Hello and welcome back to your weekly gay Yellowjackets recap! I’m your host Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, and today we’re talking all things “Them’s the Brakes,” the third episode of the third season. The episode was directed by Jonathan Lisco and written by Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, the trio who co-wrote the season premiere. As a reminder, if you’re going to include spoilers in your comments, please include a few non-spoiler sentences first so that they don’t appear on the homepage’s recent comments sidebar. Thank you so much for making the comments such a lively place for discussion last week! It warmed my heart! Let’s do it again shall we? Here is your Yellowjackets 303 recap!
The 90s needledrops remain supreme on Yellowjackets, and “Them’s the Brakes” opens with a one-hit-wonder classic: “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred. But the actual tune transitions to a bleaker cover, sung by tied-up Pit Girl Mari, who sings feebly “I’m too sexy for this cave / I’m too sexy for these rocks / too sexy to be murdered.”
Her captor Ben, who is not really the murdery type at all, feeds her some freshly flamed bat, which he describes as “Cornish hen had a baby with a demon.” Props to Ben for not using up all the rations he found too quickly, but this also supports the theory the rations might not exist at all and that the hot chocolate he gave Mari in last week’s episode signified something slightly outside of reality, perhaps death-adjacent since Jackie was the last Yellowjacket to enjoy some cocoa in the wilderness…during the nightmare she had as she was dying. I don’t think I believe Mari is fully dead, but I do think both her and Ben are in near-death states that are perhaps warping both of their senses of reality in tandem with each other. Or maybe Ben really did find a bunch of random rations in the wilderness and is just trying to save them and eat bat in the meantime!
Mari makes an atrocious attempt to flirt with Ben, not knowing he’s gay. He reminds her of the time she told him “gym teacher” was Latin for “pervert failure” and also spread a rumor about him having “raging gonorrhea.” I think it’s safe to label before-the-wilderness Mari as a certified Mean Girl. It’s no wonder Shauna’s beef with her seems to go back to the beforetimes.
“Mari, I’m gay,” Ben finally says before being very direct about just how little chance she has.
When the seduction strategy doesn’t work, Mari pivots to violence. She steals Ben’s bear spray — also from the rations box — and threatens him with it. But this backfires, too. She ends up spraying both of them.1
At her doctor’s office, Van learns the bloodwork from her urgent care visit shows her cancer has stopped metastasizing. She isn’t terminal anymore. But if this is the first time Van is officially learning this, why did it seem like she was lying to Tai after the urgent care visit? I have a feeling Van has at least sensed her cancer stopped progressing, even before she knew it for sure. She doesn’t seem all that surprised by the doctor’s news in the scene here. We’ve seen Teen Van evade death over and over again, so a part of her is used to miracles in lethal situations. And at the end of last season, Lottie told Van after Natalie’s death that she’d soon see they’d given the wilderness what it wanted. Is Van still a believer? Did she know deep down this would happen?
Over at Shauna’s house, Shauna asks Callie what she and Lottie talked about, and Lottie just sips her juice silently. Lottie appears then and brags about how she’s such a good house guest for announcing herself instead of silently eavesdropping. I love what the Adult Yellowjackets thinks counts as “normal” and “good” behavior. She doesn’t want to eat Shauna’s pancakes, complaining that the food where she was hospitalized was loaded with lard as a form of sedation. She wants to “reset.” Lottie has definitely appeared to have a bit of a weird food thing.2 Remember her small outburst about the smoothie last season? I’m not sure if this means anything outside of the fact that she exists in the sort of scammy “wellness” space that doesn’t actually emphasize bodily and mental wellness so much as deprivation and hoaxes, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it, especially to see if it crops up in the teen timeline at all.
Back in the cave, Ben helps flush Mari’s eyes. She admits she hadn’t really had a plan; Ben doesn’t really either. He can’t believe he’s holding her hostage. “How is that even real?” Ben says. “Shit, I grew up in the suburbs. I love frozen burritos from 7-Eleven, I’ve seen Dave Matthews Band three times at the Garden State Arts Center, and honestly? I don’t even like them that much. Hell, the only reason I started subbing in the first place is cause I blew out my damn ACL and I needed a way to pay off my student loans while I figured out what the hell I was gonna do with my life. I swear, I’m just a normal guy. So, seriously, how the fuck is any of this real? Is it real?”
His monologue is interrupted by the disturbing mixture of screaming, growling, and animalistic sounds from the solstice ritual at the end of the premiere. He hears it, and Mari hears it, too. It only heightens his feelings of confusion about what’s real and what isn’t.
I love this Ben monologue for multiple reasons. Any time we get little pieces of these characters’ lives before the crash, we get to know them a bit better. They had whole lives before this place, before their worlds and their actions became reduced to survival instincts, which has made some characters shells of who they used to be, as has been the case with Ben, who has slipped further and further into depression and dissociation since the crash. It’s easy to see how the girls’ lives have been interrupted, because they were still coming of age when the crash happened. But this monologue is a reminder that Ben really isn’t that much older than them. He was still figuring out his life, too, still on the precipice of a stable adult life. The monologue also drives home all the uncertainty for us as viewers as to what Ben’s reality is. Last season, his reality and his dissociative dream state started blurring into one another. How much of what’s happening to Ben now is real?
Also, since I haven’t said it in a minute, Steven Krueger’s acting is really fantastic. His performance and Ben as a character don’t get discussed a whole lot, but they bring a lot to the series and to the wilderness scenes. Ben stands in contrast to the girls, someone whose approach to survival is gentler. He has also become the target of their misdirected ire over what’s happening to them. They’re desperate for monsters to blame, and Ben is so far from that, far less monstrous even than some of them. But much like the boys of Lord of the Flies, the girls have become sectarian, seeing mere difference of opinion or disposition as a threat rather than something valuable to survival.
Next, it’s Mari’s turn for a revealing monologue. She shares with Ben that when she was 12, her little cousin had cancer and died. Mari was with her when she died. They were watching Eureeka’s Castle (she does not say the name of the show, but my 80s-born wife chimed in) when it happened. After her cousin, only four-years-old, died, Mari waited in the waiting room for her parents and finished watching the episode of Eureeka’s Castle.
“Why’d you tell me that?” Ben asks.
“I think maybe there are two versions of reality. Most of the time, the other one, the bad one is just hiding or waiting, but it’s all real.”
God, I love this Mari moment. Even if part of her motive here is to wear down Ben and make him pity her, she’s tapping into something very real about trauma, grief, all the little and big tragedies of human existence. This idea of split realities resonates with anyone who struggles with mental health, which at this point is absolutely all of the characters on this show who were in the plane crash. The isolation and life-or-death circumstances of the wilderness have split their realities, just like Mari losing her four-year-old cousin did. In one world, she’s watching Eureeka’s Castle; in the other, her cousin is dead. But they’re actually in truth the same reality.
Later, about halfway through the episode, Ben tells Mari to stand up as he holds a knife. Mari is afraid, but she does as she’s told. But Ben of course isn’t trying to kill her. He cuts her ties and lets her go free. Oh Ben, too kind for this girl eat girl world. She shoves him to the ground, hurls his crutch away, and flees.
The adult versions of the Yellowjackets can never really run away from the people they used to be, and in some cases, it seems like they don’t even want to. Adult Lottie is at the mall, and Callie sneaks out to meet her. Lottie still has all the rich popular girl energy we once saw in her as a teen pre-crash. She also has a penchant for shoplifting (one of my favorite Teen Lottie moments of all time remains when she explains to the group in season one how she loves to shoplift from TJMaxx and then return the items for an endless supply of store credit).
