WELCOME TO YOUR YELLOWJACKETS 307 RECAP. I AM WRITING THIS INTRO IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THIS IS ONE OF THE WILDEST EPISODES OF TELEVISION I’VE EVER SEEN (COMPLIMENTARY) AND I FEEL LIKE I’M STILL COMING DOWN FROM IT. Okay, I’ll stop for now. Below, find a painstaking breakdown of all things “Croak,” written by Alisha Brophy and Ameni Rozsa and directed by Jennifer Morrison. Can’t wait to chat in the comments! If your comment includes spoilers, just include a few non-spoiler sentences at the beginning so they don’t appear in the recent comments box on the homepage. Read past recaps! Take my Yellowjackets personality quiz! Let’s fucking gooooooo!

Heading into “Croak,” I wondered how it might sit with the shocking cliffhanger of last episode. Would we move down into a lower register to allow for a breather? Would we match “Thanksgiving (Canada)”‘s scream? “Croak” offers a brief respite in its prelude, a deft turning of the dial to tell a completely different story in a completely different tone, driving home the fact that the difference between humor and horror often comes down to context. After that, “Croak” doesn’t merely match the energy of last week’s post-Ben barbaric yawp. It turns up the volume, yielding one of the most bonkers episodes of television I’ve ever seen that still strikingly feels grounded in the world constructed by the show. I basically watched the entire thing with my jaw on the floor.

The episode opens by answering one of the season’s pressing questions: What the fuck is up with those wild ass sounds in the wilderness? The answer? Fucking frogs. As in literally frogs that are fucking. I live in central Florida and can verify I’ve often described the chorus of sounds of mating frogs as “screaming.” If I’d been malnourished and isolate for a long period of time like the Yellowjackets, I’d probably interpret those screams as even more ominous, too. The episode begins three days before the Yellowjackets are discovered dancing and screaming around Ben’s head on a spike, the first time Yellowjackets has employed this particular time device. We see close-ups of the frogs and their titular sounds. They’re being studied by a pair of scientists, a couple named Edwin and Hannah, played by Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton. They’re accompanied by Kodiak, a comically serious and gruff crossbow-toting wilderness guide who likes to suck on cigarettes while leaning against trees.

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

Kodi kills a rabbit for the trio to eat. Edwin tends to his torn up feet, the result of wearing too-small shoes, so Kodi asks Hannah to fetch the plates. As she’s walking back, Kodi takes off his outer layer to reveal muscles bulging out from a tank top. Hannah literally trips from ogling him. This is so fun! Mere miles away from the Yellowjackets and their world is this other, smaller, lower stakes diorama of drama between three people. My wife often talks about how the difference between humor and horror can be just the slightest turn of the wheel. Set the trailer to The Shining to different music with new narration, for example, and you’ve got a wacky family comedy. Yellowjackets often excels at these tonal shifts and bending its own genre. But this little prelude with Hannah, Edwin, and Kodiak is an overt example of that turning of the dial. A toxic love triangle between two scientists and a mystery man! All happening in the Yellowjackets’ figurative backyard!

“The wilderness provides,” Kodi says about the barbecued rabbit. These words in a new context take on a comical cadence rather than a haunting one as it does when any of the Yellowjackets say something like it.

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

Later in the tent, Hannah tries to get Kodiak to answer some personal questions, but he remains elusive. He tells one of Aesop’s fables: “The Frogs Who Desired a King,” of the frogs who prayed to Zeus to send them a king. Zeus sent them a heron, who killed the frogs. It’s a fitting tale in the context of the Yellowjackets, who are desperate for a leader, an Antler Queen. But that leadership only ever leads to death.

Kodiak admits he doesn’t know anything about frogs but a thing or two about horticulture. Weed. He’s talking about weed. He produces a joint, and the three proceed to get high in their tent in the rain while “Fly” by Sugar Ray plays. They talk about the frogs they’re studying, who manage to stay frozen before waking up to have a big ol’ orgy. This suggests they’re studying wood frogs, who spend the winter frozen. Edwin says something about the “arctic banshee frog,” but I can’t find any information on if this is an actual species.

Edwin has the idea to call Miss Cleo, the call-in psychic from the late 90s. He’s just kidding, but Hannah wants to do it for real. They struggle over the satellite phone until the antenna snaps. “This is our lifeline!” Edwin laments. “Relax,” Kodi says. “I’m your lifeline.”

Now it’s THE DAY the trio discovers the Yellowjackets. But first, Hannah and Edwin bicker about Kodi mere feet behind him. Kodi seems amused by it. Edwin says to Hannah that Kodi could rob and murder them and no one would ever know it. Little do they know, Kodi isn’t the danger lurking in these woods. “You’re smitten,” Edwin says when he clocks the way Hannah looks at Kodi. The camera pulls back from the group and settles on a tree where the symbol is written.

