Yellowjackets S2.02 — She wants us to

Spoilers below for Yellowjackets S2.02 — Edible Complex

Damn, this show is good. What an episode. Let’s dive right in.

The plane crash timeline

The end of this episode shows the moment we’ve all been waiting for…but how do we get there? Let’s follow our storylines.

Teen Nat and Travis

Nat and Travis are still trekking out each day to look for food/Javi. Travis gets the safety blessing from Lottie, but Nat is in the cabin until it is time to head out. They hike out but disagree on the direction to search since Nat is focused on finding food and Travis is focused on finding Javi. They split up and when they meet up again, Nat has a piece of Javi’s shirt. She tells Travis she found it on a tree branch, but a quick flashback shows that she took it from Javi’s suitcase before they left the cabin. She also cut her leg and put her own blood on the shirt before meeting back up with Travis.

Travis is distraught but she convinces him to return back to camp. When they do, Lottie says it’s impossible that Javi is dead because she can feel him. Nat tells Lottie off for continuing to raise Travis’ hopes. That night, Travis and Nat hook up for the first time since Javi ran off. The hookup is weird, though, because Travis keeps hallucinating Lottie where Nat is or Lottie looking down on them from aobve. Also, Nat needs to keep track of the cut on her leg so Travis doesn’t see it and realize she staged the shirt. Sexy!

Teen Taissa and Van

Tai’s nighttime escapades are getting worse. Van wakes up to see that Tai somehow cut through the ropes that keep her tied to the bed. She runs out and follows Tai through the woods. Tai is following a ghostly man that we think we’ve seen before last season. Van catches her and wakes her up right before the man leads her over the side of a cliff.

When they return to the cabin, Van suggests getting Lottie involved to help Tai but Tai is adamant that Van keep this a secret.

Teen Shauna

Shauna Shauna Shauna. Shauna is 7 months pregnant and still spending an unhealthy amount of time with her dead BFF. And it’s gotten a lot worse. Now, not only is Shauna arguing with Jackie, but also she is braiding Jackie’s hair and doing her makeup. It’s that creepy.

Tai walks into the shed and sees what Shauna has done. Rightfully so, she freaks out and demands that they cremate Jackie immediately. Lottie, the unelected leader of the group, affirms that this is the right thing to do, even though she had been protecting Shauna and “her grieving process” before.

BUT LADIES! Don’t you know that when you burn the body it is going to smell absolutely delicious to your poor, malnourished bodies?? This is going to end up in cannibalism FOR SURE for sure.

The girls gather wood to build a pyre for the cremation. Lottie takes Jackie’s necklace and puts it on Shauna. Remember, I said we need to keep track of this necklace! Shauna lights a stick and gives a little speech. She says that Jackie was the best friend she ever had and she won’t ever have another friend like her. She also says, “I don’t even know where I end and you begin.” HA yeah, just wait a couple hours and that will be even more true.

After they light the pyre and Travis puts Javi’s piece of shirt on there as well, the girls head to bed. However, in the middle of the night we follow a gust of wind through the trees until it knocks a large amount of snow right onto Jackie’s burning body. Unfortunately, Jackie’s body is now perfectly cooked (crispy on the outside, medium rare on the inside I imagine — I’m a vegetarian) and the smell immediately awakens all of the girls.

In a daze, they go out and gather around the body. Shauna says, “She wants us to” in the most incredibly creepy way and the girls dive in. They cut the scenes of the girls going ham (literally?) on Jackie’s body with the girls in togas and gold Greek headbands at a feast. In both scenes, the girls grab and eat and drink hungrily and aggressively. I liked this connection and the juxtaposition between Greek goddesses feasting and cheers-ing and teen soccer players eating their dead friend.

As the girls stuffed their faces with their friend’s corpse, the coach crutches back to the cabin in shock. He is disgusted and fully scared. The episode ends with him slamming the cabin door on the scene. This makes sense because we are paving the way for a fully cannibalistic, spirit-forward society run by Lottie. That can’t happen with the coach, an adult man, still in the picture. I’m assuming he’ll be dead and dinner soon enough.

The present timeline

Don’t worry, things are falling apart in the present, too!

Shauna

The world’s worst criminal, Shauna, is about to be in a whole lot of trouble if she can’t get her daughter off her back. Callie is holding onto the piece of Adam’s ID and spiraling. She breaks up with her boyfriend and returns home to be a bitch to her mom. Her anger is paused when Kevin, Nat’s old buddy from high school who is now a cop, stops by to ask Shauna questions about Adam.