“Tell me who you are,” Lottie says to Callie, urging her to describe herself without fear or shame. Callie seems seduced by this line of questioning, perhaps merely proving Lottie’s cult leader skills. But something even deeper seems to be happening here, a bond difficult to describe as of now. Callie’s especially smitten with Lottie after she teaches her how to shoplift. Callie feels like she’s being seen by someone for the first time.
Meanwhile, her mother meets up with Misty who informs her the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Misty tells Shauna Callie tricked her and Lottie to spill their secrets about the wilderness. Misty misconstrues exactly how it went down, making it seem like she was more in control of the situation. Shauna asks why she had to come all the way to meet her in person just to be told this, and Misty says she thought they could spend some time together. Shauna says she has too many errands, and Misty (probably lying) says her staff meeting was canceled so she can join. Misty is desperate to prove Walter wrong about her friends.
Over in Tai/Van Land, Tai is torturing herself by reading about the dead server who collapsed of a heart attack while chasing her and her girlfriend after they dine and dashed. Whoops! Van comes home, and they both say they have something to tell one another. Van goes first: She shares what the oncologist said about being on the way toward remission. Tai is of course thrilled at the good news. For a second, it seems as if she might not spoil it with her bad news, but then she does. “You’re thinking it, too, I know you are,” Tai says as Van shakes her head. “First Natalie, then this guy. It’s been a long time, but it could be happening again. The waiter was the sacrifice and your new prognosis, well, that’s the gift.”
“Please Van, just give in to the possibility,” Tai says. She then lights a candle and starts chanting “we hear the wilderness, and it hears us.” The camera closes in on Van looking concerned. Looking scared.
It is a striking role reversal for the two characters. As teens, Van is the believer and Tai is the skeptic. Now, Adult Tai is fully engaging with the mythos created by the girls in the wilderness. I’m assuming there’s some influence from Tai’s other self here.3
Misty is having a blast being “Thelma and Louise” with Shauna, who’s definitely not feeling the female friendship camaraderie. As they’re driving around, Shauna’s brake pedal suddenly stops working. Misty directs her to a “grassy knoll”…which also happens to be where a children’s playground is. Shauna narrowly avoids complete disaster, pulling the emergency brake in the middle of the field. Shauna’s first thought is that it was Misty who did this. Misty immediately denies it, and I believe her, but I also don’t think Shauna is that far off base in her accusation considering Misty’s tendency to manipulate people and also commit a little car sabotage just to be closer to someone, as she did in season one with Nat’s car.
Shauna also then jumps to the conclusion it was Misty who left the phone in the bathroom. Shauna’s line of thinking here supports my theory that the person who did leave the phone (and perhaps also caused this car kerfuffle) is Melissa, because you’ll recall Shauna asking the manager what the woman who picked up the phone looked like. We didn’t get to hear the answer, but if they said “skinny white woman with blonde hair,” that description could fit Misty or Melissa (although, the brief glimpses we get of Hilary Swank, who I think is playing Adult Melissa, in the trailer suggest she has more of a dirty blonde/light brown hair color…).
Shauna lists all of Misty’s recent transgressions, including holding Jessica Roberts hostage in her basement and then killing her, surveilling Nat in her motel room and, the biggest one, killing Natalie accidentally because she was carrying around a syringe of lethal drugs and just hit the wrong target. “Something must have warped you when you were little. Your parents, someone did something to you, because you are a verified psycho and you feed off this shit,” Shauna says. “You’re insane, and I want you out of my minivan now!”
Even though, again, Shauna isn’t exactly wrong to hurl accusations of depravity, it’s hard not to feel bad for Misty here. Especially because it’s pretty clear that in this one instance, she didn’t do it! She does tell Shauna she’s the worst friend, not the best, and not what she deserves.4 Though Walter clearly has ulterior motives for distancing Misty from her friends, his accusations also aren’t off-base. Shauna doesn’t give a shit about Misty.
Finally, we check in on the teen timeline beyond Mari. Melissa approaches Shauna on her log journaling and asks if they can talk. “About what?” Shauna asks. But fear not; she’s not rejecting Melissa entirely, just putting on her mean girl mask. She does, at least, invite Melissa to stay with her.
“You’re not gonna turn out to be fucking boring, are you?” Shauna asks.
I believe someone brought this up in the comments last week, but Shauna has long shown she is aroused by danger and risk. She bores easily, seeks out dicey situations, whether that’s sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend or cheating on her husband with the younger man she got into a fender bender with. I have a feeling Shauna will want to keep what’s happening with Melissa a secret, not because she’s feeling queer shame but because that makes it hot for her. The worst thing Melissa could become for Shauna is boring. Even that initial make out from last week had a feral quality to it, the way they buck against the tree (go back and watch!) and devour each other. This is what Shauna wants. Not love but thrills. She’s also exhibiting some bossy behavior reminiscent of Jackie. By consuming Jackie, Shauna absorbed parts of her, too.
Their moment is interrupted by Mari, who returns to camp. Mari is not really good at lying to the others about what happened to her and folds pretty quickly under their questioning, revealing Ben found her and is alive. Shauna wants to track him down and capture him. Nat tries to say it’s a crazy idea (she, as a reminder, already knew he was alive and was trying to protect him from being discovered by the other girls), and Shauna snaps back that it almost seems like she doesn’t want to find him. Shauna knows Nat knew he was alive, because Misty told her. The tenuous hierarchies of their new camp are rapidly splintering!
While the angry mob readies themselves, Lottie decides to hang back and wants Akilah to stay, too. After Travis told Mari he feels Akilah is more connected to the wilderness (likely as a way just to get Lottie off his back), she wants to convince Akilah to try talking to “it.” Akilah, for now, is uninterested.
In the Sadecki household, Lottie and Callie are singing along to “Make Your Own Kind Of Music,” dancing around the kitchen and cooking dinner. Shauna walks in on this strange spectacle. They’re making chicken harissa and green beans amandine as a thank you to Shauna for letting Lottie stay. It would perhaps be sweet! If it weren’t so ominous!
And in fact, it quickly slips into nightmarish territory when Shauna realizes Callie is wearing Jackie’s heart necklace, a symbol loaded with meaning and history from their time in the wilderness. The necklace, it seems, is used to mark a sacrifice. The Pit Girl was wearing it in the pilot. Natalie wears it when she’s initially marked for the hunt but is spared by Javi’s death. Is Lottie marking Callie for sacrifice? Shauna is confused as to how Lottie had the necklace and horrified that she gave it to her daughter. “It feels right, Shauna,” Lottie says. “I mean, don’t you feel it, too?” Lottie has always had a strange attraction to Callie, calling her powerful when she first glimpsed her. “It never meant what you thought it meant,” Lottie says to Shauna, presumably talking about the necklace, which Shauna rips off Callie’s neck before screaming at Lottie to “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.”
What does the necklace mean? Lottie suggests that it signifies something different than we initially thought. Perhaps Lottie sees it as a symbol of strength and power and isn’t marking Callie for sacrifice, though it’s hard to say when it comes to Lottie!
Speaking of symbols and what they mean: We have a man with no eyes sighting in this episode different from all the rest. Van and Tai are cuddled on the couch watching one of Van’s VHS tapes of The Pee-wee Herman Show, which Tai remembers loving to watch on Saturday mornings. Van’s memories of childhood Saturday mornings are slapping her mother out of her drunken stupor to get up for work. I like thinking about the fact that all of the Yellowjackets had such different childhoods and home lives before the crash and then were suddenly equalized by this shared traumatic experience.
