotions…
I saw a theory on twitter (from tumblr i think) that they draw cards for who is the antler queen, but if you are the antler queen then you get eaten next, so it’s simultaneously an honor + a death sentence. Lottie is then the last antler queen, but she survives because they were rescued, and this is why we see her with the recurring antler queen motif and why she is haunted by it so frequently
personally i think that the card drawing theory / it’s all of them is definitely the most likely so far but I like the added detail of Lottie nearly dying because of it!
Yes! This is the current theory I’m believing. While I don’t think the antler queen is ONLY Lottie, I agree that she has had the most symbolic connection with it throughout the show. So her being the last and avoiding death makes a lot of sense. (Also I so desperately need to know about the rescue but I know we won’t until later seasons or might not ever :( )
I’ve been espousing a similar theory as loudly as I can to anyone who will listen since the season began, and every episode I’m a little more convinced — well, as convinced as I *ever* am Yellowjackets-related because you just never know. Between the focus on the chore cards, within each episode, the opening credits and Lottie’s flashes, my current thoughts go:
Cards drawn, a role attached to each. (Oracle/butcher/cook/sacrifice/whatever)
Pit girl is someone who pulls sacrifice and takes off running. (I can totally see Mari being 100% in until she draws the wrong card.) But that doesn’t explain the thin nightgown in the snow, etc, unless that was the sacrificial wear and the trap in the ground was actually for potential game, not a soccer player.
That way, we’re all equally complicit, rather than one person in charge, and why they’re haunted by their actions in such a specific way.
Also, Mari’s totally stacking the cards to make sure Misty and the juniors got the least pleasant chores, right?
This is the way I’m leaning currently too. We know that 19 months would make it Winter when they were rescued, and the scene from the pilot could have been shortly before that. If Lottie was the next one slated to die and then they were rescued, that would explain the “can this just be enough?” when she offered her blood at the cult compound. It sure seems like her visions are showing her that no, it’s not enough, and the Antler Queen still wants her death, or at least Lottie believes that’s the case.
So I love all this fun and games. And the ‘theorising as a viewer coping mechanism’ that mirrors the mythological coping of the Yellowjackets is really really powerful conceptually. I will happily discuss this to death and make an argument for it being literally everyone. (Javi’s inevitable growth spurt could easily make him Antler Queen)
But. But but but
I think the no-one theory is most likely. Or at least not knowably anyone. In that i suspect they’re a symbol of the darkness, a hallucination, a coping strategy, that will be impossible to judge if they are a trauma artefact or an ancient supernatural force.
In particular, I’m increasingly if the mindset that the feast is symbolic, non-literal, and maybe even a false memory. I don’t know if this would be too disappointing for people, after so much expectation. But ever since the Dionysian Wall-climbing, I think we’re seeing a lot more of people’s impossible perspectives on these memories. Every awful thing distorted through an unreal dreamwork of trauma and justifying fantasy.
I’m okay with this.
The antler queen feels like the excuse you make up. The bigger kids that made you do it. The lie that makes the taboo acceptable. The embodiment of the starvation that will only lead to irrational coping.
Tbh, I’m less interested in who antler queen is that what on earth ends up happening in spring. They must choose to stay. I can’t imagine them willingly facing another winter. But then. Maybe that’s what the antler queen is for. Keeping them there, hopeless and suffering.
I love this show.
Antler Queen is Javi. End of story 🤣
First, kudos to Kayla for snagging that screenshot of Nat in the knit cap – thank you! It’s been bugging me because the cap looked like something a newborn might wear and the quick flash made me think it was Shauna’s baby! Nope! But compelling argument that Nat could be AQ especially the netting.
I’m inclined to think the Antler Queen group scene is likely a hallucination also…mainly because they can’t possibly find enough animals to make all those skins for warmth (unless their sitch dramatically changes). One of them has improvised rabbit ears if you Google the image. Shauna?
Its also getting me more interested in the animal symbolism with the characters: bear, wolf, rabbit, white moose, mouse…this show is making me go down that impossible viewer maze like Westworld did.
Curse you, Yellowjackets! Also, did you skip a week so we could enjoy Mother’s Day with Shauna?? 🐇
Am I wrong, or didn’t Tai’s grandmother/relative also have visions of the Eyeless Man? Has that issue ever been brought up again? Did I misremember this?
Currently convinced that if the antler queen is real, it’s Lottie, but that she’s more of a figurehead than any real power. Like with the hunting challenge against Nat, where it seemed like Mari and the others believed in her mystical connection to the wilderness more than she herself did.
I also think that if that scene is real, it’s functioning more as a witch trial type thing than a hunt for food: the pit girl is running for her life, and if she’s innocent and the wilderness wills it, she’ll be safe (like javi?).
And when she falls in the pit, it’s like how the suspected witch drowning or burning or whatever is “proof” of witchcraft. And then they ritually feast to complete things.
So the antler queen/others in furs are the upper hierarchy, whether or not Lottie is all in as leader.