Well, it’s that time of the week again! Time to scream about Yellowjackets!!! Welcome to your Yellowjackets 308 recap, where we will be discussing “A Normal, Boring Life,” written by Julia Bicknell and directed by Anya Adams. Catch up on past recaps (and their comments sections)! Remember to preface any spoilers in your comments with some filler so they don’t appear on the homepage! Feel free to put forth your own theories or just focus on things I might spend less time on. I love the collaborative recapping experience these recaps have birthed!
Buckle up, buttercup! Because Yellowjackets isn’t letting up on the gas any time soon. We’re barreling down a pit in Shauna’s minivan with achey brakes, and who knows what we’ll hit on the way down! Okay, enough vamping. There’s much to discuss this week when it comes to “A Normal, Boring Life,” a concept the Yellowjackets wouldn’t know if it bit their ear off.
We open on a teenaged Shauna scanning packages of meat over and over in a grocery store. “It’s easier this way,” she assures the customer, who turns out to be Jackie. “What are you doing here?” Shauna asks her, and Jackie turns the question right back around on her.
“You really did not pan out,” Jackie adds. The music playing at the grocery store distorts, and the meat packages transform into wrapped body parts. Shauna yells at Jackie for calling her “Shipman” and tells her she has always hated it. Shauna asks if this is what her life is really going to look like, and Jackie asks how she’s supposed to know. “I’m dead, remember? You killed me,” Jackie says. They both hear buzzing and look up at the fluorescent lights where giant moths are trapped. They’re drawn to the light, Jackie points out.
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Adult Shauna then wakes up from this apparent nightmare she has had while asleep in her van outside Hannah’s daughter’s house. I love the opening, because I spent it wondering if we were watching a dream or a flashback or a premonition or some combination of all of these things. Was it Teen Shauna’s nightmare or Adult Shauna’s? Was it a glimpse (forward or back, depending on which version of Shauna’s timeline we’re positioned in) of Shauna’s life immediately after rescue? It seems very possible that she could have had a stint at a grocery store before becoming a housewife. Ultimately, it is a dream of course, but there are likely elements of truth to it that go beyond just the symbolic. The moths to the light though, that’s a multi-meaning symbol, the Yellowjackets consistently drawn to dangerous circumstances for one reason or another, all of them like moths to a flame.
But Shauna is back in her reality now, and she slips the hunting knife she brought with her under the sleeve of her innocuous mom flannel. She approaches the house like she’s stalking prey, alert and observant. She enters a pretty normal looking suburban house. Whoever lives here looks like they’re pretty well off. When she hears voices, she tucks into a pantry. A woman bounds into the kitchen talking to her kids, wondering what “mama” has made for them. According to the subtitles, this woman is Alex. And she definitely isn’t played by Hilary Swank.
Then Hilary Swank does emerge. She’s wearing a backwards baseball cap that looks very familiar. She and Alex banter a bit, revealing they’re wives. Alex and the kids leave, and Shauna watches as Alex’s wife sets out a cutting board as if to slice an apple. But then Hilary Swank turns to face Shauna through the slatted pantry door and holds the knife up. “Whoever the fuck you are, you better get out here right now. You have no idea whose house you just walked into,” she says.
Shauna emerges confidently, points out that actually she does know and calling her by the name we’re expecting this point: Melissa. She’s alive! She has a wife! She’s going by the name Kelly! She looks very scared! “Shauna?” she asks. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing alive?” Shauna asks. We cut to the main title sequence.
So those of you who predicted last week that Melissa still could have made it out of the wilderness and could be alive without the other Yellowjackets’ knowledge were correct! And those of you who were concerned about the believability of more living survivors can rest assured: The Adult Yellowjackets really did think they were the only ones left, because they thought Melissa died after the wilderness. We’ll come back to that.
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Melissa asks for Shauna to put the knife down and to be sane, and Shauna questions her judgment on that one: “Sane? Like marrying the daughter of a woman we killed? And changing your name to Kelly?” she asks. Melissa says a lot has happened in the last 25 years. Shauna says they’re both keeping their knives.
At the hospital, Misty’s trying to get ahold of Shauna. Tai is being told by a worker that nothing else can be done for Van. “It’s time to think about palliative care,” the woman says. Tai doesn’t want that. And as we saw in the last episode, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to save Van — or, at least, Other Tai is — and that includes making sacrifices. And we know what that really means. When the woman touches Tai’s wrist in a gesture of care, something shifts in Tai, and she definitely becomes the Other One. She looks around, and when Misty asks if there’s anything she can do, Tai tells her to help her find the palliative care unit. Misty is confused. She thought they didn’t want to transfer her there. “We don’t,” Tai says ominously. Is she going to kill dying people to save Van? Will that even work? Is it an even trade?!
