Welcome to Autostraddle’s Yellowjackets 306 recap, where we will be discussing the episode “Thanksgiving (Canada),” which ends on perhaps the biggest cliffhanger in Yellowjackets history! Let’s get on with it then! The episode was written by Libby Hill and Emily St. James and directed by Pete Chatmon. Catch up on past recaps and also be sure to COMMENT and preface your comment with a couple sentences of filler before saying any spoilers so that they don’t appear in the comments previews on the homepage. Something to note: My usual workaround for screenshotting an episode without just capturing a blank screen is NOT WORKING, so right now there are only promo photos used below, which is not the usual vibe of my recaps. I am working on a fix, and if anyone has one, let me know because I’ll go back in and add!
The first time I saw the end of this episode of Yellowjackets, I practically had to get down and do push-ups? That’s how jacked up I was from the sheer shock of it all. As I say above, it’s easily the biggest cliffhanger Yellowjackets has left us on. What a cliff we find ourselves on! We’re talking KristenCrystal Falling To Her Death-style cliff!!!!!
But first, we must start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, both according to The Sound of Music and in the context of this episode, which starts strong! Shauna rolls up to her house with her squeaky brakes and her head full of voices: Jackie’s from the freezer, Misty telling her about Lottie’s death, the dulcet and haunting tones of “Queen of Hearts.”
Shauna tells Jeff that Lottie died and that she thinks she was murdered. Callie comes in, looking shocked but also…does she? My favorite theory of the moment is that Callie had something to do with this, but let’s circle back to that.
Callie finally hands Shauna the tape she intercepted from the porch and says she thinks she fucked up by not doing so sooner. The brakes, the freezer, Lottie’s death, and now this tape? Shauna connects the dots whether they’re connected dots or not: “Someone is trying to kill us.”
Okay, let me just say up top here that this is easily one of the hardest-to-watch episodes of Yellowjackets ever. It might also be one of my favorites of the season. The writers are making good on their promise that this would be one of the most intense and morbid seasons yet. Previously, I considered Shauna’s birthing episode to be the hardest to watch, but I think this one takes the cannibal cake! And it’s all because of the tragedy of Coach Benjamin Scott.
I know, I know! How could it get even more tragic than it has already been? Well, Yellowjackets doesn’t let up the gas at all on his bleak as fuck arc for Ben, who has basically been on a doomed downspiral since the beginning of the story. In his first scene of this episode, he’s tied up in the animal pen, looking worse for wear, but it’s going to get so much worse.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
His ankle, freshly cut by Melissa by Shauna’s orders, is infected. Nat brings him food. She says he was spared. “So, what, someone has a bullshit vision, and I get to suffer indefinitely?” Ben asks. “Wow, what a miracle.” She tells him alive is better than dead, and he tells her to look around. He’s a prisoner. It is no way to live. He asks, for the first time of the episode, for her to kill him. She refuses. She feels that taking away the girls’ hope of going home would be to fail them as their leader. “You won’t always feel like this,” she says. “I promise.” It’s a macabre omen for how the episode will end.
What follows is a devastating montage of Ben asking her to mercy kill him day in and day out every time she brings him food to eat. He tries all sorts of tactics. None of them work. It’s no wonder Adult Natalie is so haunted; all of this with Ben, perhaps even more than her father and more than Javi’s death, is something that would forever alter you. Ben becomes dirtier and more haggard every time. Nat becomes angrier. She does not want to kill him. She knows she probably has to kill him.
His final tactic? He tries to confess to the cabin fire. He tries to goad her into enacting revenge, but that has never been who Nat is. It does break her, but not in the way he wants. She says she won’t bring him meals anymore and that it’ll have to be a split duty added to the chore list they draw cards for.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Van and Tai are going about chores of their own when Van observes it’s getting cold at night already. “We’re going to have to spend another winter here,” she says. Tai points out that at least they’re more prepared this time.
The two wilderness dykes look over at the…other, freshly minted wilderness dykes! Melissa hurriedly follows Shauna out of their shelter and throws her arm around her. “Do you think Mel has to wear Jackie’s clothes when they make out?” Van asks. “She definitely makes Mel call her Shipman,” Tai says, referring to Jackie regularly having called Shauna by her last name. I chortled. I’m glad we’re textually recognizing the sapphic yearning between Shauna and Jackie. I like to imagine this has been an ongoing joke between Tai and Van even before the Melissa of it all. Gays love to speculate about other gays. Melissa pauses and waves at Tai and Van as if she’s happy to be in their special gay club.
Van mockingly says hi back to Melissa, and Tai tells her to be nice. They aren’t hurting anyone, and at least Shauna looks…well, not quite happy. We cut to Shauna whittling a large stick with her knife and sitting like a butch. Tai says she does seem better. “Better” is pretty relative when it comes to Shauna.
Misty tries to charm a forensics guy named Karl into testing biological material found from under Lottie’s nails. She’s still on her Citizen Detective beat of course. She’s also still rocking Nat’s leather jacket. Walter texts to try to ask if she said something to Shauna, who isn’t answering him.
Shauna is busy hiding her family away from probably an imagined killer! I’m not yet convinced someone is actually hunting the Yellowjackets again! They check into a motel — specifically, the Jolly Hitcher, which is the hotel chain owned and operated by The Joels — and, even here, the Parents of the Year make Callie go to “her room” so they can talk about murder and stuff. Jeff asks what’s on the tape, and Shauna says she truly doesn’t know.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Shauna tells Jeff she will take care of it but that she needs Jeff to trust her. Jeff agrees to this very quickly! That’s Jeff: loyal to a fault. He asks when the last time she ate was, and she acts dizzy — emphasis on acts. Jeff goes off to get her snacks from the vending machine, and she springs into action. She calls Tai trying to get ahold of Van. “You know Van and I aren’t friends like that,” Shauna says when Tai, who is in the middle of a massage, asks why she doesn’t just call Van. I’m going to remember this line, because while sure we have seen plenty of instances of Van and Shauna not getting along in the wilderness, this implies to me that there’s an even bigger chasm that opens between them, a line crossed that there’s no coming back from even as they’re adults.