Enter: The man with no eyes! He’s not where you expect him (though I suppose his whole thing is showing up when/where you least expect him). He’s in…a retro commercial for an ice cream parlor called Ozzie’s Homemade Ice Cream Parlor? Now why an ice cream parlor has such a TERRIFYING mascot is a question I do have! Tai freaks out, asks if Van sees what she sees. She does indeed, but to her, it’s just a goofy commercial, stripped of the scary associations Tai has with it.
“Holy shit, I must have seen that ad when I was little and the man and no eyes and then my grandmother died, I—” Tai says, in a line that’s a bit too explainy for this series, but I’ll allow. She frantically looks up the ice cream parlor and learns they’re closed. “This HAS to mean something,” Tai says, ranting wildly. She’s frantically searching for meaning, something a lot of people tend to do when they find out their lover has cancer not has gotten rid of it. But Shauna really set the scope for the season at its start when she wondered after Natalie’s funeral what any of it all means. The Yellowjackets — as teens but also as adults — are hungry for meaning, for something to explain everything that happens and has happened to them. It’s a human impulse we all have, theirs intensified by the strange and singular experience of being in a plane crash and lost in the wilderness.
Misty returns home and snaps at Caligula, which is how you know she’s REALLY going through it. She then breaks the picture frame containing the photo of her, Shauna, Tain, and Natalie at the high school reunion from season one and lights the photo on fire. There’s a lot of setting things ablaze in this season! I feel like it’s all meant to make us further question who set the cabin on fire but also just gives the season a real BURN IT ALL DOWN energy that I’m personally enjoying immensely.
Van and Tai drive out to the closed down ice cream parlor, which is still technically standing but barely. Tai decides to break in. Van points out they’re committing a crime, but Tai points out accurately that it wouldn’t be the first time. The interior of the ice cream parlor is eerie, somewhat stuck in time but in decay…almost like the Yellowjackets themselves. There’s a children’s bike with streamers on the handlebars. Quaint diner-style tables. All of it cast in darkness and damage. A coyote appears through a broken window with a dead rabbit in its mouth. “What do you want?” Tai asks. “We know what It wants,”5 Van says. “It wants more.”
In the wilderness, the girls walk through the night with torches looking for Ben. Shauna is uncharacteristically supportive of Mari, perhaps finding a target for her anger even more satisfying than Mari herself in Ben.
They finally find the cave, and Nat tells them they don’t have to do this, but Akilah says “yes, we do.” They hear the screaming nature sounds again. Nat relents and agrees they can go in. And here’s where things get very, very weird.
And scary! We start out with some pretty straightforward claustrophobic horror, the girls navigating the cramped spaces of the cave in the dark with only their makeshift torches. If The Descent left a mark on you or if you’re generally afraid of the concept of spelunking as my wife is, this whole sequence will definitely put you on edge!
Shauna, Van, and Akilah split off from the rest of the group. Shauna’s light goes out, and they’re down to just Van’s. They crawl through a tight space and emerge in a wet, dark cavern. Van’s flame in a can starts suddenly spitting, like a gas stove burner when you first turn it on. Akilah says they should turn back. Van turns to her left to tell Shauna they should go back, but Shauna isn’t there, only darkness. Van turns sharply to her right to talk to Akilah, but she’s gone, too. Van is alone. Van’s flame extinguishes with a hiss. This is some A+ horror direction.
We next see Van stumbling through the cave until she comes across a door. “Oh, what the fuck,” she whispers. She opens the door and finds a pretty cozy cabin! There’s a rocking chair in front of a roaring fire, hats and coats hung on a rack. This is a fully lived-in…hallucination. We see the flame flicker in Van’s eyes. Truly so much flame imagery this season!
Akilah meanwhile wanders through the wilderness of her own hallucination. In her case, she’s literally in the woods, encountering a bunch of blackberries that she gobbles up, and then, a bunch of goats, chickens, and a talking llama who warns her not to get bitten by sheep. “Sheep don’t bite,” Akilah says. “Everything with teeth bites,” the llama says. “Everything will defend itself.” She hears the trees screaming, maybe the same sounds Travis heard during his trip.
Shauna is floating in the middle of the lake the girls first found in season one. A young boy calls at her: “mommy, mommy!” Shauna starts swimming toward him, but when she looks up again, she isn’t any closer to shore. We see an aerial shot of her swimming in place while her son calls for her. Again, A+ horror direction here.
In Van’s mind cabin, an ember flies out of the fire and catches. She struggles to get up, but she’s locked in place by a plane seatbelt and then by hands of the dead reaching up to hold her in place. She finally gets up, but she’s trapped inside as the cabin becomes engulfed. The llama warns Akilah that “It” will get what it wants, and then strong vines pull her into the earth. Shauna is pulled underwater by something unseen. The specific origins of Shauna and Van’s nightmares here are easy to trace, Shauna’s rooted in the traumatic loss of her child and Van’s in her first near-death experience of almost blowing up in the plane crash when Jackie left her to die. Akilah’s, I’m less sure about, mainly because we still haven’t gotten to know her well enough. She was a girl scout, yes, but I couldn’t really locate her dreamscape in a specific trauma like I could for the others. It’s interesting though that between the three we get fire, earth, and water.
And here’s where things get REALLY weird: Akilah finds herself in a classroom, along with Van and Shauna both. “Are you in my dream or am I in one of yours?” Akilah asks them.
“There’s only one dream,” responds Lottie in teacher drag at the chalkboard, where she has written “of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” This is a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, perhaps one the girls encountered in school that has seeped into their subconscious.
The man with no eyes pushes a cart with a loose wheel down the hallway just outside the classroom they’re in. It all feels rather directly inspired by Nightmare on Elm Street — and not even just the first one but the entire franchise, as it’s in the third that characters are able to “visit” the nightmares of each other.
Jackie is here, slapping her wrist repeatedly with a slap bracelet. She asks Akilah if she wants to try and hands it to her. Akilah does it, and Van asks to try, too. When she does it, it cuts into her. “That happens sometimes,” Jackie says with a shrug. “You shouldn’t play with dangerous things,” Teacher Lottie says. Van hurls the slap bracelet away, and Jackie calls her a baby. Jackie then slaps it onto Shauna’s neck, and it starts cutting into her, strangling her and bleeding her out from the neck, the same process Shauna uses on the game they hunt to prepare it to be cooked.
Akilah, Shauna, and Van then all wake up from this shared hallucinatory experience. Ben drags himself toward them, crying out for help. He says it’s poison in there, some kind of gas. “The Cold” by The Cure kicks in as Nat holds the rifle over Ben and tells him not to move.
Those last ten minutes! They’re so intense and intensely strange. We’ve dipped out of reality plenty of times on this show before, in both creepy and campy ways, like Misty’s extended vision of the Caligula musical when she was in the deprivation tank but also like Ben imagining a different reality with his boyfriend Paul where he didn’t get on the plane at all.
Now, I’ve only conducted some cursory research on hallucinatory gases in caves, but it does seem like carbon monoxide can build up, especially due to human causes like the use of stoves. (Now, why a person would use a stove in a CAVE is beyond me, but people sure do make wild choices!) It could be possible that there was a camp stove in the rations box that Ben used. Other gases that can be present in former mines are hydrogen sulfide, methane, and elevated levels of carbon dioxide. All of these could technically create conditions conducive to hallucinations. Would love if a scientist (??? of what specialty, I do not know) could hop in here in the comments!