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In the wilderness, Misty wakes up without her glasses, confused and unable to see. She feels around for them and eventually finds them, but they’re cracked, likely meaning her vision will be fractured for the rest of her time in the wilderness. Akilah and Travis are following Kodiak, who is supposedly leading them to the pick-up point. Akilah asks Travis what about the others, and he says there isn’t time, that they can get back to civilization and then send rescue back for the rest. Akilah says Ben was supposed to be their way home, but Travis says she was just tripping on cave fumes just like he was just tripping on mushrooms. “This is all made up, it’s not real,” Travis says, telling her she’s not a prophet and he never had a vision about her being a seer. Travis thinks he has convinced her, but as they walk on, Akilah leaves a piece of her cape behind, leaving a path to either follow back or for someone else to follow. Travis is right; so many of the rituals they’re following have been made up, influenced by outside factors like hallucinogenics and coincidences. But it doesn’t matter that they’re not literally real; they’re real to the people who want to believe them. The believers are desperate to make sense and order out of the senseless violence of life. We’re even seeing that play out in the present-day timeline with Tai and Van.
Back at camp, the girls stand in a mob over Hannah asking a million questions. From Tai: What day is it? From Shauna: Can you get us out? From Van: Did Mulder and Scully get together? Natalie tells everyone to shut up and let her speak. Hannah explains they’re research scientists studying a species of frogs. She looks scared and bewildered, a lot like prey. Shauna wants to know what people are saying about them back home. “Who are you?” Hannah asks.
Nat says they’re a soccer team from Wiskayok, New Jersey whose plane crashed, and there’s a flash of recognition from Hannah. She remembers now; she saw it on the news. The girls want to know if anyone is still searching for them, and Hannah says she isn’t sure, that they looked for months. They’ve been out here a lot longer than a couple months. The realization that no one is even looking for them anymore reverberates through the group. Shauna, of course, is angry. “So you’re saying that people just gave up? Our friends? Our families?” she asks. Hannah says she really doesn’t know.
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As a result of their isolation and everything they’ve had to do to survive in the wilderness, the group has become so insular that they can’t even wrap their minds around the fact that this woman doesn’t know who they are and can’t tell them anything about their lives back home. Their tunnel vision and insularity is exactly what led to Ben’s death. And now it’s bungling their chance at rescue. Hannah asks if Shauna is the captain, and Melissa scoffs, clearly having soured on Shauna after she abandoned her with an arrow in her shoulder last episode. Shauna asks if Hannah will start fucking remembering stuff if she says yes, and Nat interjects. Shauna’s not the captain. Shauna retorts that neither is she, and Nat says what we’re all thinking: Yeah, because their captain is dead and has been for a long time now. Jackie probably wouldn’t have solely been able to save this shitshow, but she’d be showing a whole lot more diplomacy than Shauna is.
“So you all built this yourselves?” Hannah asks about their shelters. “Yeah, who else do you think would have done it?” Shauna asks. “You obviously all left us out here to die.” She is once again ascribing blame to the wrong target. Hannah has nothing to do with the fact that they were all left to die. She barely remembers the news story about them. She has nothing to do with any of this. But she’s an easier target for Shauna’s rage than it is for any of them to accept that their families might not even be looking anymore, might have given up hope when they’ve all somehow managed to keep going despite all odds.
Hannah says she can’t get them out on her own but that the guide, Kodi, can. Misty arrives and says she knows where Travis, Akilah, and “the other one” are. Shauna asks Tai to watch Hannah and Lottie while they all go searching for the others.
Jeff and Callie are having dinner at the hotel when Jeff spots the Joels. They summon him over, and he acquiesces. He tells them he’s having a staycation with the fam, and the Joels react as if he’s lying to cover up and affair, pointing at Callie. He tells them that’s his daughter. Despite this awkwardness, Jeff says he wants to take another swing at business with them. They point out his competition, and Jeff recognizes him from FurnitureFam.net, who Jeff says they should not go with! I’m living for the hyperlocal furniture distribution drama.
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Jeff gets a phone call from Misty who wants to know if he has heard from Shauna. She also asks him where Shauna was the day Lottie died, clearly still convinced Shauna killed Lottie. All this phone call manages to do really is perplex and overwhelm Jeff. “What’s Shauna done now?” he asks. Callie wants to know what all that was about, and Jeff not so convincingly says things are all good.
At Melissa and her wife Alex’s house, we get some answers about what happened to Melissa, who says Shauna could have just knocked on the door like a sane person. “How are you alive?” Shauna asks. Apparently, they all went to her funeral. Melissa says she faked her own suicide and left a note. “Even without a body, the cops will take the easy win,” Melissa says. Shauna asks why she did it, and Melissa says “come on, Shauna.” And then in a very Shauna manner, Shauna asks if Melissa is still in love with her. Melissa laughs. “I’m not still in love with you. I mean, honestly, I never was,” Melissa says. Ouch!
She says that she had no choice. After they all made it back, she was no longer one of the rest of them. “And you scared the absolute fucking shit out of me,” she adds. It seems only some of the Yellowjackets were able to live with what they’d done in the wilderness — and I think we still haven’t seen the true extent of what that encompasses yet. Shauna buried herself in her bootleg suburban fantasy life; Van isolated herself and lived in the past via VHS; Lottie started a cult; Tai repressed to the point of re-activating a sleepwalking alter ego. Melissa faked her own death to start over entirely, unable to live the life prescribed to her after everything that happened.