Tai hands Van the phone, and we pull back to see Tai and Van in some sort of luxury hotel, both wearing robes. Tai did ask Van if she wanted a change of scenery at the end of last episode. I guess by that she meant a bougie staycation! Shauna describes the tape to Van and asks if she can play it, and Van, analog queen that she is, boasts she can play any and all unidentified tapes. It’s a DAT tape, which stands for Digital Audio Tape, which was introduced in 1987 by Sony, which released its final DAT product in 1995 — all of which to say, it’s not a super common form of tape. Callie definitely wouldn’t have known how to play it, though I’m sure someone her age would have just Googled it.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Van says she can drop off a DAT player later in the week, but Shauna stresses it’s more urgent than that. She wants her to hand deliver it ASAP. Van tells Tai she feels like Shauna has finally cracked, but it seems Shauna is not the only one cracking! Tai receives her room service delivery, complete with a rare filet mignon, a bacon cheeseburger, and two Maine lobsters. “Did I somehow manage to knock you up?” Van says, with perfect delivery from Lauren Ambrose.
But in all seriousness, something is off. When we met Tai in season one, she didn’t eat meat. What is going on now? Van tries to confront her and points out it doesn’t seem like she cares about anything other than self-care, even with Lottie dying and Shauna spiraling out. Tai spins it all as being about losing her family and her career. She just wants to feel good to feel something. Van says she understands being in a live-for-the-moment kind of place. I mean, yeah, both characters have been doing that for much of this season. But I’m convinced something deeper is happening to Tai, namely that she’s not Tai at all.
Tai asks her who even uses DAT tapes, and Van says in her experience it’s weird garage bands and serious birders and, her face shifts. She’s clearly realizing something. She tells Tai to get dressed immediately. Does anyone with audio knowledge know who else might use DAT tapes? Sound off in the comments!
In the wilderness, Travis approaches Akilah who observes she and Lottie disappeared the day before. He’s wondering if she went to the caves again, and she says she did and she’s only seeing what the wilderness allows her to see. He expresses concern. I still feel like he lied about her being the chosen one just to get Lottie off his back. I also wonder if a Travis/Akilah romance is blooming? Am I the only one picking up on that energy?
Mari apparently drew the Feed Ben card, so she brings him his meal. She realizes he has been on a hunger strike, which I definitely saw coming. Mari, Nat, Tai, and Akilah all meet to discuss. Akilah shares some of her recent visions, and they’re all of things from home, but Tai correctly points out they all sound like memories, not premonitions. They decide they need to convince to eat, and Lottie has an idea. All of Lottie’s ideas lately are BAD! But just you wait for how bad this one is! And I mean bad in the evil sense.
In a quick transition scene, Adult Misty is approached by a limo sent by Walter who hands her Lottie’s trash.
Back in the wilderness, Nat approaches Misty, who feels like she failed Ben. “I’ve kept him alive before, I can do it again,” Misty says. Nat tries to convince her not to do whatever she’s about to do, but Misty stays firm. You’re going to wish Nat fought harder to stop her. But if there’s one thing that’s clear from this episode, it’s that Nat doesn’t really hold any power over the group anymore.
In Tai’s basement, Van goes through her boxes of stuff. Even just seeing Tai’s basement gives me flashbacks to what Simone once discovered there. I’m already on edge! Yellowjackets then leans into supernatural horror here, the lights flickering ominously. Then a landline phone in one of the cardboard boxes, which can’t possibly be plugged in, rings and flashes red lights. Van answers it, and Tai’s voice is on the other end, saying “I can’t” and “help” amid static before the line cuts. Taissa then comes bounding down the stairs asking her about box cutters.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
It’s a tight but effective horror scene, driving home the fact that Tai is being possessed by Other Tai and struggling to get out. I love possession narratives, and I do think this one is likely operating on an allegorical level, a way to explore the strategies Tai uses to suppress trauma.
Misty scours through Lottie’s trash and finds a takeout container from Bamboo Cafe, a restaurant that’s lowly rated and doesn’t have vegetarian options and wonders why she would have eaten from there. She stakes out the place and sees none other than Nicole Maines’ Lisa working as a bike delivery girl for the restaurant.
The in-universe reality television series Repo Divorcees MUST have started as an inside joke in the writers room, and I’m loving it as a lover of trashy reality. Jeff and Callie are watching it with snacks in the hotel bed when Shauna gets a call from Van that they’re on the way with the DAT player.
Callie and Jeff want to know where Shauna is going, and she tells them she’s going to find out what’s on the tape. Jeff wants to go with, and so does Callie, but Shauna shoots them both down. “If I’m being completely honest, we haven’t always been the best at keeping you safe,” Shauna says. “We’re trying to do better,” Jeff says very sincerely. These two!
Callie hugs her mom, but it’s all just a way to slip her phone while it’s recording audio into her mom’s bag. She wants to know what’s on that tape, too, and she got her scheming skills from her mother.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
If this is the hardest episode of the series to watch, this is the hardest scene to watch. Misty and a group of the others mask up to force feed Ben using a makeshift feeding tube. I actually could only watch this scene once, whereas I tend to watch episodes twice for these recaps. But it’s too brutal; I had to look away, and that rarely happens to me!
Misty, Travis, Van, and Shauna take off their masks, leaving Ben behind coughing up blood. Misty wonders if he kept it all down, and Shauna says they’ll get better at it, a harrowing line. They intend to keep doing this over and over. Ben is right: It is no way to live. It is deeply emblematic of our carceral system, which the Yellowjackets have remade in the wilderness to chilling effect.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Lottie — whose idea this was I’m pretty sure?! — is at the base of a tree begging for the wilderness to talk to her. She hears Akilah, who wants to go into the cave and see if there’s anything she missed, suddenly doubting her visions in the face of what they’ve led to with Ben.