At first, Shauna tries to play it off like she doesn’t really know Adam beyond the fender bender. When Kevin reveals that they know there were a lot of texts between them, she says it was because of insurance. (I guess the idea is that they can see there were outgoing and incoming texts to and from Shauna’s number, but not what the texts said?) Callie comes to the rescue and interrupts the conversation, but when Kevin leaves, Callie goes to a local bar with her friend.

At the bar, Callie strikes up a conversation with a young-ish man (Drew from Search Party!) who was obviously also a cop working with Kevin. I mean, check out that mustache. He tells her that his parents are splitting up and she says that her mom has been cheating on her dad. Ugh Callie you idiot!

Side note: I thought she was in high school this whole time, but she says she’s a senior at Rutgers. She’s just lying, right, because high school kids can’t go to bars?

Taissa

Nighttime struggles are back in full force with present-day Tai as well. She is keeping herself up to avoid killing her new puppy Steve, eating more dirt, and doing who knows what else. That plan can’t really last forever though and she is cracking.

Tai comes down the stairs one afternoon and sees her son, Sammy. He says he walked there from school to play with the puppy. Tai calls Simone to tell her what happened and Simone arrives quickly. But, when she gets there, Tai is asleep. She wakes up, lets Simone in, and…Sammy is nowhere to be found. They think he ran away so they get in the car to look for him. While Tai is driving, Simone gets a call from the school and they say Sammy has been there for the past 2 hours.

UH OH! Taissa dreamt that Sammy was there and Simone is freaking out, telling her she really, seriously needs help. But then, Tai’s eyes get really wide and dead and the car starts accelerating. Tai is staring straight at the camera and BAM they are T-boned by a truck, flattening Simone’s side of the car. I literally still have chills from this scene.

Misty

Misty posted a photo of the video camera from the motel on her unsolved crimes Reddit thread asking if anyone knows how to hack it to get the footage. The poster, “I put the SICK in forensics”, who has the (correct) theory about Adam says that he an help her but only if she stops shitting on his theories. Not going to happen.

The next day at work, a man (Elijah Wood!) comes by with his mom to check out the facility. The way he is speaking and the look he gives Misty makes her think he is there for her and sure enough, she finds an envelope addressed to her in the fridge. The paper inside is blank, but she realizes she needs a UV light to read it. The paper tells her that a man who has been living at the motel for 3 months has an “interview with the FBI” the next day and asks if she wants to join.

If Misty has met her match, Elijah Wood’s character will make it even more difficult for Shauna to get out of this. If not, he is not long for this world.

Nat and Lottie

The meat (I am so sorry) of the present-day timeline comes with Nat and Lottie. Nat is now free-ish (she is no longer handcuffed) to roam around the grounds of Lottie’s community/cult. Lottie (who goes by Charlotte with her followers — I guess Lottie is short for Charlotte) shows Nat a note from Travis that says “Tell Nat she was right”. Nat demands the full story and Lottie gives…something like that.

I do not believe Lottie at all about anything. First, she says she told her followers to check up on Nat but then they kidnapped her because she was trying to kill herself. I mean, I guess that could be true but I highly doubt it. Then, there’s the story she tells about Travis.

She says that Travis called her because the wilderness was coming for him again. She drove all night to get to him and she helped him calm down with the Lottie touch. Then, she fell asleep and he drove to the ranch where he worked. She woke up and followed him there (how did she know that was where he was going?). He laid out the candles in the shape of the symbol and told her that he was going to hang himself until he passed out so that he could commune with the wilderness and learn what it wanted. If she didn’t help him, he would die.

She agreed to help him and uses the crane remote to raise him up. He starts suffocating and passes out. But then, the remote for the crane stops working and she starts seeing visions of her own and he dies. Come on, Lottie, this story is so weak. The visions that she sees, by the way, are some of the scariest we’ve seen on this show. She sees the blonde Christian girl Laura from the plane crash timeline, who is dead and rotting and also coming at her fast.

Remember: Laura is the one who baptized Lottie and woke up this whole spiritual side. When Lottie stops hallucinating, Travis is way higher in the air and she gathers what she can from the scene and runs.

Nat is not buying this story and wants to get away from the commune as soon as she can. Unfortunately, Lottie says she can’t leave until morning so Nat has to spend the night there. I’m sure we’ll see some terrible things happen in the night during the next episode.

Final thoughts/comments (all timelines)

• If Javi is still alive in the plane crash timeline, and I feel like he is because Lottie seems so sure, where is he? How is he still alive? When will he come back? Does he make it to the present timeline? (I feel like he doesn’t make it to the present timeline, but beyond that, I have no idea the other answers)
• What is going to happen when Simone is hospitalized (or killed?) and Sammy has to live with Tai again? I am worried for Sammy (and Steve!!)

Originally published at http://lizziekreitman.wordpress.com on April 3, 2023.