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Now Melissa wants to know why Shauna is here. Shauna pulled out the tape and says she wants to know why Melissa is fucking with her. Melissa says Hannah told her where to find the tape and begged her to give it to her daughter if she ever made it out. But Melissa didn’t do that, because if anyone heard what was on it, they’d know the Yellowjackets were murderers. Melissa didn’t want Alex to have to live with that. But Melissa fell in love with her. She insists it isn’t a sympathy marriage or a fucked-up version of survivor’s guilt. “Or shit, I don’t know, maybe it is.” Yeah, girl, I’m gonna have to agree! You went to check on this woman to make sure she was okay after you and your friends killed her mother?! Maybe ate?! (We don’t know Hannah’s fate yet, but I also did notice she’s pretty diminutive…could she be pit girl? REGARDLESS: Shauna just said they killed her.) And then you FELL IN LOVE WITH HER? It’s very much sounding like a fucked-up version of survivor’s guilt, perhaps made even more complicated by Hannah potentially taking on a maternal role for some of the girls just as a fact of being older.
Hilary Swank crushes this little monologue! Melissa really does love her wife and really is committed to living a different life. She goes to church! And she knows none of it matters to Shauna, but it’s real! And it’s pure! And…
“You’re right,” Shauna says. “None of that matters to me.” The music shifts. Shauna looks deadly serious as she tells Melissa to sit. We’re seeing an old version of Shauna, all that misguided confidence of her vengeful teenage self. The Shauna who threw Jackie out in the cold. The Shauna who beat Lottie to death. The Shauna who stabbed her boyfriend because she had a feeling.
In the wilderness, Akilah stops to tie her shoes. She’s stalling. Then, when she’s sure she has heard the right sounds, she aims the gun at Travis and Kodi and tells them to stop walking. The rest of the Yellowjackets emerge, surrounding them. Kodi tries to say there’s more of them out here, but Van doesn’t fall for that. She and Tai saw the camp; there were only three sleeping bags. Kodi is learning in real time that these teens aren’t to be fucked with and are more wily than they appear.
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Shauna asks Travis and Akilah were going, and Akilah tries to help cover for Travis, likely knowing full well that Shauna wouldn’t hesitate to execute someone if she felt abandoned. Kodi tells Nat the hike out of here will take six days, so she asks everyone to pack six days of stuff. Shauna tells Nat she’s not in charge anymore. Misty asks what they do about them. What if they tell people what they saw once they’re rescued? “Hey, I didn’t see shit,” Kodi says. Hannah agrees that they’ll say whatever they want them to say. She swears to god. Shauna says that doesn’t mean anything out here.
Nat says they’ll have time to figure out what to say and what to do but that for now they should focus on rescue. They can go home! She tells Kodi and Hannah to bury Edwin, tasking Mari with supervising them as they do so. Lottie finally chimes in to say they can’t go. “We don’t belong there anymore,” she says. Nat asks why the fuck they should listen to her. Lottie’s grasp on reality is tenuous, but her words seem to hit some of the others, including Shauna. They’ve grown increasingly attached to the idea that they’ve been called into something larger than their previous lives in the wilderness. Shauna feels powerful in the wilderness. And she has already lost so much. Perhaps rescue doesn’t signal relief for her so much as a return to a life she doesn’t want. Just think again of that nightmare sequence from the beginning of the episode. Even Adult Shauna seems haunted by what’s awaiting her on the other side of the wilderness.
Here’s what Adult Shauna wants to know from Melissa: Why send her the tape if she was so worried about Shauna puncturing this perfect life Melissa has made for herself? Melissa says it was haunting her. She hadn’t thought about the tape in years. It was her leverage in case any of the others came looking for her. Shauna asks why they’d come looking for her, but Melissa is basically like read the room, bitch! “Why would Lottie start a cult? Why would you all join it and start making sacrifices again to appease some I don’t, whatever the fuck?” Melissa has clearly been keeping tabs on all of them.
She started having nightmares after she learned Natalie died, and then she started having fucked-up daydreams. She had to do something. Her therapist Barbara tells her she has been holding onto something and needed to let the darkness go. She decided to leave the tape at Shauna’s house as a way of letting go. “Shauna, this was all in the note,” she says when Shauna says it was clearly a threat. Shauna never saw any note though. Does Callie have it?
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Shauna lists all the things that have been happening to her: the phone, the freezer, the brakes. But it seems very apparent Melissa doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. Shauna says it’s clear that the only way to ensure for certain that no one will spill your deepest darkest secrets is to be the only one left. She says it’s why Melissa killed Lottie. But Melissa doesn’t even know Lottie is dead. Shauna’s the only one talking about being the last one standing. And Shauna’s the type of person to really commit to that if she sets her heart on it.
At the hospital, Tai asks Misty to investigate a patient in the palliative care unit. He has end-stage heart failure. “He’s dying anyway,” Tai says, and Misty looks at her confused, repeating her words. Tai says she can’t lose Van and goes into the man’s room with a pillow. Misty asks her why she’s doing this. But Tai can’t do it. She drops the pillow and screams, and his heart starts failing. “Does that count?!” she asks. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so fucked up!