Tai, Van, and Shauna gather in Tai’s car to listen to what’s on the tape. It’s someone’s voice saying “testing, testing, one two three, oh my god, what is this?” That’s all we get for now.
Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Misty approaches Lisa during a delivery, and Lisa is rightfully terrified, given that Misty had been trying to kill her when she accidentally killed Nat. Misty tells Lisa she’s trying to figure out who killed Lottie, and Lisa is amused. “You think I did it?” she asks. Misty points out Lottie took all her money and her freedom. The motive is right there. “Yeah, I was in a cult that ruined my life, I don’t recommend it,” Lisa says. “But murder? Not all of us turn our trauma into stabby-stabby.” I’m glad we’re acknowledging just how predatory Lottie’s cult was, something only Nat and Shauna seemed to notice last season. Lisa does agree to tell Misty what she knows, but only if they stay out in the open.
Back in the car, shouts and strange noises can be heard on the tape, along with a woman screaming “NO!” Van shuts off the tape. “The only people that even know about this are either us or dead,” Van says. Tai suggests they destroy it, and Van points out it’s probably not the only copy. Shauna points out it came to her house specifically and was part of a series of events specifically targeting her. She realizes Callie’s phone is in her bag recording and takes it out to delete the voice memo. IT’S GOING TO BE IN RECENTLY DELETED, SHAUNA!!!!! IS THIS YOUR FIRST RODEO? She exits the car.
What was on that tape!! Clearly it’s something bad that happened that we haven’t even seen yet. But can it really be something from the wilderness? How would it be recorded?
In the cave, Akilah has a vision of a claymation bear arriving at camp and growing a third eye. There are also flashes of the group doing some sort of ritual. Akilah breaks down, saying she doesn’t know what any of it means. Girl, neither do I!
Nat wakes up in the middle of the night in anguish. She leaves her shelter with a knife. Travis tries to stop her, but this time, she has made up her mind. She has to do this. They can’t keep torturing him. Travis relents and says he’ll keep watch. The sun will be up soon.
Nat goes into the pen. Ben whispers a thank you that is so heartbreakingly earnest. She stabs him in the chest and stays with him until he dies. In the morning, she stumbles out with a bloody knife and wipes a bloody handprint on her cheek. Misty screams “what did you do?!” before accusing her of murder and calling on her to be “arrested.” Again, they’re just replicating these evil, violent systems. “I kept a promise,” Nat says when the others ask what she did.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Misty goes to Ben’s lifeless body and kisses him, one final violation. Ben didn’t deserve any of this. What they did to him is unfathomable, and yet I think we still haven’t seen the extent of the horrors they enacted in the wilderness. For one, this seemingly doesn’t have anything to do with what was on the DAT tape.
The mob surrounds Nat. Tai tries to call for another trial, but Shauna doesn’t want another trial. Lottie steps in and says Shauna will lead them. It’s exactly what Shauna has wanted, and she immediately steps up with a rallying speech. Something about it is giving Kendall Roy!
“When people die out here, we honor them,” Shauna says, which is a cute way to say “we eat them.” Natalie’s punishment? Shauna is going to make her carve up and prepare Ben’s body for the feast. Shauna’s practically salivating at this cruelty.
In the present, Jeff and Callie are playing poker on the motel bed for candy when Shauna returns and asks to speak with Vallie for one of their “special mother-daughter chats.” Shauna accuses her of recording the conversation, and Callie says she has a right to know what’s coming to them. Shauna says she’s a child, and Callie says “I’m the same age you were.” Points! Made!
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
“I just want to be close to you,” Callie says. “I thought you wanted that, too.”
Being close with Shauna, though, is a doomed thing. Also, does Callie want to be close to her mother to the extent she would commit murder just to be like her? Something to think about!
Sure enough, Callie finds the recording in her recently deleteds. SHAUNA, STUDY UP ON TECH PRIVACY AND SECURITY!!!!
In the wilderness, Shauna shows Nat how to prepare Ben’s body.
Out in public, Lisa tells Misty that Lottie gave her the $50,000. So that suggests Lisa is the one Lottie was meeting up with to apologize to. Misty tries to defend her friendship with Nat to Lisa, who says to start with her friends in her investigation of Lottie’s death. Lisa reveals Tai and Lottie met up the day Lottie died.
Tain bolts awake in the middle of the night and shouts “Van, you’ve gotta help me!” When Van tries to rattle her, her face morphs into a sinister expression and she settles back into bed. It’s a battle of the Tais, and Other Tai is WINNING. Personally, I would not be able to continue to sleep in the same bed as my lover after this horrifying sequence, but Van apparently has no fear.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Misty texts Tai that she wants to meet up. Karl sends Misty back the DNA results, but she doesn’t have samples to compare it against, so she begrudgingly sends it to Walter to see if he has any luck with it.
It’s nighttime in the wilderness, and the girls all sit around a fire draped in their finest furs. Shauna is holding court, and Van tells Tai she was right: Shauna does seem better. They all eat bits of Ben off their plates.
Misty starts humming, and Lottie says this is wrong, isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. She hears laughter and whispering that isn’t there, and then she shouts at the top of her lungs. Something screams back.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with Showtime.
The wilderness keeps screeching, and Lottie joins it. She commands the others to sing. Their shouts along with those of the wilderness amalgamate into the score for the series. They start dancing around the fire. When the music cuts out though, it’s just a bunch of teens screaming into the void. Lottie pauses, thinks she sees Ben standing in the distance. More of them stop and notice something.
