Hello and welcome to your Yellowjackets 302 recap! If you’re actually looking for the recap of the season three premiere, you can find that here. Come back when you’ve seen the second episode, which also dropped today on streaming. I swear if anyone tries to tell me the headline of this recap is a spoiler, I will scream! I don’t say who is gay! It’s a very vague question that could mean ANYTHING! I also strategically picked the featured photo so as not to spoil anything (you already know Tai and Van are gay!!!), though spoilers certainly do abound if you read any further, so you’ve been warned now. Please hop in the comments to get the conversation about the episode going! This is “Dislocation,” written by Rich Monahan and Ameni Rozsa and directed by Bille Woodruff.
THERE’S SO MUCH TO DISCUSS BUT ALL I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IS THAT KISS!
Okay, but fine, I will refrain and save the best for last. Just know that I have bravely had to sit on this reveal for WEEKS since watching my screener, and the whole time I’ve been like “Autostraddle readers are gonna be so gagged.”
“Dislocation” opens with Mari screaming from the pit she accidentally fell into after Coach Scott set a trap to catch food. He caught a lot more than he bargained for. Now Mari knows he’s alive, making her a liability. She also has a dislocated knee, which he has to coach her through realigning. Nothing like a bit of bone crunching sound effects to kick off an episode of Yellowjackets!
“Dislocation” really is a perfect title for this episode. There’s its physical meaning, referring to the displacement of bone. But there’s also its more sociopolitical meaning: a disruption to an established order. We can see dislocations in many parts of this episode.
Before we cut to the title sequence, Shauna visits the grave of her dead baby, removes the corpse from the group burial grounds and places him somewhere more private that only she knows about. We hear an echo of her words from last season: “it’s me and you against the world.” Teen Shauna, indeed, doesn’t really have many alliances at this moment, alone on an island with her grief and the haunting absence of her baby. In her ongoing attempts to broker peace between Shauna and Mari, Nat asks Shauna to join her in a search party. Shauna’s response? “Fuck Mari.” Yeah, Nat is a bit out of her league when it comes to fixing this one.
In the Sadecki household, Shauna attempts to be a normal housewife, making a green smoothie for Jeff that she plops a few random whole blueberries into? Even these small attempts at normalcy seem like Shauna’s wearing a weird costume. Jeff reminds her they have dinner with a couple of hotel hotshots tonight who he’s trying to land a furniture contract with. Shauna, far worse at lying in her adult years, struggles to come up with an excuse to get out of it, but before she can think of one at all, there’s a knock at the door.
Lottie is back! And Shauna pretty much slams the door in her face, literally saying “take your shit and get off my lawn.” Shauna can’t believe she would show up here after everything that happened at the compound, especially the whole part where her daughter shot Lottie and saw Nat die. Lottie agrees Callie never should have been there…but wasn’t that Jeff’s fault for bringing her? Simone Kessell and Courtney Eaton have the least aligned performances of all the pairs, but they’re both great in their own ways, and Kessell is especially funny in little moments like this one.
Callie walks in on this mess and insists Lottie should stay. She tells her mom she has such “I want to speak to the manager energy,” to which Shauna responds “I do fucking not.” (She does.) The Sadeckis have a family meeting where they remind Callie how dangerous Lottie is and she subsequently reminds them how dangerous they are. Callie spins some story about wanting to help someone who’s unwell and also seek forgiveness, but I’m sure Callie has an angle here, because Callie is becoming her mother’s daughter more and more every episode. Sure enough, she has a motive of her own, which we’ll get into.
Van is on Tai’s couch singing karaoke when Tai walks in. Van says she’s feeling bad about the dine and dash incident (and she doesn’t even know about the server having a heart attack!) so she proposes going to the restaurant to settle up. Tai and Van then flirt with each other, Tai feeling Van up teasingly looking for a wire. As they kiss, Van accidentally steps on a glass and pierces her foot. Is it just me or is bad stuff happening every time these two get together? First Tai seeing the man without eyes and now Van getting a puncture wound! They agree that Van will go to urgent care and Tai will go settle up with the restaurant. I’m stressed!
Walter is still trying to take care of Misty by bringing her a tray of hangover cures and suggesting calisthenics to flush the toxins. He remains chipper in the face of her depressive funk and misdirected anger. Walter tells her he feels like her “friends” don’t actually care about or support her. He’s not wrong! But Misty doesn’t want to hear it, and while she respects his commitment to cage maintenance (he reminds her they’re supposed to clean Caligula’s cage together on Wednesdays), she doesn’t think he really gets her, and she’s convinced that Shauna and Tai do.
“Sometimes I forget you can’t possibly understand relationships forged in life-and-death experiences,” Misty tells him. “See, us survivors, we’re not sitting around keeping some petty log of who needed what when. Our bond just runs deeper than that.” She’s correct about the fact that the Adult Yellowjackets understand each other on a very deep level, but she mistakes that understanding for unconditional love and genuine care whereas Shauna and Tai are more interested in self-preservation. They’re bound by their trauma (though not trauma bonded, one of the most misused psychological terms these days, a personal pet peeve of mine), but that doesn’t mean they’re safe together. I mean, just look at what happened the last time they were all together.
Back in the wilderness, Teen Misty and Teen Nat are looking for Mari. Tai and Van are searching, too, though on their own. Travis wants to join, but Lottie is very pushy about their mushroom therapy sessions, foreshadowing some of Lottie’s cult leader future. Misty asks Nat if she thinks Coach Scott is really dead and if he really burned the cabin down. Nat evades the questions and also downplays her friendship with him. Later, when they stumble upon one of Coach Scott’s hunting traps, Nat tries to distract Misty from looking at it, but she spots it anyway. Nat redirects them, making Misty very suspicious of what Nat knows and supporting my theory Nat absolutely knows Coach Scott is alive. He did ask her to join him by splitting off from the others at the end of last season, and she may have gone with him if she hadn’t just watched Javi die in her place.