In any case, yes, it does seem as if something is present to cause these hallucinations. But what can we make of the specific experience of a shared hallucination? Not only do Van, Akilah, and Shauna all seem to be part of this, but there are elements of others, too, Tai’s eyeless man making an appearance. I will be curious to see how the characters do or do not process this experience after the fact. Was there really a crossover experience in their barely conscious states? Many spiritual practices and cultural traditions affirm the ability to visit others in dreamstates. I bring this up a lot, but I am convinced I have “shared” dreams with my sister, especially in our youth. Here, Yellowjackets again skirts its narrow line between reality and unreality, between the supernatural and natural phenomena.
I’m sure many of us will interpret it in divergent ways, but we can all agree that the final sequence is some damn good horror visual storytelling. Beyond just the visuals and the school-set nightmare motif, the themes of Nightmare on Elm Street also resonate. Freddy is a monster born of generational trauma and also violent, punitive revenge. Like the parents of Nightmare on Elm Street, the Yellowjackets have deputized themselves as executioners in the past. Maybe the guilt is starting to catch up to them.
Last Buzz:
(I’m experimenting with footnotes down here while also maintaining it as a space for loose, unfootnoted thoughts, but let me know if this format is confusing/not working.)
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- 1 It’s difficult but not impossible to explain how the rations box might not actually exist given their use of the bear spray, but if the cause of the gas is not a camp stove but something else, could the gas have contributed to their affected eyes and also distorted their perception of how all this played out? I could truly be reaching, and honestly it doesn’t matter to me if the rations box exists or not, I’m just having a little fun here.
- 2 Is Lottie MAHA? Discuss.
- “Ooo foot doctors. They’re sexy, right?” Only Misty Quigley would have this reaction to Shauna’s (obviously made up) podiatrist appointment.
- 3 Here is where I admit I don’t really track the Tai “eye color change” theory where when her eyes are “red,” she’s the Other One and when they’re brown she’s herself. I don’t think it maps perfectly onto moments where Tai is clearly the Other One! I think that’s just Tawny Cypress’ eyes in certain light! But also maybe the visual quality of my screeners isn’t as good as the final product so I don’t catch the shift as much? Regardless, it has never really been a detail I buy into. I think it’s one of those things viewers latched onto but wasn’t intentional on the part of the writers! Sorry! But also maybe I’m wrong! Make your case! The shifts I notice more are a change in her general disposition and the cadence of her voice.
- 4 Misty refers to Shauna here as “Shauna Shipman,” so by her maiden name. I think this is just indicative of Misty always living in the past, but whoever sent the cassette to Shauna’s house that Callie intercepted also addressed it to Shauna Shipman. Just noting!
- Misty clutching her crocs as she storms off and then yelling at a child…comedy gold.
- Tawny Cypress and Lauren Ambrose have such good romantic chemistry! Jasmin Savoy Brown and Liv Hewson’s chemistry is a little more bro-y, but 1. That makes sense since they’re such good friends IRL and 2. That sort of tracks for young first queer love.
- 5 “It” is indeed capitalized in this piece of Van dialogue in the subtitles, so she is talking about the It of the wilderness, not the coyote.
- I looked up symbolic meanings of llamas, but it varies too much from culture to culture and I couldn’t land on anything definitive, so I gave up, but if you have theories as to why Akilah’s hallucination took that particular shape, chime in!
- Just me or was the music over Shauna’s swimming-in-place nightmare giving Killing Eve?
- According to the credits, the llama was voiced by Vincent Pastore of The Sopranos! I knew the voice was familiar. Props if you figured it out without waiting until the credits.
Comments
Ok this episode was SO FCKING STRESSFUL but honestly my favorite moment was when Ben casually name-dropped the Garden State Arts Center. I also grew up in New Jersey in the 90s—I am the Yellowjackets’ exact age—and I saw several shows there before its name was changed to the PNC Bank Arts Center (barf). I salute this writers room for not only mentioning the venue, but rooting it in time. According to Wikipedia, the name was changed in 1996, which tracks with Ben not knowing that yet.
I am obsessed with this detail.
OMG I LOVE THIS DETAIL, thank you for sharing! especially interested in the fact that yeah he wouldn’t have known the name changed. that’s so good. long gone are the days when the writers accidentally put movies into Jackie’s journal that she would not have seen lol…they def have people triple checking these things now!
Honestly I grew up in the area in that era too (and recently moved back) and I STILL refer to it as the garden state arts center, just sounds better 🤷♀️
Yesss. I excitedly called that out too!
Lots on NJ references. Where do you think the fictional town is supposed to be? I’m thinking somewhere in the vicinity of Holmdel / Manalapan / etc.
In this episode they also mentioned playing a team from Manasquan. And then obviously the ice cream shop on Rte 9. Did anyone call the number?????? So creepy!! (732) 858-5242 (it shows up as a holmdel number btw).
Tai also mentioned “the diner in Rte 9” before they skipped the check.
I hadn’t been paying that much attention to geography in prior seasons, but they’ve referenced a concert at Meadowlands, Asbury. I am going to rewatch from the start. It’s long overdue. That I’ll add that to the things I’m looking for!
This may not be a very popular comment but is anyone else reading these recaps because they gave up on the show when the quality of the writing went so wildly downhill in s2 but they are still desperate to find out what happens even though they’re increasingly convinced the writers themselves have no idea . . . or is it just me lol . . .
haha well i’m glad you’re here! truly! i will keep you in the loop and maybe it’ll become enticing enough to hop in again lolololol. but just ftr, the writers have had a plan for all five seasons ever since the show began (and it has planned ending at five seasons so won’t do the annoying thing many shows do of sticking around too long). i’m sure some things have changed and certain details fluctuate, but i believe them about plotting out the full five seasons
I don’t know if I do believe them! Or I guess maybe I believe them but I don’t think they’ve… plotted it out very well, if that’s the case. The pace of s1 was soooo tight (in both timelines) and these seasons are just feeling baggy and repetitive and circular to me in a way that has drained the vast majority of the tension from the mystery, even though s2 had a few great moments. I have to say I do agree with the Forbes reviews https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2025/02/21/yellowjackets-season-3-episode-3-review-poison-gas-cave-talking-llamas-and-the-man-with-no-eyes/ and it’s a real shame! But Kayla I am still grateful for your detailed recaps allowing me to keep up with what’s going on, maybe they’ll turn things around and I’ll jump back in someday
I will say that wife of someone I know/trust who isn’t really one to gossip knows someone who worked in a substantial way on the show, and apparently things happened that threw off the planned arcs. So they ended up having to figure out a lot of things for season two that they were proud of but weren’t the original plan. Which is why some things might have felt disconnected, unexpected, not properly built up, etc last season. (That person said people who worked on the show obviously saw the criticism and understood where it was coming from, but they did the best they could to adapt.)
I haven’t asked that person about it since season two to respect the privacy there, but I would guess they took the time between seasons 2-3 to regroup and come up with a new arc for the rest of the show.
(Keeping it as vague as possible because I don’t want to reveal too much and betray anyone’s trust.)
totally haha and thanks for being here! i honestly love when there’s some disagreement on the episodes, especially in the comments so we can all chat it out! i did find this interview with jonathan lisco really interesting in terms of how much is planned, what has shifted, etc https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/yellowjackets-hallucination-dream-sequence-jonathan-lisco-1236142603/
worth a read even if you’re feeling agnostic about the show post-s1!
I wish there was some way to make it so that these comments didn’t spoil people on the front page.
– I don’t think that Mari sprayed herself with the bear spray. I think she sprayed Ben, and then he sprayed her.
– Why wasn’t Jackie standing on the shore with Shauna’s son?
– Akilah’s going to die next, because she ate food in the underworld.
– JACKIE!