Or, someone. Lottie shouts “no!” and we cut to at least one man and someone next to him stepping forward and saying “hello.” This…does not seem like a hallucination. The man looks down and sees Ben’s head on a spike. “What the fuck?” We cut to the credits.
If we are to believe these people are real — and again, I don’t think the moment has a group hallucination quality to it — then holy shit. Someone found the girls in the wilderness! But we also know they live through another winter out there, so what happens to these people? Do they use them to eventually secure a rescue but also kill them because they’re witnesses to their little cannibalism ritual with Ben? Does something go wrong with their attempts to get out of the wilderness with them? WHO ARE THEY? HIKERS? DO THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE DAT TAPE?
For now, we know very little. But I welcome any and all theories and speculation. For now, I’m just reeling! This season is keeping us on our fucking toes. This is one of the biggest plot twists yet, and I can’t wait to see if it’s earned.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
But also, whew, as much as I love it, I don’t think I want to watch that episode ever again. It’s such a harrowing reality that the girls think they’re preserving hope by torturing Ben when really they are destroying it. By the end, it’s like they’ve gone fully feral for real, having destroyed the last of their humanity by ending his life in such a prolonged and unnecessary way.
RIP Ben Scott. You were actually a pretty good dude.
Last Buzz:
- IS THAT ROBBY FROM NEW GIRL? (It is.)
- “And you know how I feel about cops now.” Jeff said ACAB, hell yeah brother.
- “Plus, Jeff’s already in his sleeping boxers.”
- “I took an oath. And vacation days at work.”
Spoilers maybe??
The people are birders. It’s the memory that triggered Van when talking about who uses DAT. And the girls’ howling to the wilderness during the Benquet seems to have gotten them found found so…Ben really was the key to getting home?
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the end of the Callie/Shauna scene that ended with Callie (who is a P.O.S.) fixing to meet Shauna Shipman.
Goodbye, Ben. You were not a good guy and I won’t miss you.
“Benquent” I love it. Morbid and perfect.
so curious to know why you dislike ben or more specifically why you think he wasn’t a good guy!
I would say that Ben is a good friend to Natalie. That doesn’t make him a good guy, in my opinion.
In the recap of the trial episode you wrote about Ben’s position as an adult. About his adulthood not making a difference in the wilderness; that just because he’s the grownup he “doesn’t know how to deliver a baby any better than the rest of them.” That’s fine, but they tried. Ben didn’t stay in the room during Shauna’s labor, he wasn’t there when Van’s face was being stitched back together, he wasn’t coming up with plans for keeping everyone fed, he didn’t pitch in on “keep Lottie alive” duty. He seemed content to stay in his room while most of the others dealt (often very badly) with the horrible things they were faced with.
I don’t think he should have been executed, even if he had burned down the cabin. I just didn’t agree with Natalie and Misty when they would tell him what a good person he was. For me, a good person does good things for those around them. Too often Ben didn’t do, or even try, to do anything.
So I won’t miss Ben and the leadership and selflessness that I feel he didn’t show. I will miss Steven Krueger. He gave a beautiful and heartbreaking performance.
I agree with all this. I think because Kruger’s performance is so heartbreaking, and he reveals his humanity and empathy and disbelief at the situation even as he’s dissociating and hiding from the group and so on (even before he flees), so I think it’s easy to forget that yes, he may be like 27, but these girls are like 16, and even if his dissociation and inability to function is a rationale response to the trauma they’re suffering, it is still a betrayal of the rest of the group––particularly as the sole adult, and the person whose role it was to safeguard them to the best of his ability.
Was this written by Shauna Shipman?
Ben was a good guy. This episode was rough, yeesh.
Ben is literally the one who patiently taught them how to shoot a gun, hunt, butcher animals, etc etc and is the only reason they were able to survive. He was not a bad person, idk why you think that
What an episode! Definitely one of the hardest to watch episodes of the show for me, but equally full of little moments that kept it getting too weighed down by the darker material.
I’m like 99% sure the recording on the DAT tape is the moment the hikers (serious birders?) arrive – Lottie’s “No!” seems to match. This to me very strongly implies that the hikers are about to get killed, but we’ll see! It certainly sheds some new light on just about everything in the adult timeline if they killed people who weren’t even in the crash.
And yeah, that forcefeeding scene just viscerally upsetting. Really well done but Jesus Christ.
Ok this is just a sentance to avoid spoilers on the front page.
I think the guy hiker may have a tape recorder around his neck? Which again, leads me towards the tape being of the moment at the end of the episode. I really don’t think these hikers are making it back to civilization.
Okay this makes sense to me!
he’s definitely wearing something around his neck but i kinda thought binoculars
yes on yet another rewatch, the NO definitely matches!!
So I have thought non stop about the very beginning of the show when they are hunting a woman and she falls on spikes and dies etc. I think they are going to keep these birders and then hunt them, and it’s the lady birder who ends up in the pit on the spikes. Maybe?
Wow just wow. What an episode! What a recap! What an ending! That cliffhanger was fantastic.
SPOILEEEEERS
OMG This episode, “the Giver” dropping, and a lunar eclipse? What a night for sapphics!
I wish I had theories. Love reading them but my brain refuses to try working things out on its own. Except for Other Tai. I’m squarely in the Other Tai is running the show camp.
I feel this. Love reading the theories but my brain is not that of a citizen detective’s!
Oh my gosh. NOW I understand what everyone was talking about with this episode.
space
for
spoilers
As soon as those birders pulled up, I was speechless, then I was like “What the fuck?” and immediately, the birder echoed my sentiment. So…is this what they have been so afraid of getting out? That they weren’t ready to go back and these randos found out what they had been doing, so they kill them all? Cause it’s only fall, they have to live through another winter, we still have too many survivors so a bunch more have to die before they get rescued (or potentially rescue themselves…)
Also, I was right and it’s been bad Tai all along this season. Real Tai is trapped under Alterna-Tai. How is Van gonna get her back?