Mari, trying to bargain with Coach Scott from the pit, asks how she’s supposed to get out, especially given the screaming they heard the night before. So, they heard it, too. It wasn’t just the participants in the solstice ritual. I still think it could be some sort of shared auditory illusion or misinterpretation of normal nature sounds as something bigger and badder. Mari pivots to a new strategy other than making him feel bad for her and says she never believed he burned the cabin down. Coach Scott’s reaction to this makes it seem very much like he for real did NOT burn the cabin down! He doesn’t even know it burnt down! And he may be gay, but he’s a sporty gay not a theater gay. I don’t think his acting is good enough that he’d play stupid about this. I think he really didn’t know.
As they look for Mari, Tai tells Van she feels like Nat failed them by not letting them look for Coach Scott. Van asks Tai if she wishes she’d been named the leader in Nat’s place, and well, yeah of course Tai feels that way even if she won’t admit it outright. Van says the wilderness doesn’t want to be governed. She’s correct! And not because of some supernatural force but because nature has its own agenda beyond us as humans, and often the human impulse to try to control it or dominate it leads to violence and chaos. The wilderness is trying to survive just like the Yellowjackets are. It’s probably only a matter of time before I write an entire piece about Yellowjackets and climate change, so consider this a teaser!
Van and Tai hear screaming and realize it’s Travis. He’s hallucinating as Lottie asks him to describe what he’s seeing. He starts choking her when she pushes too hard, and Tai and Van pull him off her. This is a particularly tough scene to watch in the context of Travis’ final moments of life, which were spent with Lottie. He wanted to get close to the experience of letting the wilderness in, and it ended up killing him as Lottie watched. When we first saw that scene last season, it felt a little strange and untethered, but this season three scene grounds it a bit more in their past dynamic and drug-fueled experiments together.
Later in the episode, Coach Scott helps Mari out of the pit but then ties her up to take her as prisoner, pointing out that she’ll just go running back to the others and tell them he’s still alive. If they all think he burned the cabin down, he knows he’s a dead man if they find him. He has seen what the group’s mob mentality leads to, and Javi’s death was the last straw. He leads Mari blindfolded back to the cave where he has been hiding out. It’s in the cave near the end of the episode when he hands her a mug full of hot chocolate. Okay, so maybe his survival box discovery was real after all and not a hallucination. But…he’s not exactly out of the hallucination hole entirely. As Mari drinks her hot chocolate, she overhears him talking to…no one. Is it his boyfriend Paul? Or a new hallucination entirely?
Adult Misty perks up when she gets a call from Shauna asking her to come over, but it’s not the friends hang she wanted. She realizes something is off and asks if it’s an intervention and if Walter called to share about her recent drinking. But no, it isn’t that. They have no idea what she’s talking about. Shauna only called Misty so she could be a “babysitter” for Lottie and Callie and keep them from being alone together. All of Walter’s words came true: The other Yellowjackets only call Misty when they need something.
When Tai arrives at the restaurant, she offers to pay cash, obviously not wanting a dine and dash scandal to be traced back to her. It’s a cashless restaurant though, so she presents her credit card, and the woman at the register says she needs to get her manager since she’s just filling in and doesn’t know how to ring it up. Then Tai notices a makeshift memorial set up with candles and a photo of their server from the night before. Another server informs her he died of a heart attack while on shift, and Tai realizes the consequences of her and Van’s actions and quickly grabs her credit card and gets the hell out. I bet she wishes she had Jessica Roberts around to fix this one! (RIP)
While reorganizing Shauna and Jeff’s cupboards, Misty berates Lottie, frustrated with her for the same reasons Shauna is. Lottie apparently has not let up on the whole wilderness getting what it wants thing. She still thinks they performed some sort of ritual bound to the past the night Natalie died. She asserts her beliefs are rooted in her faith and not in any kind of psychiatric hallucination.
Callie creeps around the corner, clearly eavesdropping. She whips out some alcohol, wanting to get the party started. “What are afraid of exactly, my mom?” Callie asks when Misty tries to shut it down. “To be fair, we’re all afraid of your mom,” Lotties says. No kidding! Shauna might literally be the scariest Yellowjacket, and they’re ALL SCARY!!!! Misty makes the mistake of confessing she has never been to a sleepover (“What was our time out in the wilderness besides one really long, really cold sleepover?”), and Callie uses Misty’s lifelong desperation to be part of group to manipulate into this “sleepover” between two unhinged adults and a teen girl. What could possibly go wrong!
Speaking of going wrong, Jeff and Shauna’s dinner with the hotel dudes is a disaster from the start. They’re dicks, and Jeff is forced to suck up to them even though he clearly has no idea what tapas are (oh, Jeff). Shauna spends much of the meal texting under the table, trying to check in with Misty. She’s not doing a very good job of even pretending to be interested in these guys. When they go off to greet someone they know, Shauna refers to them as “the Joels” to Jeff even though only one of them is named Joel. She’s so right though; they both have Joel energy.
At the sleepover from hell, Misty and Lottie are wearing animal skincare masks which, even though they look cartoonish, are oddly reminiscent of the fact that they wore animal masks during hunting rituals in the wilderness. Callie proposes a game of truth or dare. Here was her real motive. She wants the answers to questions her mother won’t give her. Lottie chooses dares, and Callie wastes no time: “I want to know what really happened out there.” She’s not talking about in 1995; she means out in the woods the night she witnessed Lottie about to ritual-kill her mom. Misty tries to intervene and asks for a dare. Callie dares her to chug her cocktail…a cocktail that Callie just made with cherry-flavored allergy medicine instead of grenadine. Misty promptly passes out, leaving Callie alone with Lottie, her endgame all along because if anyone is going to actually answer her questions, it’s Lottie.
After running out of the restaurant, Tai wanders into a late-night church service and drops the matchbook from the restaurant into a prayer candle in front of a Mary statue (between the first two episodes, we get a lot of Catholic imagery, which is fitting given the cannibalistic undertones of transubstantiation). (I believe someone in the comments before has gone long on the Catholic symbolism utilized throughout the series, so if that was you, would love to hear more from you again!)
