Welcome back to Autostraddle’s weekly coverage of Yellowjackets! This is your Yellowjackets 305 recap, where I’ll obsessively break down “Did Tai Do That?”, which was written by Sarah L. Thompson and Elise Brown and directed by Jeffrey W. Byrd, who also directed “Digestif” from last season. I wrote a list of queer book recommendations inspired by Yellowjackets — did you read it? As a reminder, try to bury any spoilers in your comments a few sentences down so they don’t appear on the homepage. Also, all the recaps for the season are sooooo close to having 100 comments on each of them — let’s get this one to triple digits! I love chatting with y’all!
“Did Tai Do That?” opens with Misty in the morgue looking at Lottie’s body. But we see them as their teenage selves, reflecting Misty’s own point of view. All of the adult Yellowjackets are stuck in the past and stunted in some way, but that’s always the most cut and dry when it comes to Misty, who still calls the others her teammates, still has old memorabilia up in her bedroom, and doesn’t see any difference between herself in the wilderness and her self today. Indeed, Teen Misty and Adult Misty are the most similar across the board than any other teen/adults pairings. She has always been exactly who she is. In some ways, it makes her the easiest character to understand. There’s a satisfying directness about her. Many of her actions could easily be described as chaotic, but they aren’t really for her. Misty is the most predictable of them all.
She sits down Van, Shauna, and Tai and tells them Lottie is dead. She says it feels fishy, and Shauna’s first instinct is to ask Misty where she was when it happened. Shauna’s still convinced Misty has been up to shenanigans. But Misty points out it would be absurd to murder Lottie and then hold a meeting with all of them about it. Misty storms out of her own house before returning and telling them to leave. Christina Ricci’s comedic delivery remains spectacular. I think Misty assumed this would unite all the Yellowjackets again with a common goal (solving Lottie’s murder), but Shauna is too busy scapegoating Misty and Tai and Van are in their weird delusional lesbian lala land. No one’s feeling seduced by the promise of a murder mystery today. The scene admittedly feels a little…stiff? Maybe the characters are in denial, but their reactions to the reveal of Lottie’s death are very subdued. It does make it seem like any one of them could potentially be her killer.
In the wilderness, fresh off his guilty verdict, Coach Ben is being kept prisoner in the animal pen awaiting an uncertain fate. He tries to butter up Akilah by talking to her about the baby animals and how his mother used to foster kittens. I love this tidbit from his backstory, because we also learned last episode that his parents were very uninvolved in his life and left him to fend for herself. I’ve encountered adults who exhibit these exact contradictions: barely caring for their own children while giving all their caretaking energy to animals and pets. It’s messed up!
The girls are still deciding exactly what to do with Ben. Nat wants there to be “another way,” and it quickly becomes clear they’re talking about killing him. Shauna wants to serve poetic “justice” by burning him at the stake. Melissa chimes in to support the idea: “It’s what he wanted for us.” Nat proposes a firing squad so it’s quick and more “humane.” None of this, of course, is humane. They’re literally going to murder a man. Not only is this not a form of justice; it’s also just stupid to do from a survival standpoint. They could be integrating Ben back into the society they’ve created for themselves so he could help contribute to their collective efforts to survive. But that’s the problem: They’re thinking in groupthink ways not in collective ways, and there’s a stark difference.
Shauna thinks Nat should be the one to shoot Ben since she’s the best shot. She’s clearly goading Nat, who she knows actually cares about Ben. Shauna’s wickedness has no bounds this season, and I’m extremely enjoying this depiction of a teenage girl filled with rage. Nat says since it’ll be at close range, anyone can do it, so they’ll draw for it. Van proposes the King of Hearts as the card: “The suicide king.”
In the present, Shauna is tailing Misty. But someone is tailing Shauna. It’s like Fast & Furious: Jersey Suburbs Edition. Shauna notices the Mustang behind her and pulls into an alley before slamming on her brakes so she’s rear-ended. The last time Shauna got in a fender bender, she ended up having an affair with a younger man who she then murdered. I don’t think there’s a risk of romance here though: The person tailing her is Walter. He thinks Shauna killed Lottie. She has a body count after all. But so do Misty and Walter. There are a lot of murderers in this crew.
But only one of those murderers was a bloodthirsty teen who is practically giggling at the prospect of executing her varsity soccer coach. In the wilderness, Shauna smiles during the draw. She’s entertained, hungry. But it’s Tai who ends up with the King of Hearts. There have been multiple moments of characters staring directly at the camera this season: Shauna in the premiere, and now Tai here. I like it. This is a season that urges you not to look away, even as the characters do some of their most depraved acts.