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Similarly striking a very Yellowjackets contrast of humor and horror, Mari watches as Kodiak and Hannah dump Edwin’s body while “Alright” by Supergrass plays. She drinks from a water bottle but when she lifts it back up, there’s a Slurpee in her hand. Misty goes to pee in the woods and imagines real toilet paper and a toilet. Van collapses into an impossibly plush mattress covered in pillows. Yes, the Yellowjackets are dreaming of rescue. Their minds are writing back-home luxuries into their wilderness lives. But the hope of rescue feels as fleeting and fantastical as these imagined visions. Something tells me it isn’t going to be so simple.
Tai interrupts Van rolling around on sleeping bags imagining a mattress to ask her what if they can’t be together when they get back. Tai says they’ve been in the wilderness a long time, but it hasn’t been that long out there. “Do you really think the world has changed that much?” she asks Van. The implication of course is that they’re going to have to re-enter the extremely homophobic reality of 1990s suburban Jersey. Tai and Van were never out in the outside world. Their relationship remained a secret — if not a particularly well kept one — even at the beginning of their time in the wilderness. They don’t know what it looks like to be out in the outside world, if it’s even possible. There are a lot of bad things about the society the Yellowjackets have crafted in the wilderness, but there’s some good, too. Queerness has been normalized. And the queer characters have accessed parts of themselves they may not have been able to in the outside world, including Melissa and Shauna as well.
All of these realities get all mixed up with other fears Tai has about the fact that they’ll have to memorize and be on the same page about everything that happened in the wilderness. Queerness isn’t even the transgression they have to worry about; they killed and ate people. Tai thinks they’re going to have to kill the scientists. Tai couches all of her fears in the fact that they’re threats to her and Van’s relationships. If someone messes up out there, their futures will be fucked. “This will follow us for the rest of our lives,” she says. “This place will follow us for the rest of our fucking lives.” She is extremely correct about that one! But Van points out that getting rescued and going home outweighs that possibility of being forever haunted. When Tai looks back at her, the man with no eyes is standing right behind her. He is the literal manifestation of this haunting she warns about. They’re all taking so much with them out of the wilderness, and I’m not talking about the supplies they’re packing.
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Melissa and Shauna are packing their own supplies when Shauna confronts Melissa to ask what’s the matter. Melissa can’t wait to be rescued and get away from Shauna, who she’s mad at for abandoning her when she was shot. Shauna says she knew Gen would get the bleeding under control and that she wasn’t going to die. She says she also knew she was the fastest person on the team. It has been fascinating to watch Shauna really lean into the soccer roles of it all in this episode, enjoying being mistaken as the captain and bringing up here her speed on the pitch. She wanted to be the one who got the guy who shot her, and neither Melissa or I are really buying this. Shauna wanted to be the fastest for no one other than Shauna.
Melissa does like to hear that Shauna hasn’t ruled out killing him for shooting her. Ah, young love! Melissa asks Shauna what she’s excited to do when they get out, and it’s clear Shauna hasn’t thought about this at all. As Melissa goes on and on about how she wants to do everything she thought she’d never have a chance to do, Shauna sees one of the giant moths from the beginning of the episode fluttering above Melissa’s head. Seems like Tai isn’t the only one bringing a haunting presence out of the wilderness with her.
Adult Shauna tells Adult Melissa she isn’t stupid and she’s not insane. She has to repeat the second one. Melissa wants her to put the past behind her. But Shauna points out none of Melissa’s life is normal either. “It’s a fucking lie.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you don’t have a normal life,” Shauna says. “You don’t get to have a normal life.” It’s clear Shauna’s jealous, angry even, at the possibility that any of the Yellowjackets could have a normal life. She ignores a call from Callie, and Melissa twists the knife (metaphorically speaking), asking if Callie knows what Shauna did and what she’s capable of. “Actually, she does,” Shauna says. “And she still loves you?” Melissa asks. “Yes, she does.”
“Who’s lying now?”
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Indeed, Shauna is throwing around a lot of accusations that are classic projection. What she accuses Melissa of doing — pretending to be someone she is not in order to receive love — is exactly what Shauna is trying to do all the time by manipulating and lying to her family. She can never be her real self, and when it slips out, people get hurt and she has to repeat the cycle of lies and cover-ups.
For example, here she is ignoring her daughter’s phone calls, who just wants to know if she’s alive. Callie watches as her dad screams into a pillow, clearly at a breaking point. She needs him to pull it together. She tells Jeff she doesn’t think anyone is after mom, and he quickly agrees. All the things that Shauna has thought of as attacks have really just been coincidences. She’s paranoid, and she’s a dangerous person when paranoid. Callie says she doesn’t know what her mom or any of them did to survive but that she thinks it messed them up way more than they thought. Jeff agrees and asks her to get her stuff so they can go home.
“Wonderwall” by Oasis starts playing — an unironic favorite of mine!!!!! — and the Yellowjackets keep packing their things up. There’s hope in the air, as Melissa and Gen discuss what their first fast food orders will be. But it’s quickly undercut by Akilah returning to her domain to find her crops have died along with all of the livestock. But when Lottie grabs her shoulder, she snaps out of it. They’re all alive. It was just another vision. Lottie asks if she saw something, and oh lord no one should be telling Lottie about their visions!