In another restaurant where people are having a bad time (though not as bad a time as the dead server), Jeff is probably learning what tapas are while Shauna goes to the bathroom so she can try to contact Misty. While in a stall, she hears someone enter and sees their shadow standing right in front of her door. The lights cut out, and Shauna springs into survival mode, splaying her keys in her fingers and ready to attack. But there’s no one there, just a phone left behind on a toilet that starts ringing and playing “Queen of Hearts” by Juice Newton…an upbeat but ultimately eerie song given the whole queen-of-hearts-card-in-the-wilderness situation.
Shauna turns the phone in to the bar and then returns to the table with Jeff and the Joels, who start not so nicely turning Jeff down. Shauna intervenes and asks Joel what his dad does. Joel dodges the question and says he’s retired. Shauna asks what he used to do and eventually extracts from Joel that his dad worked in luxury real estate. Earlier in the episode, Joel insisted he and his business partner were “humble motherfuckers” and “self-made,” which was already clearly untrue, but Shauna masterfully exposes them as nepo losers. Of course, this isn’t going to land Jeff any contracts, so he’s rightfully pissed off with her. But it does land a round of applause from ME!
In the wilderness, Travis is struggling big time, traumatized from his hallucinations. Akilah offers him a duck to hold onto, and he clings to it. “It actually told me that it didn’t want me,” Travis tells Lottie, who insists he needs to keep connecting with the wilderness. “Someone else here is already closer to it. It’s why the animals trust her.” He’s talking about Akilah, who is indeed the animal whisperer in the wilderness (and at least they’re alive ones this time and not a rotted dead mouse!). Now, I don’t necessarily think the wilderness “told” this to Travis. I think he’s just trying to get Lottie to shift her focus away from him onto someone else, and Akilah is a solid target given her affinity for animals.
Misty and Nat return from searching for Mari, and Misty tells Shauna she thinks Nat knows where Coach Scott is. Shauna tells her not to tell anyone else, clearly wanting to keep this in her backpocket to deploy at some later time.
Back in present day, Callie and Lottie are watching a campy reality television show called Repo Divorcees and doing each other’s hair when Shauna and Jeff get home. Misty, still half asleep, pukes on Shauna’s kitchen island. Successful sleepover! Misty returns home to Walter fixing up Caligula’s cage. She’s super drunk again, and he’s worried. He goes in on her “friends” again, and she yells at him to stop air quoting her friendships. Misty starts describing everything Walter has been doing for her over the past several days, and it all sounds…exactly like how Misty treated Natalie a lot of the time. She was always following her around and trying to “help,” even when Natalie insisted she didn’t need her help. And if we go back even further, Misty did the same to Coach Scott, too. She doesn’t like this behavior turned back around on her, even though she’s desperate for reciprocal friendship.
At Tai’s place, Van gets home from the doctor and asks her how it went at the restaurant. Tai lies and says it was good and straightforward. Now, we know Tai is lying, but why does it sound like Van is also lying about going to urgent care?
Okay, it’s time!
We end the episode by jumping back and forth between Shauna in the present and Shauna in the past. In the present, she calls the restaurant to see if anyone picked up the phone. She wants information about whose phone it is, but as usual, she bungles her way through her lies. She also asks to speak to the manager, fulfilling Callie’s accusation.
In the past, Shauna visits her baby’s grave again but feels as if she’s being followed. She pulls out a knife and demands that whoever it is “get out here.” It’s Melissa, and she says she was just keeping an eye on her. “No one has any right to my baby,” Shauna threatens her.
“I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you,” Melissa says. “You are, you’re so resilient and that’s so important out here.”
“Everyone’s afraid of you, you know, but I’m like, I’m not,” Melissa says. Shauna shoves her against a tree and holds her knife up to her throat. As Shauna’s threatening to kill Melissa, Melissa leans in for a short kiss. This elicited a big gay gasp from my wife and I the first time we saw it. Shauna pulls back, looking surprised. But then she goes right back in for a full make out. This elicited literal SCREAMS from my wife and I.
More! Queers! On! Yellowjackets! SHAUNA! IS! CONFIRMED! QUEER!
This is thrilling, for a number reasons. First of all, back when JV Melissa didn’t even have many lines at all, I took one look at that girl and said gay. I’m sure we all did. Second of all, a queer Shauna recontextualizes and deepens her character arc, particularly when it comes to her dynamic with Jackie, which I’ll get into in a bit. Third of all, I think the splicing together of Shauna’s phone call to the restaurant about the cell phone with this surprise kiss scene suggests the two are somehow connected. The logical theory here is that the person who has been following Shauna (perhaps the person who left the package with the tape inside it last episode, too?) is Adult Melissa. And I very much think this is who Hilary Swank could be playing, based on appearances alone. Has Hilary Swank come back to stalk and torment her wilderness ex-girlfriend?! Incredible turn of events!
Now, I’ve grown a bit tired through the years of television series that wait until a season finale or even a few seasons in to “reveal” that a character is gay or queer. It can feel lazy or under-baked, especially if that queerness isn’t foreshadowed ahead of time or if it somehow coincides with a major plot twist as well. But this isn’t that at all. For starters, Teen Shauna has always seemed a little bit queer, so yes this moment has technically been foreshadowed. Her desire to be with Jeff as a teenager had less to do with Jeff and more to do with wanting to “become” or be possessed by Jackie. Their entire friendship was so homoerotic that whole essays have been written about it on Autostraddle (see: Shauna, Jackie, and Those Sapphic Gazes on Yellowjackets and All Girls Want To Eat Each Other).