At night, Edwin is still on one about trying to prove Kodi isn’t who he says he is. Edwin smells fire and thinks they should go check it out. “Wouldn’t recommend it,” Kodi says. “This far from civilization?” Edwin doesn’t care. He wants to go check it out. Hannah and Kodi go with.

And, well, we know what happens next. The trio hears the girls screaming from a distance at first. Then Hannah starts recording, and we hear the beginning of the DAT tape that’ll be played by Shauna, Tai, and Van in the future. When Lottie sees the group, she shouts “NO!!” We end on Edwin’s “what the fuck?” from last episode’s ending, and then Van exclaims in disbelief “we’re going home.” Cut to theme song.

When we return to this fraught scene at camp, Hannah apologizes and says they didn’t mean to interrupt and are just leaving. Her instincts are clearly telling her to run. Misty tries to say Ben died of natural causes. Edwin seems to piece together who they are, but then Hannah’s instincts are confirmed by what happens next: Lottie axes Edwin in the back of the head, and he collapses.

“Holy shit,” Shauna says, glee all over her face. “Lottie, what did you do?” Nat asks. “They don’t belong,” Lottie says. “It doesn’t want them here.”

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

Kodi tells Hannah to run, so they do. Nat yells at the others to bring them back alive, but the way they’re suiting up and making animal sounds suggests they’re prepared to hunt not gather. Kodi shoots his crossbow and hits Melissa in the shoulder. She begs for Shauna not to leave her, but Shauna tasks Mari with taking care of her: “She dies, you die,” she tells Mari. Nat instructs them all to clean up the Edwin scene because they don’t know who else could be coming. It’s sheer chaos.

In present day, Shauna sits on the toilet and listens to the DAT tape, hearing the moment when Edwin was struck by Lottie. But then she skips through the tape and lands on a part where Hannah talks to someone about how she wants them to be proud of her, not just see her as some mom who had a teenage pregnancy. So, it sounds like Hannah has/had a kid. We’ll circle back to this.

Shauna tells Jeff to stop spending time in the lobby, because circumstances have changed. She, meanwhile, is heading out. Jeff laments that she’s able to do whatever she wants while he just has to stay put. “I appreciate that secrecy, that’s your love language,” Jeff says. That’s not a love language, Jeff!

“I don’t deserve you, you know,” Shauna says before asking him to do something for her. She wants him to keep an eye on Callie. Shauna doesn’t know that Callie already has access to the tape. She’s also listening from the other side of the door while she searches the web for Unsolved Missing Persons + Canada + 1990s. She’s certainly not backing the fuck off like Shauna wants her to.

At the hotel where they’re staying, Van watches over a sleeping Tai, clearly still unnerved from Tai’s outburst in the middle of the night. Misty fucking Quigley then barges in unannounced, prompting Van to grab a…butter knife as a weapon. Misty drops the info that Tai met with Lottie the day she died. “You did?” Van asks. Tai says she met up with her to have a private conversation and that it doesn’t mean she murdered her.

Misty brings up that Tai has a history of “doing crazy shit and not even knowing about it.” Tai drops that it’s obvious whoever sent Shauna the tape murdered Lottie, but this is the first Misty is hearing of the tape.

Back in the chaos of the wilderness, Hannah and Kodi are running, the girls in close pursuit. Hannah wants to head back to camp, but Kodi points out they’re as good as dead if they do that and that if she wants to survive she’ll have to actually rely on her instincts. “Stick with me or you’re on your own!” he says, before splitting off. Hannah runs another way.

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

The girls run and growl, caw, snarl. Nat breaks up the group. They’re treating this like a sport, strategizing as if it were a soccer game. A chunk of Hannah’s hair gets caught on a tree. She ducks behind a log and starts recording the message Shauna will later hear, a message for her “sweet baby Alex.”

In the present, Shauna’s intercepted by Tai, Van, and Misty. She tells them there was more on the tape than just what Lottie did. Shauna, struggling initially to call Hannah by name, informs the group that she had a daughter who has clearly gotten ahold of the tape and is now out to punish them for what they did. Shauna wants to go stop her. Van asks her what she plans to do with her, and Shauna sarcastically says she’s going to sit her down and have a calm conversation with her. Van says they’re going with her, to Richmond, Virginia, where Shauna has apparently tracked down this Alex. This impresses Misty greatly. A new citizen detective has been born!