– That was a rainbow slapit wristband. It didn’t hurt Akilah because she’s straight, it hurt Van because she’s fairly gay, and it nearly killed Shauna because she’s super-duper, ultra gay.
sakdajsldkjlksad dying @ this homophobic slap bracelet theory asdkajskdjsakdj (akilah is too connected with animals for me to be convinced she’s fully straight tho that’s an empathic animal-loving sapphic 🤣)
The theory that Akilah might die next due to the berries is so interesting…I hope not I love her but I very much feel like she is in danger!
i’m def worried about her fate
Love the gay slap bracelet theory – lol! My thoughts on it: It’s least harmful to those who are most connected to the wilderness. There’s clearly something going on with Akilah, and I don’t think Travis was bullshitting when he pointed Lottie in her direction. Van is a believer but not necessarily **CONNECTED**. And Shauna doesn’t believe at all.
Interesting! I also noticed that it had the symbol on it, although it was hard to tell. But I see the moment when Akilah freed Shauna as the moment when she gave in to being whatever Lottie wants her to be.
yeah i think we see Akilah shift here as well after initially being skeptical of lottie’s pressures on her to become…the wilderness conduit or whatever
like this theory too!
Wow yes, good to know this is what good horror looks like bc I’ve never watched other horror and this episode ending was tremendously stressful!
I’m enjoying adult van and tai together and am captivated by adult Lottie. What DOES the necklace mean? I’m excited to find out.
yeah a lot of those horror sequences from the end were directly referencing existing horror, which was fun!
ADULT LOTTIE SCARES ME i do kinda think she was marking Callie for sacrifice which 😵💫
Just when I was thinking this season wasn’t as scary as the first two, we get this one which was terrifying to watch in the dark alone at home!
If the pomegranate theory is correct, that means Akilah will soon be on the chopping block the way she was gobbling up those berries.
The eyeless guy is definitely the stuff of nightmares and remains the scariest part of this show for me. I think the reason he was the mascot or whatever in the commercial is a nod to the place being called Ozzie’s and the 80s were when Ozzy Osbourne was a big deal in music. He was known for doing creepy stuff like bite the heads off bats in concert, so that was the connection I made.
Travis and Nat have had no interactions together in 3 episodes. Does this mean they broke up (again) after Javi? Or has she left him to his own devices now that he’s following Lottie and her crazy drug experiments while Nat still is a realist and doesn’t believe. The line I can’t stop hearing in my head ever since season 2 premiere when they drank the tea from Lottie before going out to hunt is Nat saying as an adult “Travis never believed in any of this shit.” But clearly he did, which makes the (alleged) truth about his death more realistic (but I still don’t think Lottie is telling the entire story, or at least didn’t have a full grasp of reality when that happened).
I cracked up at Lottie’s lingering shoplifting habit, it’s gotten way more out of control than just TJ Maxx, it seems!
i was screaming @ lottie still shoplifting it’s such a fun detail like she seriously has some control issues for suuuuure.
travis and nat are for sure broken up. i also keep thinking about adult nat saying travis never believed in any of this shit because that’s really clearly not true? but maybe he sorta kept it from her? was embarrassed by it? eventually renounced it? that last one seems likely since he has been kinda scared of lottie and sort of thrust akilah in his place
Love the Ozzy connection!
I am loving this season! Shauna is a nightmare, which is simply the best. And her horrible daughter! I love their wretched relationship! I’m in heaven.
Also I feel like I get extra bonus content because I get to talk about the show at home with you whenever we watch the episodes and then I get to come on here and read your recaps. Folks, I love my wife!
i love YOU!!!! lol
Shauna and Callie are def one of my favorite parts of the season so far. I’ve always enjoyed Callie as a character tbh! i feel like she has been underrated
The official French word for ‘to spoil’ is ‘divulgâcher’, a blend of ‘divulguer’ (to divulge) and ‘gâcher’ (to ruin). It was coined in Canada as an attempt to prevent people adopting the English word and is now recommended by the Académie française. Hopefully this has been enough text to avoid ruining by divulging…
Hate to say it: maybe my least favourite episode ever? I understand that shows tend to alter the pace around episode 3 after hooking us with the first couple of eps, but this felt almost stagnant. So little time passed in everyone’s storylines and even the character development didn’t feel that insightful to me? Then plot points like the girls going after Ben and the Van in remission reveal were fairly predictable after last ep.
Also, I know hallucinations, drug trips etc are useful devices when threading the needle between supernatural and psychological interpretations for the crazy shit going down, but they’re approaching the point of overuse for me. I don’t find the show scary* so the last ten minutes were a bit of a slog, even with the Jackie cameo! There’s so much potential there – what if she’d surfaced in a one-on-one with Shauna for example? That would have been delicious, especially since Shauna’s queerness has just gone from subtext to text, but there’s still time I guess. How long did Ella Purnell’s dodgy wig install take? Make it more worthwhile by giving us other scenes with her. (Yes, I realise I’m immediately contradicting my call for less hallucinations lol).
Reading that back I sound hypercritical, so I want to stress I love the show! I especially love whoever in wardrobe is putting Tawny Cypress in crop tops and little vests this season ¬‿¬ Jokes aside, I am still absolutely locked in and I so appreciate being able to come here after watching and digest the show further.
Last stray thoughts:
-What fuel are they using for the torches? Maybe that caused the carbon monoxide reaction? I can’t remember if Ben cooked the bats but I think he and Mari were close to the entrance of the cave then, whereas the girls had ventured deeper and were in a cramped, poorly ventilated space.
-Did the snap bracelet have ‘the symbol’ on it? I didn’t pause it, but there were definitely circles and triangles.
*I realise this says way more about me than it does about the show.
no, by all means be critical! we have to critique the art we love. i don’t think anything you’re saying is too far off base. the end just really worked for me on a Nightmare on Elm Street level but I’m also such a fan of that franchise!
are the little torch cans things like candles made from tallow? that’s what i assumed
I literally commented to my partner on adult!Tai’s little fuckin vest she was wearing in the kitchen like yessssss Tawny yessssss
tai’s wardrobe got so much better/gayer when she dropped the whole state senator thing
Gosh, I have … so many thoughts on this episode. Not all of them good! Anyway, in order of when they’re discussed here:
1) The Mari/Ben dynamic was great in a way I didn’t know I needed. I watched with a friend last night and she said the bear spray debacle leaned a bit “clown,” but I don’t care! I appreciate that we’re getting more of Mari this season, her “I walked to civilization to fuck your dad” line toward the end of the episode was deliciously bitchy.
2) I don’t think the show would actually Go There in any meaningful way, but is Callie’s dynamic with Lottie not weirdly homoerotic to anyone else? There were a couple of moments when they were together and she’d look at her in the kind of a way you’d look at someone you are both deeply intrigued by and deeply attracted to. I don’t think it’s necessarily romantic or sexual and I’m DEFINITELY not shipping it, but I think Callie has an attraction to power and danger that’s been slowly growing throughout seasons.
3) I also loved the Mari/Ben cave moment, and I’m hoping that Mari’s “two realities” thing doesn’t actually get introduced LITERALLY in the show. It feels like the kind of thing that’s too deliberate to not come back around, but I don’t know if I could take them doing some Riverdale-esque parallel universe thing seriously.
4) I also picked up on the Teen Van/Tai vs. Adult Van/Tai vibe shift! It’s such a stark difference between timelines and I wonder when/if we’re going to watch that dynamic change in real time. Side note: All of the fire imagery with both Teen/Adult Van is definitely fueling the theory that Taissa burned down the cabin and Van knew about it.