Was Shauna in love with Jackie? I think that question is too basic actually, too reductive. I think Shauna desired Jackie, a desire that led her to absorb parts of Jackie, first by stealing her boyfriend and asking him to pretend to love her and culminated in her literally consuming Jackie’s flesh. I felt this way before Shauna kissed Melissa, but this just emphasizes it further. It also adds some texture to Shauna’s “failures” at trying to fit into a picture-perfect domestic life in the future. I don’t think she’s fully a lesbian who is stuck in a life of compulsory heterosexuality, but I do think she is a bisexual/queer woman who is constantly forcing herself to live against her truest nature and desires. We’ve seen her experiment sexually in the past, though in a straight context with Adam. We saw in glimpses of their texts as well as physical moments between them that they had a dom/sub dynamic, and while that isn’t inherently queer in and of itself, I think all these things are connected and point toward an interior life Shauna desperately tries to quiet.
Shauna as an adult represses a lot, but we even see threads of repression when she’s a teen, her unwillingness to ever tell Jackie the full truth about anything eating away at their friendship. In the present, it’s possible she associates her queerness with the wilderness and therefore pushes it away, prescribing herself this Jersey housewife life that was never meant for her. But that life has been dislocating for a while now. Adam did it. Reconnecting with the Yellowjackets did it. And her past is all catching up to her now, quite literally if Melissa really is the one following her around. Shauna says in this episode that she can’t wait for things to get back to normal, but the life she’s talking about isn’t her “normal” at all.
Dislocation: a disruption to an established order. There’s more queerness in the wilderness than we initially believed.
Things are shifting in other ways, too. Nat’s power over the others is being called into question. In the present day, Callie is out-maneuvering her mother for the first time. Adult Misty is completely adrift, far from her usual position of control. And something is undeniably dislocated between the adult versions of Tai and Van, whose romance keeps leading to violence. No doubt more dislocations are on the horizon.
But also, I mean, did we really think there were only two queers on the girls soccer team? Let’s be so for real.
Last Buzz:
- Forgot to mention this incredibly important detail: “Criminal” by Fiona Apple is playing diegetically during Callie/Lottie/Misty’s sleepover.
- Shauna calling Lottie a “Goop sorceress” 😭
- I love that there are multiple moments in this episode where characters correctly guess what other characters are going to say, like Callie foreshadowing Shauna asking to speak to the manager (and correctly guessing that she asked Lottie to get off her lawn) and also Shauna perfectly predicting the hotel guys would say “It’s not a hotel room; it’s an experience.”
- “Can we play light as a feather stiff as a board? I’ve always been really curious about that science.” MISTY.
- “Oh I do think about it.” I love this line reading from Sarah Desjardins.
- “Does your stock fuck, Jeff?” I HATE THESE GUYS SHAUNA WAS RIGHT TO GET THEIR NEPO ASSES.
- Wait, actually now that I’m thinking about it, very funny for Yellowjackets to be making fun of the name Joel when Joel McHale was added to this season.
- Didn’t quite catch this moment from the premiere until I rewatched with subtitles, but okay Mari, come through with the foreshadowing!
- Here is where I remind you these recaps are free, but they are also generously supported by AF Media memberships, because all the work we do is! Only $4 a month!
I, too, screamed (at 2AM… sorry, neighbors)
And agreed re: Hilary Swank; if those dovetailed scenes were a mislead, I will be so mad
sorry to your neighbors but IT WAS A SCREAM-WORTHY MOMENT
“As Mari drinks her hot chocolate, she overhears him talking to…no one.” I think it’s very possible it’s Paul because we know Ben has hallucinated him before, but I can’t help but think of when Javi first came back from being missing and he said “she told me to run.” And while probably he was talking about Shauna during Doomcoming, what if there’s another survivor? Or just someone else who lives in the woods, in the cave, maybe even the person who drew those symbols, and maybe the one who is screaming with the animals and scaring the girls? Maybe even the person who burned down the cabin? I know this is far-fetched but these girls didn’t exactly seem to take a headcount when they were first burying people from the flight. And maybe this is who actually stole the bear meat and did number 2 in the number 1 bucket.
“drops her credit card into a candle” not to be that person but I think she actually dropped the book of matches she got from the restaurant into the candle
“why does it sound like Van is also lying about going to urgent care?” i saw a theory in S2 about how their sacrifice to the Wilderness might have saved Van from her cancer diagnosis and I can’t help but wonder – if that’s true – if she did go to her doctor and got surprisingly positive results but doesn’t know how to factor in a) hope, in general b) how to tell Tai when she she probably thinks Tai is only *with* her now because she thinks it’s a short-term commitment
When Shauna was holding JV Melissa at knifepoint and then they kissed, after I was done running in gay circles, I was like “knifeplay and bonus queers? oh they did this for Kayla specifically”
THANK YOU AGAIN for these recaps and for being a place for me to shout my random-ass thoughts about this show until all my friends have finally caught up and I can bother the group chat instead haha
Maybe “she” is Laura Lee, and that’s who Hilary Swank is.
ok but Lara Lee exploded!
oh you’re probably right about the matchbook! i think i saw something rectangle-shaped and assumed
also very into this Van cancer theory
THEY DID THE KNIFEPLAY FOR MEEEE!!!! in fact, i should update my list on the topic lol
thank you for reading these and contributing to the comments, Valerie! means a lot!!!
ok van was definitely lying and i could totally see her finding out she isn’t actually dying but keeping it from tai
yeah this is what i’m thinking too because she was very clearly hiding SOMETHING
I am now a truther for this Van theory!
So, when Shauna and Melissa are having sex (are they going to make love or just fuck?), is she going to call out Jackie’s name?
Just posting this comment here to get the above one off of the front page.
Same with this one.
Very respectful spoiler etiquette! And lol I wouldn’t be shocked
I loved Shauna in this episode so much and not just because I am that bitch who goes in hard on assholes disrespecting my partner.
SPOILER SPOILER
“To be fair, we’re all afraid of your mom.” —AS YOU SHOULD BE
I screamed too. Shauna has always felt straight to me, even with her homoerotic friendship with Jackie. And I’m not sure that kissing Melissa makes her queer since it could just be her craving intimacy. I don’t know! I’m ready for the ride though!