More thoughts bouncing around in my head.
– Nice product placement with the poltergeist phone, I had that exact one when I was 16 in 1996.
A couple thoughts about that final scene:
– How is having coach’s head on a spike while they eat him honoring? Seems more disrespectful than anything.
-Shauna’s face when she sees the hikers. You know she’s thinking: “Shit, man! I JUST got elected leader this afternoon!”
-Also, no wonder Nat is the most fucked up of the adults. She had to mercy kill her only friend there. She was always an outcast of the group even though she was respected. But she had an actual friendship with Ben. She might have thought they would kill her in response so she could end her own suffering.
– Is Hilary Swank actually going to be in this season? I’m starting to get skeptical, we were also promised Jason Ritter last season and that never materialized either.
i thought it was a reference to the pig head on the stick in Lord of the Flies
i ALSO said “what the fuck” in unison with them. and yes i think we’re getting Alterna-Tai 100% of the time for real, which is unnerving! i love possession tropes though so interested to see where it goes
your recaps are life-saving to me. i read so many YJ recaps and yours are far and away my faves. thank you for your service!
RIP BEN YOU WERE THE REAL ONE AND I MISS YOU ALREADY. that shot of ben’s ankle? the way he begs, his desperation? give krueger all the jobs! and a supporting actor emmy! the makeup/hair crew has also done an incredible job with him. ben better start HAUNTING this narrative – especially for Nat and Misty. this feels like a reversal of Javi’s death – Nat watched him drown while he begged her to save him. now, she’s ending Ben’s suffering after he begged her. in both instances, she had this power of life and death, and now she’s following her gut feeling of what’s right, even though the others might kill her. i DO feel like stabbing him in the chest was probably not the quickest way to kill him but i also don’t know that much about how to kill a guy.
“was it like the stuff from the journals?” being reminded in THIS episode that jeff knows everything that went down out there…. DARK! he knows what they did to ben. he knows what became of those hikers (avid birders?) ! simone would NEVER
the yellowish sheen of summer is gone! the light is gray, autumnal – reminding me of late S1. the girls are in their jackets! it’s going to get cold again!
theory: akilah will die either by suicide (guilt over what happened to Ben and others because of the visions) or in the caves.
fun observations because this was A Lot
– RHINESTONE NAILS?????? nothing has been more Other Tai this whole season. not the meat-eating. not the waiter thing. these nails are deeply sinister to me.
– LISA IS HERE WE ARE SOOOOOO BACK
-claymation!?
– melissa waving at van gives baby gay trying to make gay friend energy. even though i doubt melissa is a baby gay.
– is tai rationing her hair product? how are those curls so immaculate?
not me getting claymation confused with stop motion :(
wow! I’m so obsessed with this episode!! I actually found last week’s episode personally harder to watch and digest, I think because I wasn’t warned, but when the cast kept talking this one up I knew it would be really wild.
so currently my thought is that the tape is something the birders/hikers had on them and it captured proof the girls were found and probably murdered these people quite a while before being rescued. I don’t think it’s that the girls don’t want to go home yet, I think the birders just saw Ben’s decapitated head which would be hard to explain and then ask for a ride home. I think this is why van reacted with urgency after saying intense birders use the DAT tapes. I also think one of the girls finds the tape on the birder at some point and hides it and brings it home. so the last survivor…maybe melissa? I don’t know how else it would exist. I’m thinking that currently the adult yellowjackets we already know don’t realize any other survivors are still out there because van says everyone else who knows about the recorded incident is dead, so did the last survivor fake their death and is now re-entering the narrative?
Someone make a supercut of every hilarious side-eye and one-liner both versions of Van have ever said or done and I will watch it every single day
Someone else create a new Emmys category for Best Portrayal of One Character in Two Timelines and then immediately give it to Hewson and Ambrose, what a gift these two are
#VanLife
HEWSON AND AMBROSE ARE KILLING IT IT’S UNCANNY
Yes the vans are so so good!
YES!
Steven Kreuger and Sophie Thatcher have been MVPs this season.
spoiler spoiler spoiler
Kayla, you focused on Callie’s reaction to hearing Lottie is dead and whether it was fake or not, but I think you should watch Jeff’s reaction again. Doesn’t it seem a little over-broad? I can’t decide if it’s Warren Kole playing the reaction over-broadly or Jeff himself being over-broad. Jeff is on my suspect list now. It’s not the first or even second time he’s done shady stuff, and it would be ironic for him to be telling Shauna to have trust in him while not confiding in her either.
That promo pic at the end with Ben’s head really struck a chord in me, more so than when I saw the episode, probably because I was too busy gasping and freaking out over the hikers. But doesn’t it give you vibes of classical paintings? There are two famous decapitated heads in art with long hair and beards: Holofernes and John the Baptist. I like the idea it’s a Holofernes reference more because the Book of Judith is left out of certain versions of Bibles because men, and because Holofernes’s murder, like Ben’s, is presented as a heroic act on the part of the woman who did it, whereas John the Baptist’s murder is straight-up evil.
you know i kinda thought it was just jeff being jeff but now that i think about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
oh love this comparison to classical paintings and going to do closer looks at the ones you mentioned.
STEVEN AND SOPHIE ARE SO TALENTEDdd
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME ON THIS
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I don’t know what it was, but something about Jeff’s acting was off to me this episode. Too happy, everything is normal, etc. I’m not sure how to articulate it, but he also just seems…over it. Putting on a facade, like he’s annoyed they’re going through all of this. I’ve never been able to get a good read on Jeff though. But it would make way more sense for him to go after Lottie instead of Callie murdering her. I love the idea of Callie having a murder arc (still wish she got that last season by getting to kill the creepy cop) but also enjoy her being the moral compass of the adult timeline too, since we all know they need it.