5) The Jackie/Shauna to Shauna/Melissa parallels are something I’m looking forward to the show exploring more. I think it’s obvious that, in the wake of her Jackie dynamic, Shauna needs to more or less take advantage of someone who’s very well-meaning and blindly loyal (see also: Jeff). It’s interesting because Shauna is definitely attracted to chaos and danger, but I don’t think she actually wants to have a partner who challenges her.
6) I hope we never see the fucking Man With No Eyes ever again, I swear to god. Adult Taissa’s bullshit is consistently the most horrifying to me, which is a shame because I love the Tawny/Lauren chemistry so so much, but I can’t keep having that fucker pop up. I guess if you call the ice cream place’s number IRL there is a message of some sort, but I’ve been too afraid to try. Someone else should for science!
7) Last night, as we were falling asleep, the friend I watched with muttered out of nowhere “I can’t believe they put a fucking talking llama in Yellowjackets,” which is exactly how I felt about those last couple of minutes! Horrifying and stupid all at once! I hope we get a better sense of what Akilah’s hopes and fears are, but I sense she is not long for this world.
8) When do we think we’re getting Adult Melissa? There’s no way that isn’t who Hilary Swank is playing. If I remember correctly we didn’t get Simone/Lauren as Lottie/Van until a few episodes into S2, but they’ve set this one up a lot earlier. I thought it would be this week because in all of the promos we see Swank during what looks like a car accident, so the “Them’s The Brakes” title alluded to that, I thought. What are the chances Shauna doesn’t get her car looked at and ends up in another bonkers situation on the road next week?
1. loved it! both monologues were solid
2. no i toooootally felt this and feel as if it’s not by accident — it’s not that I think the show is going there explicitly, but I do think we’re meant to see Callie sort of “seduced” by danger/risk in a way that is similar to Shauna. and I think it also underscores Lottie’s charisma as a cult leader and her ability to draw people in intimately. there’s also something Oedipal-adjacent about it as I do think this is the relationship Callie sorta wishes she had with Shauna
3. i don’t think it’ll be literal.
4. i’m mixed on the Who Burned Down the Cabin question but i do think this indeed supports that theory.
5. 1000% yes to all of this
6. you can read a whole Reddit thread decoding the ice cream parlor phone number message thing!
7. we got a talking parrot scene last season! it’s not outside the parameters of the series imo. but i get if it wasn’t your thing.
8. I AM WAITING WITH BATED BREATH
Okay where is the best option to go watch season 3 as a person without any active streaming service subscriptions? I don’t mind getting a full service for a few months, it just seems like half of them require some add on.
Glad these recaps are back because I really need to be emotionally prepared for the eyeless man! Why is that the creepiest thing in this show?
Not having watched any of this season yet I can’t really say this for sure but – by the end of last season it was starting to feel like the symbol and the Lottie being possessed by dead cabin guy missing fingers (or something else) and the other evidence of past weirdness in these here hills was only being tossed in as a side note when the writers remembered. I’m interested to see if I feel that way about this season when I get around to watching it.
Talking llamas will never not bring to mind the opening credits of Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Don’t know what to do with that.
Love the pomegranate theory except no! Wrong person to play Persephone!
Truly have nothing the add to the comments I’m just happy to be here (and will be happier once I finally get to catch up)!
paramount+ with showtime i think!
no the eyeless man really is the creepiest part and i think bc he’s giving sl*nderman
It’s not my account, but from my understanding showtime is now included in paramount+ so it isn’t an additional fee. Could be wrong and probably only applies to the US.
I like the addition of the footnotes for the article. Personally, I would prefer the footnotes separate from the bullet list. I think it’d be easier to reference. I’ll read the recaps either way though!
I’ve always liked that Mari has something bitchy to say, and this episode has her thoroughly as my favorite Yellowjacket. She’s so unserious lol
I could almost believe the creepy loud shrieking they keep hearing is a huge swarm of bats in the cave, but that doesn’t hold up since they also hear it in the forest.
Not trying to criticize your article, but for the people only reading and not watching the show, maybe add that Ben rescued the girls from the gas cave? I think several of the girls seeing that is gonna weigh in on the trial. I ended season 2 thinking Ben set the fire, but at this point I agree way more with the Other Tai theory. I always enjoy reading your recaps!
good point, i’ll use this format next week!
i’m not sure if the girls see that as him rescuing them since he too was incapacitated? it’s clear to us as viewers he is a good guy but i don’t think the characters have moved on that
Ben wasn’t incapacitated. When we see him dragging Van up to Shauna and Akilah, he has his mouth covered with a bandanna or some such to limit his intake of the toxic gases he’s telling them about. That’s why he was able to stay in his right mind and rescue the girls instead of falling into hallucinations and unconsciousness like them.
On an unrelated note, I didn’t care for the footnotes because there’s no hyperlink. I’m not going to scroll all the way down the recap to look at a particular footnote and then scroll all the way back up trying to find where I left off. If you can’t put in hyperlinks so we can get to and from specific footnotes, then I would prefer you just put whatever you’re saying in the footnote in the recap itself. It’s fine to do that because your (awesome!) recaps are written in a conversational style anyway.
I do agree… ended up pulling it up on my phone so I didn’t have to scroll back and forth. Love these recaps and appreciate everything you do!
ok cool lemme see if i can figure out how to link them — i’m sure there’s a way in wordpress i’m just technologically challenged lol
GOSH what an ep!! I am literally living for this yellowjackets fervor that I haven’t experienced in like 2 years!
I see the llama is being discussed, so here’s my thoughts on this + some stuff on the cave hallucinations: Akilah’s dream made me immediately think of Misty’s iconique dream sequence in the sensory deprivation chamber in S2 and her hallucination with Caligula! I personally am a fan of something weirdly supernatural in the woods and I do think perhaps ‘It’ was talking to Akilah/Van/Shauna in the nightmare. Also I love it when the show just gets so over the top like this personally.
Also, some thoughts on the cave science (mostly me spitballin): spelunkers have talked about mild visual hallucinations when all lights are turned off in caves, though this tends to be on a longer scale. Additionally, there may be evidence that oxygen deprivation alone can cause hallucinations. Even if the caves were filled with a relatively inert/harmless gas like n2 or co2, I believe it is specifically o2 falling under a threshold that can cause visual hallucinations to trigger. Maybe there is additional hallucinatory gas too? So, Ben might not be wrong, but it might be the lack of o2 rather than a specific gas causing it. We’ll see…if this is gas left over from the mines, perhaps it may be a future plot point. Either way, I looooved that whole sequence. Very nightmare on elm street/eternal sunshine but scarier and also the descent all mixed together…yum :)
Also…last notes…I feel like the acting has been cranked up to 110 on this season. Ben’s monologue, Shauna’s outburst at Lottie, /Callie’s expression at Lottie shoplifting/, I am eating up allllll of it. I love the sort of himbo role Mari is filling right now…I luv u girl TuT also TaiVan breaking and entering is the plotline of my dreaaaaams I love u all thank you Kayla thank you YJ !!!!!
Spoiler blocker!
Spoiler blocker!
Spoiler blocker!
yes thank you for the Cave Science™
the performances are indeed SOOOOO GOOD
thank YOU!!
sorry to give everyone homework, but everyone should absolutely read this interview with jonathan lisco!! too many good parts to quote here so just read the whole thing let’s discuss!!!! https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/yellowjackets-hallucination-dream-sequence-jonathan-lisco-1236142603/
There is so much here!
.
I didn’t catch the thing he says about the hands in Van’s dream.
Love this: “Themes of the season are: Who is the villain and what does it mean to be a villain? And, who is the underdog and who actually never was to begin with.”
i didn’t catch the hands detail either!