Also Joel was in Ginger Snaps! He was the jock guy that Ginger had sex with and spread lycanthropy to. We love a horror cameo!
yes lmaooooo immediately recognized Joel from Ginger Snaps
I’m so excited your recaps are back!! I read ALL of the season 1 recaps before I even watched the show- and now it is my favorite show ever. Buzz Buzz!!
yayyyy welcome back!
Holy crap I was not expecting that ending. I can’t wait to see what the deal is with the secret tape that Callie picked up. Could it possibly be unrelated to someone leaving the phone? Because they could’ve led with that if that’s what they wanted.
i am like…….does Callie even know how to play that tape lol?! she’s Gen Z……I feel like it’s gonna take her a minute
Right?? Unless Jeff & Shauna have a stock of tiny camcorder tapes that they pull out from time to time, how would Callie have a clue how to watch that thing?
feel like she’ll have to get crafty and get one on ebay. but also if 1 person is going to have the equipment she needs, it’s probably Misty. so maybe she’ll try to get one from her somehow. she’s certainly getting comfy manipulating her mom’s teammates lol
Who even has those small cassette players anymore?
I’m so happy the recaps are back!! I still have to process the episodes, but I know that I liked the surprise of the time jump in the past timeline. I love how this show manages to keep me on my toes. So good
Also Shauna is so scary, in both timeline, but then she does something like talk shit to the joels, and I remember why I love her.
So happy to be back!
I truly love how scary Shauna is at ALL AGES
-When Mari drank the hot chocolate–I was reminded of Jackie drinking the hot chocolate in her (or Shauna’s?) dream before her death and Lottie not consuming her drink before waking from her hyperthermia induced dream.
-It’s been interesting seeing the competitive dynamic between Teen Nat and Shauna. In my S1 rewatch, in the episode where adult Tai, Nat and Shauna attempt to thwart the blackmailer, I noticed that there was such jarring hostility coming from Nat towards Shauna. We’re seeing the origin?
-Loved Shauna seeming flabbergasted that Misty could have a drinking problem.
yes great point, Mari drinking the hot chocolate doesn’t necessarily confirm the reality of Coach’s ration box if we consider the near-death hallucination Jackie had about hot chocolate!
Yes that hot chocolate callback is so interesting! I am inclined to think that the rations are real and are telling us a little more about the dead guy in the attic/whatever else was there before them, but who knows!
Hell yes with the hot chocolate call back! Thank you for drawing attention back to this, I totally forgot.
I’m also super curious what the letters (KUH) on the ration box could mean. Also the design of the ration’s labels seems very interesting/strange even if I could spot that the peanut butter bar was almost certainly a Clif bar from a mile away…
i want to know exactly like WHEN the box is from
THIS. The hot chocolate immediately made my spine tingle, it feels like a very clear callback to Jackie, and either therefore a hint that something supernatural is happening w/r/t Coach’s delusions, or a nice little motif being used as foreshadowing. (And even if it’s just a motif or a coincidence, the idea that coincidences can feel supernatural and we don’t ever really know if they are or not is a big part of the show’s mysticism.) Anyway, yes, agreed!
Shauna checking the door was closed to make sure Callie wouldn’t hear her asking for the manager took me out
SAME
I’m not certain, but I thought Tai dropped the matches from the restaurant into the prayer candle, not her credit card.
yes i have indeed been corrected about this so i’ll fix!
So happy for autostraddle recaps and a healthy comment section. Thank you!
ME TOO!!!!!!!!!! SO HAPPY TO HAVE ALL Y’ALL HERE!!! I WAS REALLY WORRIED NO ONE WOULD COMMENT LOL
What a mf episode. What an episode…that ending tho…my partner and I both let out the biggest, gayest gasp like truly. I cannot WAIT to see where that goes.
Other details: thank you for pointing out the connection between Lottie ans Travis’s current shroom therapy experiments and the final moments of Travis’s life! They hve a pretty toxic dynamic and I’m not sure how much we’ll see now that Lottie has a new target (which…yikes…not Akilah!! My baby!!) but I do love to see it when it comes out.
Also I kind of loved seeing Misty and Nat’s dynamic as teens looking for Ben together. One of the biggest things I’m going to miss this season is Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis’s scenes together. I’m curious if we might get more of it in the teen timeline instead, especially if (as it’s been implied) Nat’s rule is ‘dislocated’ by another teammember and Nat may potentially be ostraciszed.
I love every single moment of Mari and Ben together…Mari I love you…you’ll get a last name someone day I believe in you!
worried about Akilah too!!!
i reeeeeally miss Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis together. they brought so much humor
I think it’s so interesting that in the teen timeline, Misty is willing to betray Nat’s trust by telling Shauna that she thinks Nat knows where Ben is. She really will do anything for someone to think she’s valuable, so I’m curious where that will lead.
yeah i think Misty likes to pick 1 person and be intensely loyal to them but has no issue replacing who that person is if the power scales tip in a new way
Dark Ben is amazing, love that for him. The hot cocoa reminded me of Jackie’s death dream. Queer Shauna makes so much sense! Lottie was basically psychologically torturing poor Travis, I wonder if she’ll move to Akilah or her obsession with Travis will continue.
felt genuinely bad for Travis!!
WE ARE SO BACK! As a way to avoid spoilers, I’ll start off by saying I’m really enjoying the music already this season. Fiona Apple, Cat Stevens, I’m having a good time.
Hopefully that’s enough filler space for me to say
.
.
.
I’ve always been a bi-Shauna truther so I’m calling this episode my VINDICATION on that one. I’m also very onboard with Swank’s character being adult Melissa come back. Because Shauna definitely needs more messy ex-lover drama (she doesn’t, but I need to see it lol). Also, her pride as Callie’s entrails stunt was golden.
I love Tai and Van so much but I found myself trying not to invest in their adult relationship too much because it’s gonna make me sad when it ends in tragedy. I love the comment that postulated Van got unexpected good news though, so I’m going to try and ride that high because they are so deliciously messy I can’t help but stan. I kinda worried that Van was introduced just to die last season, so hopefully that’s not the case!