As a huge opera nerd, Misty kissing dead Ben is giving MAJOR Salome kissing John the Baptist’s head. The Ben head even looks like a lot of John the Baptist props I’ve seen onstage. That being said, Salome has John the Baptist murdered so that she can keep him for herself, and Misty isn’t orchestrating this plot, so it’s certainly not an exact parallel. But for anyone who knows that story, it’s a pretty clear reference.
I would let misty quigley ruin my life and not just because she’s Christina Ricci, loving her turn into Cool Misty with the jacket and shades. In an episode where basically every actor brought their A game may I just say KRUEGER!!!! HANRATTY!!!
The fuckin sound design on this show kicks ass. I was thinking it the whole time and then they really put their foot in the last sequence. I got a nice 4D experience there too bc my infant started waking up and yelling about it right in line with the gals.
Love that in the scene in the basement there’s a pair of skates hanging out behind tai with her box cutters. Lotta sharp around her
The voice notes:
Ilana Cinnamon Challenge 00:29
Coach Morrison being stupid 00:53
Physic lesson Tuesday 1:12
Gym rant 00:09
Chloe guts screaming 2:23
I like that this show has a pretty strong sense of class and status. Van remembering the masseuse and bellhop are people with ears and ushering them out the room is the most striking example to me currently but it’s been there the whole time.
Not since last season (and before that, the old av club) have recaps been appointment reading for me, thank you for writing them!
heyyyy i love so much about this comment!! also LOL @ 4D EXPERIENCE
thank you for writing out the voice notes hahahaha meant to include in Last Buzz section as a screenshot but alas was having technical issues.
YES the writing seems very aware of class.
and omgggg i love this!!! i got my start writing TV recaps for The AV Club, which I did for over six years over there <3 thank you for reading here! (and thank you if you ever read me there)
Excellent recap as always! Completely agree that this is the new hardest episode to watch.
Not to be contradictory, but doesn’t Natalie specifically say Ben’s cut is not infected? Paraphrasing the conversation, he asks “how would she know” and Natalie says “I can at least recognize pus”. Plus, you don’t wanna eat infected meat
If Ben was still alive, do you think the girls would be able to play off holding him captive? Obviously it’s no where near as bad as murder and cannibalism, but it’s still not a good look…
Loved seeing Lisa show back up! I wish Callie was more involved, especially with the Lottie investigation. Seeing her hop from Lottie to Misty to pump them for information about the Wilderness behind Shauna’s back is very compelling to me.
I think they are setting up a connection between Lottie and whoever is leaving stuff for Shauna. Lottie somehow had Jackie’s necklace and Callie intercepted the DAT tape from the hiker/bird watcher guy. (Agree with fellow commenters that the recording matches Lottie screaming “no!”)
Reading about Van and Tai talking about Shauna and Melissa, I wonder if they had clocked Shauna and Jackie BEFORE the wilderness.
This was my favorite scene. Also, I recently rewatched the pilot, and ho boy what vibes those two had! I loved van and tai joking about it
Yeah, I had always kind of assumed that. That they had looked at Jackie and Shauna in the past and asked “ya think?”
Spoilers for Yellowjackets on the front page. Don’t look.
Sorry, I forgot to give my thoughts/theories on the episode.
– Tai and Van are straight out saying that Shauna was in love with Jackie. There it is.
– Lottie is the king maker. I feel this makes her the Antler Queen, which isn’t the same thing as the leader.
– We saw the masks, but Shauna was wearing the bunny mask. That means it gets passed around.
– If they hadn’t killed and eaten Ben, then they’d have been rescued. So the dream was true.
– Six episodes in, and we still haven’t seen Hilary Swank.
– OH! And maybe Hilary is related to one of the two people they’re about to murder. Maybe she was the one that recorded them getting murdered. Their teen daughter on a bird watching trip with her parents.
– It finally occurred to me. The screaming that the girls have been hearing is the birds that the bird watchers came to see. That’s why the bird watchers followed their screaming. They thought it was the birds.
Oh I am very intrigued by that last theory about the birds shrieking! I think you might be onto something.
I oscillate back and forth between whether there’s actually supernatural or not (and which one I’d prefer), but in either case, what they’re experiencing is a heartbreaking and haunting depiction of trauma.
I think the hikers/bird watchers will be killed soon for what they witnessed. It’s a man and woman who were taping and that tape survived after their demise. ALSO, I think WALTER is the son of those hikers and he is seeking revenge (my theory, of course). He’s way crazy, odd and he’s hiding something as we don’t know much about his background.
I am literally living for this episode and also this recap and also the comments section this week…I love all of the theories being shared so far >:]
I am SO curious what the hell the three-eyed bear from Akilah’s vision could possibly mean. This episode really felt like a horror episode from so many different moments (Ben’s entire arc :'(, Van’s horrifying phone call scene, Akilah’s fucked up vision) and I am absolutely eating it up.
My partner and I thought Alterni-Tai was going to be the first to kill someone this season but the fact that NATALIE, the character with THE strongest moral compass on the show is the one to draw the first real blood is making me go ferallll. Like what an absolute oomph of a storymove. Also their total descent into the wilderness after this…birders it is not looking good.
Van Googled how long does a dat tape survive outdoors. Obviously they kill the birders. They bury the tape. One of them either takes the tape home or someone else finds it while poking around after the rescue. A family member of the birders. Someone interested in their story. Whoever. No wonder they’re all the way they are. This episode was fantastic! This season has been amazing.
I keep being surprised at random comments on various platforms about folks’ disappointment in this season and I honestly wonder what is going wrong for them other than like…their particular hopes aren’t being met? This season feels stronger and more cohesive than season 2 to me.
100% agree! Loving this season. The Yellowjackets Reddit is such a downer.
Although someone on Reddit did just posit that the female hiker will be pit girl, which would be such a great twist.
‘Van Googled how long does a dat tape survive outdoors’ – i didn’t see that. Well spotted.