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

It’s time for a road trip! Shauna plays the rest of the tape for the group. Misty points out there was no mention of any offspring in Hannah’s obituary, but Shauna says it’s because it was a teenage pregnancy where the child was then adopted. Misty wonders why they didn’t know about the kid in the first place. “Someone did,” Van points out. Someone, after all, would have had to have gotten that tape to her. Tai says that Gen and Melissa got pretty close to Hannah, but Van points out they’re both dead. So, that’s that! It seems as if Hilary Swank As Melissa hints were a red herring. Melissa is dead. Perhaps there are no additional survivors after all. It seems much more likely now that Hilary Swank is playing this Alex character.

Misty wonders why this Alex woman would wait 25 years to enact her revenge. I have the same question!

While they stop for gas, Van confronts Tai and asks if she was ever going to tell her about going to see Lottie. Tai says she went to see Lottie to ask her to clarify more about what she meant when she said “it” was pleased for them after Nat died. “You promise you didn’t do it?” Van asks, and Tai does not answer.

Tai and Van come across Edwin, Hannah, and Kodi’s camp. They hear something in one of the tents, but it’s just a frog rattling in a jar. Van frees it and says “you’re okay, you’re free.” It’s ironic in the context of the fact that they could be free, too, if they weren’t busy hunting their way out of here. They find the satellite phone, and Van frantically tries to dial her mom. They seem, suddenly, so young again, like the boys discovered at the end of Lord of the Flies abruptly reconciling with their own youth and innocence again.

Akilah and Travis are looking through the woods together. Akilah says Lottie must have had a good reason to kill Edwin, like having a vision he was a bad guy or something. Misty approaches them and has an idea: They can corner Kodi at the “shit ridge.” Travis suggests they split up, so he and Akilah go left while Misty goes right. Travis fires a few shots to through Kodi off, and Hannah assumes it’s Kodi being shot. Shauna finds the chunk of Hannah’s hair on a branch and pockets it. Nat finds one of Hannah’s footprints, and Shauna takes out her knife.

Hannah slowly emerges and asks them not to hurt her. Nat says it’ll be okay, but Shauna of course grabs her and holds her knife against her, accusing her of shooting an arrow through Melissa. Hannah says it wasn’t her, that she has no weapons, that it was the guide they hired. Nat and Van come across them, too, and Nat tries to deescalate the whole situation. Shauna says they can still get rescued without leaving any witnesses. When a search party is sent looking for the scientists, they’ll find the Yellowjackets. Her plan is…short-sighted to say the least.  Hannah says she knows where there’s first aid supplies to help Melissa. She has her leverage.

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

In the present Misty finds a receipt for the Lincoln tunnel in Shauna’s car and pockets it. She gets a call from Walter, who tells her the DNA results from under Lottie’s nails match the hair he took from Shauna’s hat. He thinks Shauna is Lottie’s murderer. I’m still wondering if a DNA match could also indicate it was Callie! Misty frantically texts Tai and Van that Shauna killed Lottie. They’re all trapped in the car together, wondering if they’re being driven around by a murderer.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” Shauna asks. She makes them tell her what the fuck is going on, but before they can, Van coughs up a bunch of blood.

In the wilderness, Misty screeches while running and is almost crossbowed by Kodi. When she ducks, she loses her glasses. If we’re sticking with the Lord of the Flies comparisons for this episode, it’s like when Piggy’s glasses are stolen.

Akilah and Travis indeed corner Kodi at the cliff, and Travis aims his gun at him. “Save your bullet,” Kodi says, implying he’s going to let go and crash to his death. But they tell him to stop and help him up. “Take us back with you,” Travis says.

The women rush Van to the hospital. Tai tells the front desk she has metastatic cancer, and this is the first Misty and Shauna are hearing of it. Tai pretends to be her wife so she can go in with her. Shauna says it seems so unfair that Van has cancer, and Misty tells her to stop pretending to care, accusing her of killing Lottie. Shauna is unfazed by Misty revealing the DNA match, pointing out Lottie stayed with her so naturally would have some of her DNA on her. Based on Shauna’s reactions, I genuinely don’t think she killed Lottie. I’m all in on the Callie theory at the moment. But I also know people clocked Jeff’s indifference to the reveal Lottie was killed last episode. Is it possible he’s helping cover up for his daughter? Would he be wiling to take the blame? Past behavior indicates yes!

Shauna abandons the others at the hospital. She clearly wants to finish off the job she started.

In the hospital, Tai sits with Van. She makes an under-her-breath comment about wanting to kill the guy who is screaming in the bed next to them, and Van clutches her hand and says “don’t.” Van isn’t sure what Tai is capable of, especially if Tai thinks that sacrificing someone could save her. Van closes her eyes and hears teen Lottie saying “take a breath, now what do you hear?” We slip into a dreamstate where Adult Van encounters her teenage self. “We never actually cheated death,” Teen Van says. “It was always an even trade.” Teen Van sets fire to Van’s hospital bed. The way they’ve been engulfing Van in fire so much this season really does suggest she had something to do with the cabin fire. When she wakes up in her hospital room, she sees Tai as Other Tai, mouth covered in dirt. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t let them take your eyes.”