As a smaller aside, the way the rituals are building up in the wilderness timeline is fully creeping me out. I felt so uneasy watching the solstice scenes even though they were pretty tame. Also, Lottie, in all timelines, can you maybe stop manipulating vulnerable teenagers for your cultish ends? The scene of Travis holding the duck almost made me tear up because they really are all just kids still!
I really wondering what we are getting set up for with adult Misty next in regards to the survivors lack-of-support group they’ve got going on, and boy and I nervous and excited for that!
Thanks for these reviews, I love the community of getting to comment and speculate all together, and I also love being able to double check here whenever the show makes me go “did that really just fucking happen?” Cheers to another mind bending season!
Also! I don’t know where else to talk about the promotion for this season but does anyone else use Bumble? Because they ran ads with the adult characters as if they had a dating profile. Seeing Misty Quigley pop up on my app outright scared me 😂
OMG I hadn’t heard about this yet lol
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I actually hope there are no more survivor reveals, unless it’s Ben. I think Hillary Swank isn’t Melissa, even though that seemed to be what they were implying at the end of the episode. It just seems a little odd for the characters that weren’t even present in season 1, and barely present in season 2, to suddenly have such a larger role. Not complaining about the kiss though!
My instinct is to agree, but also after that kiss, I’m willing to be convinced.
i think there’s something Shauna and Tai say in their conversation in the first season when they meet up at the diner that left the door open for additional survivors. i totally get what you’re saying! but i think there could possibly be explanations for why other survivors weren’t specifically discussed by name by the others
I absolutely agree that the 2 Lotties have the least aligned performances of any of the pairs we’ve seen so far, but I actually think it’s gotten closer this season than it was last season. With teen Lottie’s willingness to push Travis, giving her a slightly harsher edge, and adult Lottie’s fall from her cult leader status giving her more opportunity for the sort of lost softness we’ve seen from teen Lottie.
hi i’m back here to report that i have just learned that the butterfly shirt Teen Shauna was wearing during HatGate was actually Jackie’s AHHH
yes!
I am weirdly so emotional about having this show back? And there being autostraddle posts about it! I have never murdered or eaten anyone, but I think having a show that is as highprofile and big budget as this that has so much queerness in makes me feel someway I can’t put my finger on.
Hopefully that will stop anything spoilery popping up on the side bar!
– ahhhh that kiss!!
– I am excited for Callie becoming intertwined, and the parralels of Lottie/Travis and Lottie/Callie are fascinating and spooky.
– I am worried what Misty rejecting Walter will do for the rest of the girls, seeing as he covered up Adam’s murder for them.
– Adding Mortimer to #animalsafetywatch
– I am suspicious of the army containers and what that means. Is Mari actually dead and Ben’s seeing her alive like with Shauna and Jackie? Is this another time line? I don’t trust it!
-Am definitely of the theory that Van has gone into spontaneous remission.
– Misty used to drug people for control, and now Callie is doing it to her. I feel like there’s something with Callie having bits of all the yellowjackets in her or something.
Thanks for getting these recaps up so quickly Kayla! You deserve a medal for keeping that kiss a secret!
P.S Small edit – I think Callie asks Lottie for a truth and Mistie suggests its a dare?
“I feel like there’s something with Callie having bits of all the yellowjackets in her or something.” oh i loooooooove this
THANK YOU I ACCEPT MY GAY MEDAL 🎖️
I’m soooo happy this show is back. It is the cathartic nostalgia that I very much need at this wild time. And so happy for these recaps Kayla and the fun comments!
Ok was that long enough?
Spoilers:
– In the recap of this episode, the flashback on the cassette drop showed a profile of long blond (woman) hair. Don’t think that was in Ep 1. IMO this is direction to support the idea that it’s Melissa, esp with the context of this episode.
– with Ben convincingly saying he didn’t burn down the cabin paired with Tai and the match book, that seems suggestive too. I don’t remember where Tai was when the cabin caught fire – weren’t they all inside?
Don’t necessarily believe either of those – could just be misdirection. Ben is “off” enough in the woods atp that maybe he did burn the cabin.
One other thought- what is Walter up to? Other than giving Misty a taste of her own medicine?
I do think it’s possible Ben doesn’t even know what he’s doing because he has been in such a dissociative state
yeah i keep running through different potential culprits of burning the cabin down, but Tai was inside with the others when the fire broke out. i can’t really think of anyone else it could have been? unless it was somehow naturally caused? which supports my blossoming theory of them just basically fighting with nature the whole time
I had the thought about Tai as well… no one woke up until the fire was BLAZING which sure maybe the cabin was dry enough to burn quickly? But if not, Tai could have left and came back. The scene of her taking the matches from the restaurant, Van saying “doesn’t this place just make you want to burn it to the ground?” Or something like that….
Also, Ben did seem convincing about not burning the cabin down to me but he is definitely in and out of some kind of hallucinatory state.
I’ll be rewatching tonight before we watch ep 3. So I’ll pay a bit more attention.
Thank you Kayla for these recaps!! I was feeling cautious about season 3 despite being a die-hard fan since the pilot first aired because some parts of the end of last season just didn’t quite work for me, but these first two episodes and your recaps have me fully hyped for this long-awaited return!
Hopefully that is enough to avoid any spoilers appearing on the front page lol
One thing to add!! I’ve seen a few commenters helpfully point out that Tai actually dropped the matchbook from the restaurant into the prayer candle, and there’s another detail too – the matchbook has the name of the restaurant on it, which is “Pas D’ame,” which google translate (I don’t know, I suck at French!) tells me means “no soul.” 100% intentional on the part of the writers for sure, and she BURNS IT?! In a PRAYER CANDLE?! God I love this show
ohhhhh love those details!!!
Just watched this episode today & I’ve been scanning comments on both recaps for HOURS just to see if anyone else caught the glorious unsubtlety of “pas d’âme” !