Adult Tai and Van are having lunch at a restaurant, and Van is seemingly the only one processing Lottie’s death. She can’t believe Lottie just died after everything she survived before. Tai is more concerned with what they’re going to order from the restaurant; she wants to try everything. I think it’s safe to say we’re getting a lot of Other Tai (love the commenter who posited “Alterna-Tai”) this season, seen in the plain fact that suddenly Tai doesn’t seem to be a vegetarian anymore. Her demeanor is super unsettling. Van asks where she was for the hour she disappeared last episode, and Tai asks if she’s accusing her of murdering Lottie. Van responds that that’s not what she’s saying, but then they’re interrupted by a phone call from Simone.
Solving a murder all by her lonesome, Misty heads to the stairwell where Lottie was found dead, which we learn is located in the fancy apartment building where Lottie grew up and where her father still lives. So it makes sense that this was a place Lottie dreamed about in the wilderness. The doorman fills in some backstory: that Lottie lived here in the city until her parents divorced and then moved to Jersey with her mom. Her father used to be a “Wall Street titan” back in the day but now has health issues, and Lottie has been “living with him for weeks.”
In the wilderness, Van and Tai are practicing execution, and it’s every bit as bleak as that sounds! They’ve carved a sad face into a tree that she can practice aiming at, but images of Coach Ben’s smiling face keep popping into Tai’s head as she’s holding the gun. A vicious side of Van comes out here; she clearly thinks Ben should die. Tai is less sure, even though she was pretty game to literally prosecute him last week. The uncertainty tracks though; as she says herself, it’s one thing to say someone should die and another to do it.
Van has an idea: What if Other Tai does the killing? She compares Tai’s situation to Steve Urkel becoming Stefan Urquelle (the episode title’s Family Matters reference suddenly makes sense). Jasmin Savoy Brown and Liv Hewson are super funny here, but it’s also another scene that disturbs in the same way as the entire trial last episode. The Family Matters references remind us of their youth, but the context of the conversation — that they’re literally discussing executing someone and dissociating to do it — makes it extremely macabre. These are children who are contemplating murder, and they’re learning in real-time the limits of this kind of “justice.” Van is suggesting Tai essentially kill her humanity in order to do this. She simultaneously is insisting Ben has to die while acknowledging Tai will have to become someone else entirely in order to do it. She’s grasping at something that isn’t possible, trying to absolve them from what they’re about to do.
In other gay happenings, Melissa approaches Shauna who’s sharpening her special knife on her special log. She wants to be left alone, so Melissa slams down the gift she made for her and walks away, but Shauna stops her by asking why she likes her. “You say that like there’s nothing to like, and sure, I get it,” Melissa says. “Jackie kinda treated you like shit. Jeff acted like you were a dirty secret, and you totally let them. But now? You’ve changed out here, and I like that you’re not afraid of the bad parts of yourself anymore.”
The gift she brought her? A handmade leather sheath for her knife. In its own twisted way, it’s quite romantic.
Misty brings Ben a meal, and he’s surprised by its quality, tries to make a joke. But his face completely falls when he realizes what’s happening. Misty tells him a firing squad is coming at dusk. He’s in disbelief but also despondent. He knows there’s nothing he can do. Misty says a tearful goodbye. It’s all very devastating!
Lottie wants Akilah to return to the caves, which sounds like a horrible fucking idea, but Lottie is Queen of Horrible Fucking Ideas.
Misty rings the doorbell of the penthouse Lottie’s father is living in and spins a tale about being Mary from the fifth floor. She convinces him to let her in, and he rambles about some meeting he has but clearly seems confused. She pulls the bank slip out of Lottie’s fur coat. It’s for a withdrawal of $50k. Misty suggest possible foulplay in Lottie’s death, and her dad shuts it down swiftly, saying Artie down at the station will lose financial backing if he says otherwise. So it feels very much like Lottie’s dad is covering something up or has a reason not to want an investigation into Lottie’s death. I don’t think he was necessarily involved; I just think he’s probably an evil guy (see: Wall Street titan) who doesn’t want anyone looking into anything in proximity to him.
Misty isn’t the only one playing citizen detective in the penthouse. Walter AND Shauna are both here. They’re disguised as tech guys “fixing” the internet so Walter can hack Lottie’s internet history. Misty accuses Walter of rebounding with Shauna. I worried there wasn’t going to be enough humor this season without the Misty/Nat dysfunctional duo teamup, but my fears are unfounded! I could watch these three in a scene together any time — they’re so funny.