Nat returns to the plane to leave Coach’s whistle and say her goodbyes. Nat hears the plane creaking, and she announces they’re going home. “We are leaving whatever you are behind,” she says. It’s hard not to think of her death scene in this moment.
In the present day, Tai goes to Van’s bedside. But she hears the doorknob rattling and turns around to see the real Tai banging at the door begging to see Van. Other Tai says she’s the only one who can help her. “You never did believe,” Other Tai accuses Tai. She’s at war with herself.
As they’re all getting ready to head out for rescue, Lottie announces that she’s staying. Nat tries to give her a pep talk. She knows it’s scary to go back and that a lot of them had given up on getting out. Lottie says she can’t go back. “If I go back, nothing will be well. I won’t, I won’t be well,” Lottie says. “I won’t be me, the me that was made out here.” She wants to believe she’s safer here and the most “well” version of herself.
Shauna announces she’s staying, too. She doesn’t know why. “Something just doesn’t feel right,” she says. Tai joins her. She says whatever it is Shauna and Lottie have been feeling she has been feeling too, since “those two arrived.” She points at Kodi and Hannah. Indeed, I think something about the arrival of the scientists triggered something for some of these characters. Faced by outsiders and reminded of their lives back home, suddenly they can no longer repress anything. They can no longer pretend to just seamlessly slide back into their previous realities. What they did to Jackie, to Javi, to Ben, it’s all eating away at them, and to go back home means the possibility of being devoured. What they did to survive makes sense in the context and bubble of the wilderness, but once they step out of it, it won’t. It’ll destroy them. It’ll make them monsters in outsiders’ eyes.
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Nat thinks they’ve all lost their fucking minds. They can stay behind and the rest of them are going to go get rescued. The group turns to just do that, and Shauna steps forward to tell them no. It’s a wilderness standoff! And Shauna has technically never lost one of those.
Jeff and Callie are checking out of the hotel when they run into the Joels again. “My wife ruined our dinner; I didn’t,” he says. For the first time ever, he throws Shauna under the bus and calls her a crazy person. We’re watching a real shift in ol’ Jeff Sadecki. Wife guy era OVER.
Melissa — no doubt a Wife Guy for her Alex — is still trying to get a rise out of Shauna. “You hate yourself, and you want everyone else to feel just as miserable as you are,” Melissa says. Meeting up with an ex-girlfriend can really be so brutal! She’s reading Shauna for filth and honestly saying a lot of the same things Jeff just did. I can’t blame either one of them. To love Shauna is a kiss of death. Just ask Jackie and Adam.
Melissa gets up to get them both water and asks Shauna why she came here, if it was to kill her. Shauna doesn’t answer. Melissa thinks Shauna came her because she wants her life to explode, gets a kick out of it, loves to burn it all down just to watch. Shauna then attacks Melissa, pushing her down to the ground and punching her repeatedly in the face. Melissa headbutts her, but she doesn’t get away. Shauna doesn’t even use the knife. She bites a piece of Melissa’s shoulder and then makes her eat it.
“Eat it, or I’ll fucking tell your family exactly who you are,” she says, nose dripping blood from the headbutt. One thing’s for sure about Shauna this season: You can never guess exactly what she’s going to do, but you know it’s going to be absolutely sicko shit.
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“Dig Me Out” drops in on this gory forced cannibalism scene, and it’s a perfect needledrop, one of my favorite heartbreak/breakup songs of all time.
The arrival of the outsiders in the wilderness was like holding up a mirror in front of the Yellowjackets, showing them all the worst parts of themselves. To go home would be to live through exponentially. Shauna’s encounter with Melissa in the present day similarly is like holding up a mirror to herself. Melissa says all the things other characters have previously been too afraid to say to Shauna. She shows her who she really is. It’s a wild episode with wild choices, but those choices track with all of the characters’ turmoil in the face of their own reflections. They act as if they can change those reflections, so they act nonsensically. Shauna in particular has gone off the rails in both timelines. But I gotta say: I’m loving it.
Last Buzz:
- “We’re not in high school anymore. Let’s act like sane adults and both put the knives down?” Just a normal conversation between ex-girlfriends!
- “She’s extremely intuitive.” “Barbaras always are.”
- “Haven’t you ever fallen in love with an unhinged woman? Or has every woman you’ve ever been with been fucking boring?” JIFF.
I totally called it last week in my comment (Swank was Melissa and she found Alex and now they’re a couple).
I love this show so much! I watched it once already. I always watch it twice before I comment but I just had to give myself a shout out. Lol. 😂
When did Shauna beat Lottie to death?
Not to death of course, but she beat her after the birth of her baby I think. Shauna was so angry.
It wasn’t to death but she beat the living crap out of Lottie to Lightening Crashes by Live (amazing use of the song BTW). It was after Shauna’s baby died. She could’ve killed her but Lottie survived.
lol i left out the word “nearly” but yeah she would have died if they hadn’t been able to eat javi!
you won! I was shocked, but your comment last week totally nailed it
yes i was so impressed by the people who called it! shout out to you!!!
Another great episode – I’ve really been enjoying this season after season 2, though I’ve always enjoyed your recaps.