I love what Lisco says about storytelling, shared dreams, and the neuroscience of memory…
Is this whole series a shared dream, for the characters and the viewers? Do all the characters have distorted memories of what happened in the wilderness? (definitely yes to the latter, IMO)
Oh, in the happy summer scene early in 3.01, Travis and a few of the girls are playing Telephone, which is also a form of storytelling that distorts the original message…
omg yes great point about them playing telephone, it really does mimic what lisco is saying about memories and how they break down over time
Has anyone spotted ol’ Charlie No-Eyes in the credits? I’ve been keeping an eye (lol) out for him but I can’t figure out where he is, and it seems like he should be in there somewhere.
Vans vision cemented something that I’ve been turning over in my head since season 2. The show loves to pump fake something malicious happening that later turns out to be an accident and I think that’s what they’re doing with the cabin fire. I don’t think anyone set it, I think a coal popped out of the fire and spread quickly until the girls woke up. I think maybe Shauna’s brakes would be a case of this too, it’s not unreasonable that her 20 year old shitbox ruptured a brake line and no one is sabotaging her.
LOVING Lottie schoolmarm and feeling prettt [dashboard confessional voice] VINDICATED at thinking she’ll be a bad influence on Callie, though I do wonder what Lottie thinks the necklace means.
I get the impression the llama was just a way to tie back into the hallucinatory nature of 80s and 90s children’s tv – pee wees and eureka and such.
i am of the belief no one set the fire also! even though it did seem like the flames started outside the cabin
yeah great point that the llama’s presence especially makes sense in an episode that already brought up Eureeka’s Castle
Ooh I love that theory – these girls/women would really be the kind of people to assume malice and not consider anything coincidence.
totally! i think they are desperate for ways to explain ANYTHING, because so much of what has happened to them is inconceivable, especially to such young minds. it’s why they’re also becoming so dangerously factional. they’re trying to create order because it provides the illusion of safety, but really it’s just driving them further apart when what they need is collectivism!!
I thought the same thing about the fire! I wonder if when they wake up, Van will realize that’s what happened, just a spark popping out of the fire while they slept (though it would be much more satisfying for it to be alterna-Tai.)
yeah i wonder if shauna/van/akilah will have any big revelations as a result of the hallucinations/dreams or if they’ll just be like…in denial about them. the yellowjackets do love denial lol
“…alterna-Tai”
Chef’s kiss
lolol yes love alterna-Tai
For anyone questioning the bear spray scene. Bear spray is not like pepper spray and where you can just direct it at someone. It kind of seeps into the whole area. If you sprayed it at someone in a cave that whole area would cause people to cough and there eyes to water and not just for a little while. When you spray bear spray you have to get out of the area right after.I know some who’s bear spray went off inside a truck and it took a lot of cleaning, and seat replacement before the truck became usable.
totally! i’m familiar with bear spray through my sister so yeah I figured mari sprayed it and ended up just harming them both because that’s what bear spray DOES
We do see the van’s speedometer climbing though!
Love this show and these recaps so much! A few questions/thoughts:
1) I wonder if the fire in the cabin started by accident, like in Van’s hallucination? So no one is actually to blame?
2) I know they kind of explained it away in the first ep, but I’m having a hard time believing that Adult Tai doesn’t care about her kid, wife, or career anymore?? She seemed so driven by those things in Season 1 (keeping her family together, winning the race). I love her with Van — maybe she’s trying to escape from the destruction she caused by pretending those things/people don’t matter? But at some point she will need to address them right? (Like does she have a job?)
3) Right now I’m much more invested in the adult storylines than the teens this season, and I think it’s because there are so many (too many?) teen girl characters. I think the show did a better job in S1 balancing the storylines of the 4 main characters in each timeline (Tai, Nat, Missy, Shawna). Now it feels like there are too many new characters for the main ones to get enough screen time for them to have character development. I love this show and will watch every episode until the last season!! But I still think introducing all the JV girls in S2 weakened the focus and character development of the series and it hasn’t necessarily improved yet. :-/////
1. i believe this yes!
2. it does seem odd that the kid and wife are just like…gone
3. i see what you mean but i feel like the limited amount of teen characters in season 1 had more to do with covid filming protocols than with the story the writers wanted to tell which is why we got more characters in season 2
I’d love to see Simone again – honestly I’m sorry Tai pretty much burned all her bridges with her. I think she’s the better actual adult partner for Tai. However, I bet the issue with Sammy is that the actor will have grown a lot. I’m not sure exactly how much time has passed in the adult timeline, but we’re talking months at most…
I agree. I’d like to imagine that Simone is making a nice new life for herself, cause she deserves the world.
I saw Tawny Cypress reply to a comment on ig saying that simone and sammy have not been forgotten so i’m assuming they’ll be back in later eps
oh that’s reassuring! i’d like to see some of that incorporated, as much as i’m loving the tai/van stuff. they’re living in a fantasy world like she isn’t even DIVORCED yet
Do we know what type of cancer Van was diagnosed with? I don’t know enough about the science of any of this (including timing) but introducing the potential for toxic gas exposure immediately made me wonder if it’s connected.
we don’t but that’s a great theory!
Thank you for these recaps!! My favourite thing is to watch a show and then read about it and think about and talk about it so thanks for creating a space for it!
I don’t have any major thoughts to add, other than that I cannot wait for Buffering’s coverage cause Kristen is both from New Jersey and loves Nightmare on Elm Street!
thank you for reading <3
I’m both loving Callie this season and deeply concerned for her. She’s absolutely infatuated with Lottie (not necessarily in a romantic way). I mean, she has this VERY complicated mother with a mysterious past, and now she has access to someone who knew her at that time? Who also happens to be charismatic and enigmatic, and who has taken a serious interest in Callie? Of course she’s gonna be enthralled! When Shauna told Lottie to leave, and Callie went to “do her makeup”, I think Callie might just hitch a ride with her new idol.
I desperately need Jeff to quit focusing on business and start parenting this child before something bad happens to her
really loving Callie this season
Wow this episode was intense, LOVED it and your recap!
– wanted to add Jaws to list of horror films referenced in the hallucinations-Shauna being yanked down in the water is very reminiscent of the opening kill
– Yet I still found Shauna’s hallucination emotionally gut wrenching, with her stillborn son calling out to her as a 4(?) year old
– The LOST Easter egg was amazing (Lottie and Callie singing to make your own kind of music, which was the introduction to Desmond inside the hatch). Literally jumped off my couch with excitement, love that the writers do just a touch of fan service without being disruptive
– Callie wearing THE necklace was terrifying. I’m afraid of what Shauna will do next
– totally agree with prior comments about Callie’s hero worship of Lottie, she’s not going to walk away willingly. Will that force Shauna to have to confess what really went on out there
– I was floored by adult Tai doing the wilderness chant, felt extra creepy
– Melissa hesitantly approaching Shauna was adorable. Are the little braids new???? Even though they seemed a little out of character, it was also cute that she was ‘dressing up’ for Shauna
ooo yes very Jaws reminiscent for sure (and that’s one of my favorite movies of alllllll time. honestly a lot of the themes of Jaws resonate w this show’s narrative now that i’m thinking about it)
melissa’s baby dyke vibes are so spot on lol
I found the cave scenes literally nauseating. From the moment they started squeezing themselves through gaps I was getting ready to run. To the bathroom. I found myself squirming in my beanbag, feeling like I was on a bad trip. It was hugely effective television!!! Ewwww even thinking about it is terrible haha.
they were super effective for my wife too lol. i don’t have as much of a reaction to claustrophobic horror but the tension was indeed great
Okay, some thoughts….