Teen Van and Tai are trying to figure out how to trigger turning her into Other Tai. Van suggests listening to the trees, but then they land on fucking against a tree. Sex has brought Other Tai out before, so why not try it again! Van tops Tai against a tree, and I take back everything I wrote a couple recaps back about the energy between these two being more bro-y than romantic/sexual. The chemistry here is fantastic. It’s a great episode overall for both actors. Also, Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose are getting so good at mirroring each other that I’m starting to forget they’re separate actors giving separate performances.
Lottie, Akilah, and Travis head to the caves, and we’re definitely seeing the early seeds of Lottie’s cult leader future in the way she’s talking to Akilah and convincing her to do something she clearly does not want to do. Lottie thinks the gas in the caves is acting as a conduit for the wilderness and showing them crucial visions. Their plan is to tether Akilah with a rope to Travis so they can go in and extract her when the gas knocks her out. Travis wants to call it off, but Lottie reminds him he saw her in his vision. The way Travis reacts to this makes me even more convinced Travis saw no such thing and just pawned Akilah off on Lottie so she’d leave him alone. Lottie enlists Travis to help convince Akilah. Again, the cult leader vibes are strong.
In the penthouse, Misty is still trolling around for clues, refusing to collaborate with Misty and Walter. We’ve got a Citizen Detective Competition here! Misty messes with their investigation, sending Shauna and Walter out into the hall. I remain so entertained by the fact that Shauna as an adult is so bad at lying despite constantly doing it. Her little knock on the wall!
Finally, Tai remembers she has a wife and child. She meets Simone and Sammy at a playground. For some reason, Van JOINS for this? She sits next to Simone when Tai goes over to Sammy. “So, you’re her, huh?” Simone asks, making it clear she and Tai had talked about Van in the past. The way she says it makes it sound like Van was a point of contention in their relationship. We don’t see exactly what goes down between Sammy and Tai here, but Sammy scoops up his dog and walks away from her, making it clear something off occurred.
Shauna asks Walter why Lottie wouldn’t have come and stayed with her dad after getting out of her psychiatric hold. He says maybe she needed a friend and then lectures Shauna on how she’s squarely not a friend to Misty. Shauna points out he’s sabotaging her investigation, but he says he’s giving her a challenge because he knows it’s what makes her toes curl. Shauna wonders if he maybe killed Lottie just to orchestrate giving Misty this “challenge.” I’ve had the same thought, too. Walter offers some of his hair to Shauna as mutually assured destruction. He’ll give her his hair if she gives him some of hers so they can check it against the DNA found at the murder scene. Shauna refuses, but Walter is able to extract hair from her hat anyway. At this point, it kinda seems like any of these characters could have killed Lottie, which makes me think it’s none of them. Do we know what Callie got up to last episode? If the DNA comes back as a match for Shauna, could that also be a match for Callie?
Following their tree fucking, Van and Tai are wondering if it worked. Tai pretends to be Other Tai briefly. They try a different tactic: ritual sacrifice. Tai slits the throat of a rabbit and repeats Lottie’s grounding exercise as she does so. There’s a rustling wind right after, but not transformation occurs. The teen versions of the characters are essentially doing the same thing their adult counterparts did last episode: desperately trying to fulfill a ritual when really they’re trying to create control and meaning where there is none. The girls think they’re enacting law and order by sentencing Ben to death, but just as carceral systems in the outside world provide a false illusion of “order” when really just reifying hierarchies and oppressive power structures, they’re actually sowing chaos. Their society is fractured, and they’re seeking control in these rituals in attempts to make sense of senseless violence.
Also busy doing a ritual that probably means nothing, Lottie and Travis send Akilah into the cave to hallucinate. It gets off to a rocky start! Akilah indeed passes out, and Travis and Lottie try to extract her.
Walter and Misty are still beefing in the present, and Misty isn’t really taking the bait on playing this game with him. It’s possible Walter played his cards wrong here.
Shauna, meanwhile, wanders into Lottie’s bedroom. She still has a framed photo next to her bed of them all as teens. Images of Lottie as a teen and an adult pop into Shauna’s mind as she looks around, including mostly things we’ve seen before but one we have not, of Lottie’s face covered in what looks like blood.
Lottie’s father then mistakes Shauna for a teenaged Lottie. She turns, and Melanie Lynskey has indeed been replaced with Courtney Eaton. “Too bad I’m not one of those crazy voices in your head, maybe then you’d listen,” he says to her. They sit on the bed and Shauna keeps up the charade of pretending to be Lottie. “Sometimes it’s hard to show love the way we want to,” she says, hugging him. She’s manufacturing some closure for both of them. Shauna does look genuinely emotional, but I think it has less to do specifically with grieving Lottie and more to do with guilt and shame from her past. I mean, Shauna almost killed Lottie all those years ago. It would be a mindfuck to then be investigating her murder decades later.