I did wonder if a certain revelation last episode was to throw the viewers off the scent and, well…
Apparently I wasn’t wrong, though I wasn’t expecting her to turn up here. It does lend an interesting twist to Shauna’s expression when Van mentioned that Gen and Melissa were dead – I wonder if she blamed herself for Melissa having ‘committed suicide’ all these years – I can definitely see Ghost Jackie turning up a few times to blame her for it.
The ending, while fucked up, is also fascinating – I don’t know if I’m reading it correctly, but it felt like Shauna trying to reclaim Melissa as hers, making her eat human flesh as a way of taking Melissa back to their time in the wilderness. And that wild possessiveness… it’s interesting to contrast it to Shauna’s reaction to thinking that Jeff was cheating on her in season 1 – fucking Adam. Which, sure, ended in blood and death, but that was never aimed at Jeff. How much is the difference between her relationships with Jeff and Melissa and how much is the amount of Shauna’s veneer that’s been stripped away between then and now I’m not sure, but still.
One note – the recape kind of implies that Shauna attacked Melissa because Melissa was getting under her skin, but the proximate cause was actually Melissa going after Shauna’s knife. Not that I exactly blame her, given Shauna’s violent tendencies, but Melissa was the one who basically started the fight.
I missed Melissa going after the knife! I thought Shauna took the opportunity to catch her off guard, not the other way around. I may need to rewatch that scene
yes i super agree with your reading of the final scene! shauna was forcing melissa back into that time like “this is who you REALLY are and where you come from.”
and yes you’re right, Melissa did indeed make the first move (much like making the first move with their first kiss — if a wildly different context lol)
I love that this is when we’re finally hearing Wonderwall now that they think they’re going home. It’s a perfect callback to Rachel’s funeral when Van said “she’ll never hear Wonderwall again”
I forgot about that! Thanks for pointing it out!
I had the same thought – absolutely beautiful song placement!
Totally forgot about that reference, great catch!
It’s a little heartbreaking that needle drop specifically comes right as Shauna’s family decides to give up on her, though maybe it implies some hope for her yet!
THAT’S RIGHT
alternate episode title: a terrible, flat wig
looove that melissa and shauna both ended up housewives but melissa gets to be gay about it. hilary swank does an amazing job of capturing teen melissa’s physicality – even the way she holds the knife! as off the rails as shauna goes in this episode, she is right to point out that it’s BANANAS that melissa FELL IN LOVE WITH AND MARRIED hannah’s daughter. girl, you do NOT have a normal, boring life!
i’m a little nervous that Van and Melissa will die and we’ll be left with only 3 adult survivors in season 4? i want Van to stick around a while longer, at least!
NAT of all people being the one to reach out to Lottie and beg for her to come with them is so poignant and really killed me.
Sophie Thatcher is both deeply affecting throughout the episode and also the most believable New Jersey Italian on the show
sophie thatcher is having such a quiet but powerful season — obsessed
Yellowjackets spoilers for front page
What’s the over/under on Melissa killing Shauna by the end of the season?
I mean, I feel like they’re setting that up for her. Shauna has been slowly losing her mind all season, but now she’s hit the gas pedal on that. Her family is coming around to her being a terrible person. It all seems like a setup for things to reach a fever pitch during the finale, and then somebody (it seems like Melissa now, but it could be Jeff) ends her.
Honestly, if anyone is going to kill Shauna, I feel like, somehow, the only thematically satisfying choice to do it would be Callie, maybe to protect her Dad, maybe to symbolically reject becoming her mom. I feel like of all the people that could kill her, Callie is the only one a dying Shauna might be anything other than 100% pissed about.
yes would love if Callie were the one to do it tbh
Love the recaps Kayla, thank you, they are always my first go to. Although you didn’t make much of them this time, my favourite elements of the show are and always have been the trippy scenes .. what is it with Akilah’s vision in the pen, Lotttie’s dispelling of her fear, Tai’s no-eyed man standing with her in some kind of solidarity?? Mystifying, wonderful.
But to serious spoiler territory:
I too totally knew HSwank was Melissa – they look alike! Beautiful casting, throughout.
Here’s a theory: the girls who stay behind – so far, Lottie, Shauna and Tai – are going to be joined by Nat, Misty, Van and Melissa, i.e. those who survive. And clearly Hanna too for some reason, as she is definitely pit girl. The feeling that Lottie and Shauna is some real intuition
… those who go with Kodi get into some diabolical trouble and none of them make it out at all.
We still have another, what, 6 months in the wilderness? Can’t wait for next week xx
ahhh yes i agree i love the stuff slightly outside of reality. yeah Akilah’s “vision” as such a sharp contrast to the fantasies the rest of the girls are having is definitely telling!!! i feel like she’s tapped into the fact that they’re all actively choosing death/destruction rather than survival
i feel like shauna is on track to be the last yellowjacket standing but maybe i’m wrong!!!!
The back half of the season seems like it is not letting up and I love it. I have friends reacting in horror and it’s like if you want Gilligan’s Island watch that. This is the cannibal cult show and I want more!
It’s interesting Melissa addressed the tape to Shauna Shipman and not Shauna Sadecki considering she’s been keeping up with them. She’s also the only one who knew about Lottie having a cult, and knew somehow they joined it. I think she and Walter have some kind of connection.