– what if Walter fucked with Shauna’s brakes? He’s been known to kill for Misty without her asking him to and just wondering how far he would go.
– disappointed we didn’t see adult Melissa or whoever Swank is going to be. I hope they don’t draw that part out too long because I’m already feeling myself get a little bored with that.
-Shoplifting Lottie is hilarious and I thought her question to Callie was telling. I think she sees Callie as one of them and wants to find more believers… I also thought about how obsessed Lottie was with Shauna’s baby in the wilderness and now we’re seeing her paying a lot of attention to Shauna’s kid again.
– I’m personally a fan of the over the top hallucination sequence and really do feel like we’ve been done a disservice in not knowing more about Akilah. What we do know is that she is good with animals, she hallucinated an animal in S2 (the dead mouse). She went from thinking the ceremony stuff was weird and just doing it to do something in S2 to not wanting to do Lottie’s drug game to being the one to say they needed to go into the cave. There just seemed to be a shift in that moment for her.
– I missed Jeff in this episode. He is easily one of my fave characters in adult timeline.
– I was glad to finally see Shauna’s rage in throwing things off the counter after yelling at Lottie. I’d be furious at Lottie too.
– I personally hate the direction Tai is going in. I do see the red eyes and shifts but open to that just being how her eyes are. I think I’m most terrified of tai if she were to fully give into the other tai. Both actors in both timelines do an incredible job of being terrifying when they go into “other Tai” mode.
– I just can’t get a real sense of Van this season. Even looking past the withholding of information, I just can’t tell where she is headed or what she believes.
– I feel really bad for Callie. The girl just wants to feel close to her mom and I truly believe that she thinks that knowing more about the wilderness time will allow her to show her mom she loves her even thought she’s a murderous traumatized person. I think Callie’s desire to know more is actually rooted in wanting to know her mom and in turn know more about herself. I saw this when Jeff told Callie about the baby dying in the wilderness.
I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts/observations when we rewatch before we arch the next episode. Thank you for holding this YJ forum! I love it here.
i know i can’t believe we still haven’t met Swank! (or Joel McHale — not as excited for that one but i feel like both of their casting were like big announcements and we haven’t even met their characters yet and don’t know much at all)
I MISSED JEFF TOO LOL HE SHOULD BE IN EVERY EP AND I NEVER SAY THAT ABOUT A RANDOM MAN
yeah the over-the-top hallucinations worked for me, too, though I understand why they might not work for everyone.
reeeeeally good point about the parallel between Lottie’s obsession with wilderness baby and now her obsession with Callie.
I love Coach. I love that on a cheesy teen drama he would be some creep who has an affair with at least one Yellowjacket and instead he is just like “ew do not hit on me also stop eating each other this is a completely unheard of ring of hell I am in”
I voiced the hallucinations featuring earth, water, and fire and my roommate said “and air is what’s killing them”. Then Coach said it was poison so like good job, Roomie!
The music in the lake hit Rosemary’s Baby for me.
Coach really is so pure!! I love him!!
A few thoughts…
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…..
Re: who set the fire, if I remember correctly when the fire was engulfing the cabin the main doors are locked they have to break them open with an axe, which I believe it’s Van kicking the door initially but then Tai welding the axe. It looked to me like the fire was also deliberately set in front of the windows which made smashing them to get out a no go option. I originally thought it was Ben after s2, and felt he would have the knowledge to set such a fire that limited options of escape. So I am not sure I can buy in to it being an accident. It seemed very deliberate. If it’s bad Tai, the only issue is that she was inside the cabin when Shauna woke everyone up. So if Tai did it she would have had to climb back in through the upper level window, not wake Shauna and go back downstairs. Because the doors were locked / blocked from the outside. Bad Tai is definitely adept at parkour so it’s possible, but I’m not sure she’s that stealthy as to not wake Shauna.
Re: red eyes i think I saw through an Ash Silver recap, where sge said the producers use the teen eye colour as the real eye colour. Jasmine SB has brown and thus they used contacts for adult Tai. There was an interview with the director that said it really was just an issue of lighting with the brown contacts and in no way is it related to Tai being in her bad or good states
Re: gas in the mine. My vote is methane, others postulated last season this may be why the animals, (deer, bear and birds) were sickly and dropped dead in s1 and s2.
yeah and it really did look like the flames started outside and moved in. “Bad Tai is definitely adept at parkour” just took me OUT lajsdlajdkajsdkjad but it’s so true kasjdkasdj.
ok great i feel validated by the eye thing.
methane indeed makes sense and yeah impacting the wildlife makes sense too!
I noticed something about Misty burning the reunion picture:
She starts burning it from the corner where SHE is standing in the picture.
She just came home after the crash in Shauna’s car, Shauna accused her of messing with her brakes, they fight. I feel like if Misty were innocent (of this one thing), and super mad at Shauna in that moment, she would have burned the corner Shauna was in?
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, and it was just the most convenient corner lol.
But part of me does think she did it, because it’s so similar to what she did with Nat. Maybe this is Misty’s way of trying out Shauna as her new “best friend?” Which, of course, to Misty means sabotaging the other person’s car so they have to hang out with you.
So when that backfires, she goes home mad at herself for being the “psycho” Shauna says she is. Hence, burning her own side of the picture first.
A stretch? Probably.
This feels like a major reach but the llama had me thinking about whether they can be found in the Andes. Sure enough, they are! So like. A reference to the Uruguayan rugby team crashing in the Andes?!
The girls are of an age with me, and this may be a reference to Akilah seeing this as a child.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCRGeXKgMGU
omg love this time period specificity
i always wonder how much any of the girls know about this crash since it happened before theirs but they wouldn’t have been born yet
The movie “Alive” that tells the story of the soccer team in the Andes came out in 1993 and it starred Ethan Hawke, so between Hawke and the soccer connection I would expect that multiple Yellowjackets watched the movie. Just like them, I was a high school senior in the spring of 1996 and I saw that movie when it came out on video.
super interesting to consider! feel like Van should have brought it up by now lol
Please no more footnotes, it’s too hard to scroll to find and then scroll back and find my spot with the tiny footnote… or if you have to, then yes to hyperlinks and yes to separating them out from the non-footnote tidbits
yes for sure noted! someone else expressed same issue
Loved this ep but I love all of them! I’m blind to all faults!
– I think Callie wishes her mom were more like Lottie, I think this is the season she’ll start to see who her mom was — and still is
– I think Lottie sees Shauna as a powerful *vessel and that’s why she was so obsessed with the baby and now Callie. Also, her choice of the bright red dress for Callie in a store full of neutrals and as a woman who mostly wears neutrals and jewel tones?? A choice!
– Where has the necklace been?? Because my first thought was that it was buried with the baby or still on Jackie when they BBQ’d her so please tell me I’m wrong
– I honestly thought Trav was just throwing Akilah under the bus at first. Excited to watch her character grow! I don’t know enough lore to understand why eating the berries in the dream is a bad thing, but I’m telling myself we’ll get a lot more of her before we have any chance of losing her (I don’t think we will but I might just be telling myself that!)
– I absolutely think Walter messed with Shauna’s van! He clearly tracked Misty at the bar and lied about the bartender calling all her friends, when he sees that his attempts to split Misty off from the other women isn’t working I think he tried taking matters into his own hands.
– Desperately trying to forget the scene with Tai reciting the chant while she lights a candle. I need to sleep tonight!
– I hope we’ll get more opportunities to understand Van’s interiority, both as a teen and an adult. Her behavior around the cancer has been odd and I’m sure carries something much deeper