I cackled about it being a jab at the soullessly pretentious rich people food (foie gras candy floss? nope. & not very vegetarian for Tai, i’d add). Then you add the layers of her anxieties about what happens to “souls” post-death (ie. being haunted by Mr. No Eyes Jusr Vibes since her grandmother’s passing), and more directly about what past violence & Bad Tai might mean for her own “soul.”
Tldr: are you even a gay brown femme if you don’t have religious trauma about being a soulless demon (yes, this is me projecting)?
Also thank you for three whole seasons of recaps!! Here we go again~~~
I’m so torn between not wanting anymore survivors and wanting adult Shauna to be confronted with her
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
ex-girlfriend! If it does turn out to be her, I’m going to need some real justification for why they never even discussed her the last two seasons when getting the gang back together.
Also the kiss was spoiled for me by Twitter which is probs what I deserve for still going on Twitter.
ugh sorry you were spoiled, that sucks!!!!
idk i totally understand the position of people who don’t want more survivors but for some reason i am convinced they’ll be able to pull it off
Yeah my foremost issue with more survivors is how they didn’t come up so far, particularly with the blackmail plot (secondary issue is not enough deaths for story impact, but I guess they’re solving that, however unsatisfactorily, with an evolving cast of redshirts). I have wondered if the in-universe explanation will simply be that varsity never saw jv as being relevant or part of their group. I’ve had to suspend my disbelief that these divisions wouldn’t disintegrate in the wilderness, since they do seem to be using this structure to support the introduction of new largely irrelevant victims each season. I really do wish that they had written some of the actual mains (and not only Akilah & Mari as the jv members who had roles from inception) to have been victims of the warring cannibalistic factions because it’s stronger storytelling even if painful for audiences. Melissa is looking to be the exception and I also can’t help wanting her to show up in Shauna’s present!
I think at least the blackmail part can be explained, since it was Jeff the whole time. He just reached out to the survivors who Shauna has had some amount of contact with and whose contact info he could easily get.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE these recaps, thank you Kayla!!
A few thoughts I’d love to contribute… spoiler space…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Ever since s01e01 I have also always thought Shauna desired Jackie – she may not have known what it was, but when Jeff climbs out of Jackie’s window and Jackie jumps into Shauna’s car, the vibe is very queer, at least from Shauna’s side of the vehicle. I think Shauna even before the wilderness gets off on risk and danger more than the actual act of sex, which informs a lot of how Shauna behaves throughout all of her timelines. I think we’re getting ready for a real trip with young Shauna’s arc this season – and I said that to myself even before THE KISS! Which made me spill my glass of wine and accidently toss my cat off my lap.
I had to rewind three times when teen Tai and Van were walking in the woods looking for Mari to understand their conversation (I usually have subtitles on, but there’s so much surprise in Yellowjackets, I try to keep them off so I don’t get 1/2 second spoilers, lol). So I am probably way wrong wrong wrong on this, but I kept hearing Van say to Tai “yeah well she never wanted to believe you did it.” ….. That in combination with adult Tai burning that matchbook makes me very much think that ‘Bad Tai’ set the cabin on fire. (So ‘Good Tai’ would definitely want to go full force into making new living spaces!). (Again, I’m sure Van said ‘yeah well she never wanted to believe he/Ben did it’ but…….)
I’m nervous and excited to see what in the world happens with Walter’s storyline. And if Missy is going to go way off the rails now that Shauna used her in exactly the way Walter predicted.
LMAO SORRY TO YOUR CAT BUT THAT’S HILARIOUS
i’m preeeeetty sure Van said “she never wanted to believe HE did it” because the second time i watched the ep i did have subtitles on
I always felt that there were more queer characters in the girls soccer team. It was only a matter of time to find out.
Among the 4 characters I suspected to be queer, I doubted Shauna less than the others (Jackie, Melissa, and Natalie) :)
Regardless of the series, I personally think that at least one fifth of women are queer, but still the majority prefer to either suppress or ignore those feelings or hide them for some reason, almost like Shauna.
i’m a little surprised there aren’t just more hookups in general amongst ALL of them in the wilderness lol
I swear I posted but maybe my comment didn’t upload?
to answer my Q on recap #1 – i feel like the blonde watching callie eating ice cream / leaving the tape could very well be melissa/hilary swank? I’ve always wondered if there were other survivors and if so why our crew never interacted with them so I am so here for this storyline !! especially since we get to lean into shauna’s queerness! I’ve always read shauna as queer/bi and I think your take on the complexity of her friendship with jackie as well as her discomfort fitting into the heteronormative jersey housewife role is spot on! also go shauna for putting those dicks in their place; i get that jeff would be disappointed but they weren’t giving him that deal anyway so…>?
i felt bad for misty again this ep! why did they let her drive home like that ???? i am loving the callie/lottie shenanigans though.
tai and van are so cute together! i wish people would stop getting gravely injured or dead every time they kiss?? i think the theory of van no longer dying is very interesting and I’m curious if “It” hasn’t completed receiving its sacrifices for that miracle hence the bleeding foot & dead waiter?
callie is steadily moving upward in the yellowjackets character power rankings TBH
I also couldn’t believe that they let Misty drive home like that. Some commenters were speculating that Walter had been manipulating Misty and trying to drive a wedge between her and her friends, but they have been so truly awful to her that I’m convinced that he was actually just right and trying to get her to see the obvious truth.
I’m also “watching” Yellowjackets only through these recaps and I’m enthralled. Thank you Kayla !
But, has it really been that long without an episode ? Wow I’m really haunted then, seems like only a few weeks have gone by.
hahahaha welcome!! happy to have you here
I’m gunning for more Jolly Hitcher flop content because we might get to see the bitchy desk clerk from S2 again 🥹
Speaking of Yellowjackets who are possibly lying…I’m curious to know how reliable Lottie’s account of Travis’ death is, especially in light of how we see them interact in this episode. I’ve always felt like she elided some details, even if unintentionally.