Oof this episode was not long enough! It was A LOT but went by so quickly. Thank you for these recaps!
Okay thoughts –
– Anyone else notice Misty calling Walter Sherlock? Can’t remember it exactly, but didn’t Walter say in s2 he was just a Sherlock looking for his Moriarty? (Or maybe the other way around?)
– Callie you’re up to something in the long game my gal!
– Shauna you could’ve kept theorizing with Van and Tai, like the whole “who sent this tape convo” is important?? Confronting Callie will keep.
– I’d love to see the chore list and just watch them do their tasks. Where is the candle-making station?
– Ben’s death was so shocking! Half because of poor Nat and half because it was such a darkly lit scene I couldn’t tell what was happening.
– Oh teen Misty you are messed up. I mean she always was, what with the black box of it all, but oof. The knocking herself on the head to stop mourning!? There was something so jarring about that.
– If I were Nat during her butchering lesson I would’ve tied my hair back MUCH tighter for the gruesome task at hand.
– THE CLIFFHANGER.
– Female hiker/birder’s whole look is giving American Girl hiking set.
“Awesome Screenshot: Scene Capture” is the Firefox plug-in I currently use to take screenshots from Prime (in case you need recommendations!)
Anyways spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler
– I loved TaiVan being mean lesbians, but also this was the first time I actually felt endeared by Melissa (her waiving over to her fellow gays was kinda adorable — saw a comment where someone said she wants to start a GSA in the wilderness lol)
– That group are definitely birders/hikers who wandered too far. My guess is they had a car to get most of the way there, since we know from Travis & Nat’s exploration that there’s no civilization anywhere nearby.
– Apparently Joel McHale plays the third birder according to an article with the promo photos?
– I LOVE the irony of them showing up right after they kill Ben. But I also I don’t know if the birders would have found them if they hadn’t heard the screaming. Maybe they even thought it was birds.
– Every time Akilah goes into that cave I get stressed out, I really want her to be the 8th survivor but I think there’s going to be an instance where she goes in (desperate to get a vision to try to save them) and doesn’t come out alive. The fact that she’s already going in there without Travis to look after her…it’s all downhill from here
– Also, I personally wasn’t getting romance vibes from Travis / Akilah (though as a chronic multi-shipper I’m never opposed to it for sure.) I actually saw him acting a bit like an older brother to her (especially since we know she has an older sister back home.) He seems very protective, and stern but sweet with her like he would have been with Javi. I also think he feels a lot of guilt for being the reason Lottie has been putting Akilah through all of this at all (since it had been him initially), but at the same time he knows he has to protect her since he wasn’t able to protect Javi from these girls. One of the most interesting dynamics to come from this season though. I love when she gave him a duck to cuddle.
– The fact that they didn’t have to cannibalize Ben…they had enough food from other means, they weren’t starving or desperate. But they did it anyways, making the excuse of it being a ritual to honor him when they literally had his HEAD on a SPIKE. If they not only kill but cannibalize these complete strangers too (which I hope they do), then they’re officially gone. They used to at people out of desperation, but now they’d jut be doing it out of self-preservation.
– Hard to watch for sure but this might be my favorite episode outside of Doomcoming
– “Did I somehow get you pregnant?” Van line of all time
At the point they decide to eat Ben, they’re facing another long winter. Sure, they have animals now, but are those animals enough to get through an entire winter? They don’t want to have to do another card draw and hunt if it can be avoided. Rule #1 of survivalism is that you make the most of every resource you have on hand. And it’s not cold enough to be able to stash Ben’s body like they did Jackie’s, so they can’t just wait and see if if they end up needing it later.
Whew. Watching from Oz .. needless to say Kayla you are my go to. Thank you ❤️
First up: I was almost ready to give this show away. I thought last season was weak and its final eps had me agreeing reluctantly with the bloke from Forbes.
The first eps of s3 were no better – I was close to OUT. Trivial, dull, playing for cheap laughs.
BUT. I am surprised that the writers have pulled us (me) back in with a vengeance. Tight scripting, nuanced characterisation .. somehow I dislike teen Shauna less than I came to .. tho I note that nobody is keen on her becoming leader. Me neither.
This is a prosaic theory, but I reckon the tape is a recording of the silly last episode of s2. Lisa recorded it. She and Callie are in cahoots. Lottie has (had) some intermediary role but it’s not yet clear. These two v unpleasant girls are up to something. Money I guess.
Not sure where the birders come in. Maybe they just get eaten.
I love love Van – did I knock you up? – and finally Tai is seriously showing alternaTai. She woke real Tai, pleading for help, but alter swiftly regained control.
Nat is the moral heart. Her last scene with coach broke my heart – I cried for the first time in this show. Reminded me of when the beautiful Osha in GoT sliced the throat of .. damn .. the Winterfell maester dude.
Tho this was less neat.
Miss you Juliette Lewis!
One last thought, the gas that Akilah is inhaling is no different to lighter fluid, she’s going to get different and unrelated trips every time and Lotttie is seriously dangerous. Which is not to say that the wilderness does not have its own voice.
But fuck you YJ I’m back.
SPOILER:
Scratch the above theory – i slept on it – of course the tape is from the birders. Van’s memory/reaction and the age of the tape. So the birders were recording the birds / girls screaming and walked into a full-on cannibalism scene that they can’t be allowed to leave alive.
So yes, what happened to the tape and where has it been all this time?
Still reckon Lisa and Callie are in cahoots.
Shauna not knowing to clear the recently deleted folder in voice memos killed me. Such a smart use of technology and generational differences with technology for plotting. And speaking of technology, I love that when Walter texts we get Elijah Wood’s voice. It’s a really fund technique to make texts on-screen more dynamic and grounded in character.