Melissa going for Shauna’s knife was such a stupid move. Of course Shauna was going to attack her.
Their rescue isn’t tied to the scientists or their pick up point. That makes me think Kodiak is killed next episode. The showdown is going to be so sick!
THEY REALLY AREN’T LETTING UP!!! every single episode gives me an adrenaline rush. which also makes me think about how in a recent podcast I heard Melanie Lynskey talking about how she doesn’t have a very active adrenal gland so doesn’t really react to being scared or high intensity situations. makes it interesting to think of her performance here!!
I always thought this show would be too scary for me. I wasn’t wrong but somehow it is so compelling that I have accepted the nightmares. I binged the first two seasons and love your recaps, but never commented because I was so far behind. Now that I am caught up, I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate the thought and work you put into the recaps
Yayyyy thanks for commenting and welcome!!!
OH GOD I nearly had a heart attack seeing that photo of the no eyed man!!! I read the recaps before watching partly so I know when to shut my eyes and not see him ahaha AHHHHHH 😭🤪😂😰🫠
SO SCARY
Thanks for pointing out that Jeff threw Shauna under the bus. Tired of seeing comments elsewhere like “he got his balls back” and lauding him for basically just going “lol bitches be crazy” like any misogynist trash could do.
I’m probably wrong on this, but I’m hoping it’ll turn out Callie is manipulating him in order to get back at Shauna. I’m wondering also what happened to that note Melissa said she left with the tape–did Callie remove it?
I do think Callie has realized that trying to get information and power out of her mom is not working so has pivoted to trying to procure those things from Jeff
Okay, this was my favorite completely bonkers episode. Instead of being terrified or hopeless about the wilderness, I was just completely entertained. And amazing recap as always.
The ex-girlfriends with their knives! Melissa’s marriage! Also I didn’t even know who Hillary Swank was, but now a fan.
ex-girlfriends who love knives together…definitely do not stay together
Another nuts episode and again in a good way!
Front page spoiler space….
Ok I can’t stop thinking about how someone on reddit theorized that adult Shauna is actually having a psychotic break or similar and Melissa isn’t really there, party because Melissa’s comments are so on point and the moths of it all. Which would be a twist!!!!
Anyone else bugged that Hilary Swank’s white hat was pristine and didn’t look lived in? Or am I just misunderstanding the level of care other people give their baseball hats?
V intrigued on what will happen with Kodi and if he has an unexpected backstory. Or if he’s just there for the sake of needing someone to shepherd the frog squad through the woods and give false hope of rescue.
Also, ~the Vans~ along with Sophie Thatcher are giving such great performances this season!
i’m actually pretty interested in how Kodi got here too!
Love your recaps, thank you Kayla! I love this show and this season is turning out to be better than season 2.
They really made us wait for Hilary Swank! But so worth it for the incredible scenes with Melanie Lynskey💗 At first I believed Melissa (Kelly) wasn’t responsible for tormenting Shauna, but then with Callie/Jiff not believing and Melissa listing off the offenses, I started to think maybe she was. Especially since her whole character so far has been defined by being obsessed with Shauna. Finding it hard to believe that she would leave the tape for her but want to remain separated and presumed dead by the remaining Yellowjackets.
Another ridiculous omission is the teen Yellowjackets not asking the scientists Where the fuck are we?? How did you get here – by car, by boat?? And instead of going on a strenuous 6-day hike while holding a crossbow to Kodi’s head the entire time, make him describe/map out how to get out! These should all be the first questions.
I was really worried when we first saw the scientists that they were going to join the Yellowjackets, and I started a tirade about shows always adding in straight men to gay storylines. So glad that’s not happening and instead another gay couple is introduced.
Tawny Cyprus is so good at portraying the two Tais, definitely the scariest part of the show for me. She was so scary in season 1, I would have liked to see more of what she’s capable of this season. Maybe Van keeps her more in check. Interested to see how Shauna makes them, or some of them, stay. Love seeing the Shaunas becoming more and more aligned. And loved seeing the first of the timeline after rescue scene, although a nightmare.
Or maybe it’ll be revealed what Other Tai has been up to this whole time…
Agreed, Altai is very scary. And Van is scared of her too! Did you catch Van saying she wants the other one? And real Tai begging Altai to let her see Van? Altai has come between them, and is now about to go on a rampage through a palliative care home to save her?? Totally nuts.
PS yes the wrong questioning of Kodi is annoying, but their little world has just been burst and no-one is thinking rationally, it works for me.
THEY MADE US WAIT SO LONG LOL but i’m also remembering we had to kinda wait long to meet adult van in s2 or at least longer than i anticipated!
oh yeah Other Tai has gotten even scarier than she was in season 1 — it’s so good!!
My comment last night went into a reply rather than main thread … too wired after the show!
Interested in thoughts about the coming split: are the adult survivors those who choose to not to go with Kodi? Love that Shauna sides with Lottie to stay. Do they share some deep intuition on what will happen to those who leave? Or are they just aligned by being the most psychotic of them all? Joined swiftly by Tai, ha!