Day breaks out in the wilderness, and Gen and Mari are trying to get the arrow out of Melissa. Lottie is bent over Edwin’s dead body, spreading his blood on their face. Gen and Mari realize they have to push the arrow through. Lottie asks to help, but Gen points out she has done enough. “Those strangers, they were going to ruin everything,” Lottie says. “Go fuck your blood-dirt, Lottie,” Mari responds.

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

They push the arrow through Melissa and extract it. We see the same shot of Lottie’s face covered in blood that appears in “Did Tai Do That?” Shauna, Tai, Van, and Nat show up back at camp with Hannah in tow. “Hi, I’m Hannah,” she says, clearly alarmed.

Callie walks in on Jeff inspecting the bed for bedbugs. She tells him that they keep telling themselves Shauna is a good person and that all the bad things that happen to her couldn’t be helped. “What if she’s actually a bad person?” Callie asks. She asks Jeff if Shauna has ever mentioned crossing paths with two frog scientists. Callie has clearly been doing a lot of citizen detective work of her own. Jeff’s reaction suggests he does already know all this. I mean, it’s reasonable to assume Shauna would have written about this in her journal, right?

Shauna arrives at her destination and slowly extracts a brand new hunting knife as “Blood Bitch” by Cocteau Twins kicks in.

I mean…what an episode! The Yellowjackets have been really keeping me on my toes this season in the most fun way imaginable. The thrills of this episode are absolutely bonkers, and the characters are behaving so wildly, but it still ultimately tracks with who they are and the journeys they’ve been on this season. Like the frogs of the fable, the Yellowjackets have over-invested in the idea of governance and leadership. All of their ruinous actions with Ben have led to this moment of them not just fumbling their chance at a rescue but actively destroying it — in Lottie’s case, killing it. The frogs were sent the king they asked for, and they suffered death as a result. Whether it’s giving too much power to Lottie’s visions or giving too much power to someone on a rage rampage like Shauna, the group is actively harming themselves by choosing these societal structures that mimic the outside world instead of truly coming together. They treat the big chase of this episode every bit as seriously as they treat the game of soccer or the bone game from earlier this season, only with this turn of the wheel, it’s much scarier.

The arrival of outside people to the wilderness further reiterates just how distant the Yellowjackets have become from the previous versions of themselves. Violence has become second nature to them. The relentlessly high intensity cadence of the episode makes for a thrilling experience, and every second of this season seems to be inching us closer to the haunting tone of the series’ opening scene.

I know some people have been struggling with the characterization of Teen Shauna as a bloodthirsty rage monster, but it has honestly been one of my favorite parts of the season. I do see the two Shauna arcs in each timeline as being very aligned, and this episode is a great example of that. In both, Shauna wants to go rogue and ignore group consensus in order to enact violence as a way of “solving” her problems. Teen Shauna wants to kill the frog crew under the assumption a rescue party sent for them will find them instead. No witnesses. Adult Shauna wants to solve the mystery of who has supposedly been targeting her with a hunting knife. Every time, she chooses self-preservation over survival. Every time, her trauma response is to pick up a knife. I didn’t know the group’s actions in the wilderness could get much worse than watching Javi die, but here we are this season, with Ben, with these outsiders who are targeted just for being that. But for as intensely violent as this episode is, in true Yellowjackets fashion we also get more than that, a turn of the wheel to give us some three-person melodrama. Edwin, Hannah, and Kodi (if that is his real name) were just living lives of minor squabbles and sexual tension until they happened across the Yellowjackets. My how fast the wheel can turn.

Last buzz:

• I ended up saying it in the comments last week but meant to work it into the main recap, but Ben’s head on a stake really feels like a reference to the “beast”‘s head on a stake in Lord of the Flies. Much like the beast in the book, our characters have found a vessel to project their own worst instincts onto, not realizing that the beast is actually within.
• Jeff’s emphasis of “poorly furnished” is too good.
• “Late. And rudely.”
• It looked like Tai also found a map of some sort in the tent.
• “I am not family, but we have a very intense trauma bond.”
• Before he’s killed, Edwin seems to recognize who the girls are. I do wonder what kind of media coverage they’ve been receiving. They seem like catnip for the tabloids — high achieving, suburban, mostly white, mostly girls gone missing mysteriously.
• So, I know a lot of us went all in on the outsiders being birders and mapped some bird metaphors onto the narrative, but let’s pivot to frogs!!!! For some reason, the fact of them being FROG scientists is so funny to me? I think just because it’s somehow giving DORK even more than birders. These poor dorks! Plus Kodi, who I’m very entertained by.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!