Okay now with spoilers bumped off the main page THE END !!!!!!! Here’s my thing: I can’t imagine they will be in unison in deciding that killing the birders is the move even when found at the worst possible time. Especially with winter coming at least SOME of them will have to think it’s better to be rescued and face the consequences. Unless Shauna just shoots them on-sight… But that feels like the kind of thing they would NOT forgive in the adult timeline. I wonder if Shauna enlists Melissa to do her dirty work which is why Shauna is in the adult gang but Melissa hasn’t been? So Melissa is blackmailing in part because she resents Shauna for getting her to do so much fucked up shit?
Just one more post:
As the credits came on straight off the back of the last scene my TV switched to an ad … for Hungry Jacks.
Thanks Paramount.
extra text
to avoid spoilers
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I guess not knowing about “recently deleted” confirms that Shauna isn’t a RHOSLC fan…
I’m pretty sure the object hanging around the birder’s neck is a compass, but maybe it’s something else too? The woman appears to have binoculars.
Ok spoiler space…
After the end of this episode, I now suspect the screeching sounds they’ve heard across the season, which seemed like the eerie wilderness spirit or whatever calling, are some kind of bird group. Which would explain the birders being in such a remote location.
OtherTai is 100% in charge (and terrifying to me), and I’m not convinced she didn’t have something to do with Lottie’s death. Others pointed out Jeff being nonplussed, but Tai’s self-care scene, lying to Van about where she was (when we now know she had actually gone to see Lottie), and other responses throughout the episode don’t assuage my fear she had something to do with it.
I do not think Callie did. I think she’s savvy and manipulative and wants to sort out what’s going on, but in some ways she’s a kind of stand-in for the audience in that regard.
I keep thinking about Akilah’s vision of the bear––how it mirrors the earlier Bear, but it feels significant that here it appears in claymation. Like, this is something that is constructed.
These girls are no longer just responding to the demands of survival, but creating something out in the forest –– something that often replicates the unjust and horrific violence and retribution of “civilization,” as you rightly point out (something I feel isn’t discussed enough in respect to this show!). And yes, the bear forms a third eye, but if there are 3 birders (as I’ve seen indicated based on casting/promo captions elsewhere), could the eyes also represent them?
Thank you Nat for being the ethical core of this ensemble.
I’m curious to watch Travis’ journey continue to unfold. I keep thinking back to his death in the adult timeline––I feel like there are still mysteries there that I want to understand. How he got to that place, from the more caring and perceptive and skeptical person he is here….
I love your point about the bear! It put me in the headspace of the old Davey and Goliath cartoons but I don’t think they’ve ever had Akilah mention anything overtly religious? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that her visions often invoke old media properties however, not sure what it means tho!
Thanks for your amazing recaps Kayla! I really look forward to reading them every week, along with all the comments after each episode. Wow, what an episode- and that cliffhanger!!
As a big bird nerd (aka “serious birder” haha) I was especially excited about the twist at the end of this ep! Just wanted to throw in the possibility that the birders were looking for (and recording) a Barn Owl, who are known for their screamlike, ghostly calls and would be rare to find in that part of Canada. Now I haven’t gone back to compare their calls to the screaming trees we’ve been hearing this season and the scream after Lottie screams this ep, but for anyone interested, you can listen to their “screams” here: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Barn_Owl/sounds
So excited to see what happens next on this wild ride!
Misty was humming “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” right???
I don’t think they are going to spend another winter in the wilderness. They were out there for 19 months and by the time of this episode, it’s already been about 16-18 months. So they will be rescued or will find their way home very soon, long before the end of winter.
Multiple more team members have to die before the rescue, as there only appear to have been 8 survivors. I don’t think there can be that much of a death toll without a second winter.
What do we think their reasoning was for not just staring to walk south once the weather would have allowed? Sure a cohort think the wilderness wouldn’t let them leave but it’s interesting that no one at least…tried.
So worried for Akilah just subjecting herself to chronic gas poisoning…feels like that can’t be good…
Sophie Thatcher felt the most Juliette Lewis after killing Ben. Heartbreaking.
1) Tai’s failed trek in Season One (before the snow) since all of Lottie’s omens about the journey came true (river of blood, etc.) with Van getting fatally injured on top of it. Only a tiny handful of people like Nat and Shauna didn’t subscribe to the idea that Lottie was a prophet and it would be hard to go against the crowd
2) After that attempt failed, Lottie Lee tried with the plane and then it exploded midair and only solidified their (probably false) belief that leaving the wilderness would lead to death
3) Nat & Travis did actually explore much farther out in S2, even mapping out everything in every direction around them, while looking for Javi
My guess is they’re still very far away from civilization, and that the hikers have a car that helped them get that far in much faster instead of going by foot all the way. If anything it’d be interesting if one of the girls tries to find the car later, or sabotages the car
Yes I agree that the wolf attack scared them enough to prevent them from exploring the area further. I see a big absence of some basic Survival 101 tactics…like they didn’t make a huge signal fire or write SOS in giant letters on the beach, especially right after crashing when help was likely searching for them by air…but I’m willing to suspend disbelief a little to go along with the story!
They did write a big SOS on the plane itself.
Okay I’ve been thinking a lot about the Birds of it all since this recap
A few folks above talk about the wilderness screaming potentially being bird calls – hence the birders being out there. How much of the rest of the narrative is influenced by birds???
They only ate Jackie after birds knocked snow onto her pyre, making her “cook” perfectly. Also I don’t know a lot about this, but I’m pretty sure bird’s migratory patterns are often based on magnetic poles. What if something about the geographic magnetism of this part of the woods is responsible for the plane crash in the first place??
I mean, what if the only reason the cabin was there is it’s used periodically by birders for this particular migration?
Something something about the girls having to move as a group as well, maybe not a huge as originally thought but a flock. Brb googling bird behavior.
Okay I googled birds yellow jackets and the first thing that came up is articles about which birds are the main predators of yellow jackets!!!
omg!!! thank you for doing this research lol