Flip not flop! But I have a feeling it will be that, too…
I DEFINITELY DO NOT TRUST LOTTIE’S ACCOUNT OF HIS DEATH
Cheating is experimenting?????
Not enough discussion of how hot adult Tai and Van are together imo…and the fact that they slept together but we didn’t get to see it?? Damn that water glass for interrupting the frisking scene
VERY HOT VERY CURSED
OK so-
– speaking of different people’s lines acting as a foreshadowing (speak to the manager lines), Misty makes the comment in the kitchen about “we’re all afraid of your mom” and then in the final scene between Melissa and Shauna, Melissa says “everyone’s afraid of you, but I’m not.” I do not think this is unintentional!!!! They’re all afraid of Shauna, even as adults, so they put up with her/do as she says/keep her around. But what if Melissa survives, grows up, and is still not afraid of Shauna, and therefore is absolutely the person who’s fucking with her in the bathroom with the phone, her backyard with the cassette, and showing up to the bar after Nat’s funeral? It would like up… but I’m still not happy with Jenna/Hilary casting bc I don’t think they look enough alike!!!
– I 100% believe that (other) Tai and Van causing that waiter’s death has gotten rid of Van’s cancer, and that’s why Van spent so long at urgent care for the smallest cut in the world and came home all weird about it. Tai and Van are lying to each other….classic… and I think maybe Van doesn’t want to tell Tai because maybe she thinks it’s the only reason Tai left her family for her? But I don’t think that’s the case for Tai, but I see why Van might think that. If they just told each other the truth (waiter’s dead, cancer is gone), they would be able to put two and two together!!!
– Piggy backing on the above ^^ it does make you wonder how many other life-for-death trades have happened that we’re unaware of. Of course Javi died “at the hands of the wilderness” and they all credit that for helping them survive the winter, but have there been more 1:1 trades going on?
– I like the theory that other tai burned down the cabin, but I’m not entirely convinced yet. HOWEVER – adult Tai dropping the matches into the candle at the church… and the shot of the matches before the cabin burnt down…. matches, fire, death… there’s something there.
– I’m still not convinced the army rations aren’t hallucinations. Why would there be army rations there? If there’s army rations there, then the government(????) is aware of that area of the wilderness and therefore would have maybe searched there? maybe a stretch, but it feels allll too random.
– I really hate young Lottie and what she’s doing to Travis. Can’t help but to feel really sad that adult Travis becomes a drug addict and Lottie is actively feeding him drugs day in and day out. Did she set off his addiction? Of course, it’s fairly normal for someone who has experienced that much trauma to turn to drugs but it’s just really sad to watch considering what happens to him later. I don’t blame him for trying to get Lottie to focus on Akilah. I would have done the same thing but would have picked a worse person to pin her on lol. Akilah is too sweet.
also not convinced as to the reality of the rations. all the points brought up about the hot chocolate being too reminiscent of jackie’s death scenes are too convincing that something is afoot/reality-adjacent
shauna’s behaviour with her baby’s body mirroring but also differing from her possessiveness around jackie’s corpse… very compelling!
speaking of catholics, i’m thinking a lot about “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”
i can’t see coach ben making it out of this season alive but god i love him. he’s a hero to me.
worried about akilah!!!! if something Bad happens to her i think this will contribute a lot to travis’s guilt and general unwellness post-wilderness
melissa yellowjackets YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN GAY TO ME!!!!!!!!!
i appreciate jeff finally asserting himself!!! he was almost becoming unbelievably a wife guy
ALSO WORRIED ABOUT AKILAH.
and yes, i love that you point that out about Shauna with her baby’s body. she seems to struggle with letting go of the people she has lost in a very literal way when it comes to closely guarding their corpses.
I just wanna call out Elijah Wood’s absolutely phenomenal acting in the scene where misty tells him he wouldn’t get it bc the team has been through life or death situations together……..completely ignoring that basically their whole relationship has been a series of life or death situations.
He killed A COP for her, and the way it plays across his face is great.
I love how Shauna is the most feared Yellowjacket – rightfully so! – but we see in the adult timeline she’s kinda just flailing all the time.
I don’t trust Lottie with Callie, nor do I trust Callie with Lottie! Bad combo!
yeah even Adult Shauna is this super fascinating contradiction at all times. always sorta fumbling her way through lies and very impulsive but also still maintains a VERY SCARY demeanor much like her teenage self. i feel like there’s something terrifying always just beneath the surface with her
I have nothing insightful to add – unless thinking Misty’s bee PJs were cute counts – but I’m delighted YJ is back and so are your recaps!
Mildly annoyingly, I got spoiled for the final scene. I’d already sensed a vibe from ep 1 though, so I don’t think I would have been screaming or throwing cats levels of gagged anyway.
ugh yeah i feel bad for anyone who got spoiled!
– I like how I hated Callie as much as Shauna did in season 1 and now she has some of my favorite lines. Way to turn the character around!
– Had to REALLY strain to suspend my disbelief in ep 1 during the solstice scene. Even if they have been killing deer, etc, how did they tan the hides enough to make those hoods? Where did they get that much white fabric to make their gowns? We send those paper lanterns off in Thailand every year, so how did they get the wire, wax and other materials to make them? OK, forcing my over logical autistic brain to shut up now.
– Love love love having these recaps and comments section back. It’s my favorite part of watching Yellowjackets!!
I feel like the first season really did a great job of putting us in Shauna’s POV because yeah they do they to make you dislike Callie but when you think about it…Callie is no worse than Shauna as a teen…actually in many ways, she’s BETTER? Lol I am finding Callie so so fun this season but she has always been pretty great!
Yeah, there’s definitely some suspension of disbelief that has to happen. Sometimes I wonder if everything they wear/have built is actually way more rudimentary and bare bones but we’re sort of seeing it “through their eyes” and their POV is distorted and they see what they want to see. Interesting to consider!
I really like the point that maybe we’re seeing a more romanticized version of their situation. We’ve seen that in different scenes like when they ate Jackie and it became this Greek mythology dinner party.