Freaky little four eyed MUSHROOM
Lots of fun cinematographic choices this episode, loved the scene with Sarah Desjardins doing some phenomenal background acting
We Can Both Keep Our Knives: the Shauna Shipdecki Story
Jiff buddy youre talking a lotta shit on your wife to these dickheads!
I was away for the weekend on retreat, and the first thing I did when I got home was watch this episode! The second thing I did was come read Kayla’s recap because it’s not a full viewing until I get her take on it!
Oh my gawwwddd this show! Even when our predictions are right, they still throw a curveball!
Nat has remained my favorite of the teens since day one. Poor Nat, she feels the weight of so many deaths on her shoulders, even though she isn’t 100% responsible for them (technically yes for Ben, but at the end of the day she was putting him out of his torturous misery). She has managed to hold onto her humanity more than any other and even when Lottie asks her what’s waiting for her back home (a valid question!) she still chooses to go back to the real world.
I am so curious as to how Shauna is going to get her way with the majority of people, and also the two most deadly weapons at their disposal, against her. It’s so fascinating that 3 of the 8 survivors are the 3 who initially wanted to stay. I wonder what made them change their minds in the end, especially considering the further depths to which they are going to sink in the coming months as they have to survive another winter.
During the fight scene, I was yelling “You won a fucking OSCAR for playing a boxer! Come on, you can take Shauna!” Melissa held her own and I wonder whether she actually will play along. Typical that the first of them to try raw flesh is the one who is now forcing someone else to do it.
Just a random thought: at this point, they are all so death happy that I don’t think they ever found out that Misty damaged the black box. If they had found out, I can’t imagine that she would still be alive.
Alterna-Tai still very much freaks me out and I hope real Tai is able to break through and take back her mind and body!
For my spoiler space comment something related to Autostraddle more than Yellowjackets – I met a fellow reader yesterday!! I am in the UK so that’s never happened before (I am normally just reccomending it!) and it was very exciting. Also I think I convinced her to watch Yellowjackets!
Now for more spoilery thoughts! Really interesting the situations in which Misty does or does not think murder is the solution. Its clearly not a moral choice, but what seems logical.
The conversation between Jeff and Callie about whether or not Shauna was being targeted made me think, based on their delivery, that a) Jeff killed Lottie and b) Callie was the one who shut her in the freezer and also deliberately didn’t tell her about the note.
I also think that Shauna didn’t write about the frog scientists in her journal, or those are journals that Jeff hasn’t read, and the reason he seems to be turning on her now is because he doesn’t know. Before he got to be the one who loved her in spite of knowing everything, and without that knowledge, he’s lost that security and is becoming resentful.
Hopefully generic comments about how intensely this episode grabbed me and pulled me along for the ride are enough to hide any possible spoilers from predictions.
I had a similar response to Jeff and Callie’s conversation about Shauna, except I still think that Callie was involved in Lottie’s death (though not necessarily intentionally). Though with Jeff’s comment that it “had nothing to do with us” I now wonder if he was the one driving the van. Like, maybe each of them thinks it was their fault/they were involved and they’re currently lying to each other? But especially Callie’s explanation of “it’s just a feeling” rang pretty hollow.
For the hospital scene, did anyone else wonder if Misty was about to suggest a more subtle form of death than smothering just before the man went I to heart failure?
In the wilderness I was guessing the main group would go and there’s be some tragedy that only a few survive, leaving Nat with even more guilt. But Shauna’s last comment makes that split seem less likely.
Lastly, did anyone else think Shauna might be going in for a kiss when she bit the chunk out of Melissa’s arm?
GUYS SORRY I HAVE BEEN TRAVELING BUT I PROMISE TO RESPOND TO ALL THE COMMENTS ASAP!!!!!
An important addition to my earlier comment:
Last(?) episode I noted Hannah’s outfit was giving American Girl hiking outfit, however, I now see the true comparison is to the 1997 purple and teal colorway of the girl’s version of the yellow fleece jacket meet outfit. Yes I spent too long looking for catalogue scans, if links can go thru in these comments you can reference below lol. Clearly purple/teal fleece combos were IN in 1997.
https://toysandcollectiblesmuseum.org/aghd1997?itemId=ycmdkjrzhknsz534g2lcq640a07pce
omg
These last couple episodes have been so intense!!
Regarding Shauna in the past, I think what I’ve been struggling with is not her darkness, but the ways the other girls are responding to it. One thing that they haven’t really done this season in the wilderness story line is mix and matching the characters with one another like they have before. It’s been pretty consistent character groupings- Melissa with Shauna, Van and Tai, Lottie and Akilah and Travis. When we see Misty or Nat they are more off by themselves or speaking with the group at large.
Having these recaps has been excellent, because I do appreciate the societal dynamics Kayla is noticing, her insights are so spot on. And maybe this was the trade-off – we lost a bit of the more micro-dynamics in favor of exploring the macro-dynamics of this society they have (re)created for themselves.
I have to imagine though that this schism between those who want to go and those who stay will give us a closer glimpse into those micro-dynamics because I can’t imagine how Shauna will intimidate that whole crew into staying through glaring alone…
oh yes good point, it does feel like we’ve zoomed out a bit into a more macro look of the “society” they’ve built. i do feel as if the split is going to make us zoom back in though. and tbh interested in the idea of zooming in and out!