Tai sits in Sammy’s room, and we flash back to what happened in the playground. Sammy apparently said “are you not my mom anymore?” It could be perceived as him expressing anxiety about her and Simone separating, but it could also be him asking if she’s Other Tai right now. He has always been attuned to the times when she’s Other Tai. And when Van walks in and asks if she’s okay, Tai asks if she wants a change of scenery, speaking in the flat, ominous tone Other Tai usually takes on.
In the cave, Akilah wakes up finally and tells Lottie and Travis she saw something. We see her vision as she describes it. She’s standing at the edge of a cliff, and a giant version of Ben acts as a bridge for her to walk across, where a foggy version of the outside world awaits. She says she felt hope.
Back at camp, Ben cradles a baby goat and nods off, hearing his boyfriend Paul whisper “come home to me, Ben.” It’s not the first time Ben has imagined his boyfriend’s voice while on the precipice of death. The group retrieves him and pushes him against a tree. Nat takes the heart necklace off of herself and puts it on him, crying as she does.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” Ben asks the group. “You cannot possibly want to do this. You can’t even look at me. It’s me. It’s Coach Scott. Fuck, you know me. Look where we are, none of this is who we are. Listen to me, this is not who you are. This is not who you are. This is not who you are.” Steven Krueger is giving a damn good performance.
Gen approaches with a sack to cover his face, and he says he wants them to all look at him directly if they’re going to go through with this. “You don’t deserve that,” Gen seethes at him.
“What kind of monsters have you all become?” he shouts. His shouts turn into a quiet, desperate, devastating begging for his life. The camera closes in on Tai, who is crying. Van says “Tai?” and she responds “it’s be alright” in that same Other Tai voice. But is it really Other Tai? Or is Tai just doing the voice to trick herself and Van into believing this isn’t really her as a way to dissociate from it all?
Right as she’s about to pull the trigger, Lottie enters and pushes him out of the way. Akilah says they can’t kill him because he’s their bridge home.
His life is spared for now, but Shauna and Melissa find him later that night in the pen. Shauna’s holding her knife. “You do it,” she says to Melissa, handing it to her. Melissa at first insists she can’t. “You shouldn’t be scared of the bad parts of you either,” Shauna says. Melissa digs the knife into Ben’s ankle so he has no chance of running away. “Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey kicks in in the best needledrop of the season so far.
Melissa and Shauna walk back to the others and announce he isn’t going anywhere as Ben screams in the background. “You don’t have to enjoy it so much,” Nat says. “And you don’t have to act like such a fucking saint,” Shauna responds. She reaches for Melissa’s bloodied hand and grips it, prompting a cocked eyebrow from Van. Shauna and Melissa have officially announced themselves as the group’s new evil gay couple.
Someone in the comments last week mentioned that Melissa is sort of playing Lady Macbeth to Shauna, and I love that, but I want to push it even further and posit that they’re both playing Lady Macbeth to each other in some sort of fucked up cycle. Shauna convinces Melissa to do this act of violence and in turn further cements her own power. TWO Lady Macbeths is a terrifying prospect. Tai had to turn off her humanity to be able to aim a gun at Ben’s head, and I think Shauna turned off her humanity a long time ago when she had to butcher and cook Javi. As with the Javi incident, there’s no real coming back from what they’re doing to Ben — no return, as the theme song repeats over and over.
Ben is right: They’ve all become monstrous. They’ve convinced themselves this is how to survive. They only don’t end up killing Ben not because they’ve had a change of heart but because they believe he’s their ticket out according to a vision of Akilah’s. So they still have tunnel vision, only caring about their own survival instead of the group as a whole. We’re watching these instincts repeat themselves in their futures as well, the adult Yellowjackets disjointed in their attempts at self-preservation. The monsters are still inside them.
Do they seek to kill Ben for “revenge” for the fire? Or are they killing him because he’s the one who sees those monsters and who names them as such? For now, he is alive, but the girls aren’t any less monstrous for it.
Last Buzz:
- Misty threatening the guy in the morgue is peak Misty; I feel like she’s getting some of her powers back.
- I laughed at Shauna’s dying of “old age” joke about Ben and do think she was just making a joke about how long it was taking them to debate the issue, but I also wondered if it signaled something a little deeper, like that Shauna thinks they’re never actually getting out of the wilderness.
- “You were my first boyfriend…and amputation.”
- Walter saying he knows what makes Misty’s toes curl instantly reminded me of one of my favorite Misty moments ever from season one: “Bubble baths. Walks in the rain. Muscular calves. Escalators. Knuckles. Steamed clams, obviously.”