The Yellowjackets get their bridge home, but it’s looking more like they’ll need to find an exit wound instead.
Recap
After last week’s incredible twist, we jump back in time three days, so that we get to properly meet the intruders. Well, first we meet the frogs: Arctic banshee frogs, to be exact, the source of the “screaming trees” that the Yellowjackets have been using as proof of the Wilderness communicating with them and condoning their acts of survival. Studying them are sweetheart scientists Edwin (Nelson Franklin) and Hannah (Ashley Sutton), with their terse Wilderness guide Kodiak (Joel McHale). They measure the captured frogs’ decibels, give off the hints of a love triangle, and decompress by smoking a joint and accidentally snapping the antennae on their satellite phone.
Which is what makes it so brutal when Lottie promptly murders poor Edwin with a hatchet to the back of the head. She claims that it’s because they don’t belong here, but as she anoints her face with his fresh blood, the other Yellowjackets must give chase after Kodiak and Hannah. All except Melissa, who gets shot with one of Kodi’s arrows, and Gena and Mari, who push it through her shoulder to her agonized screams.
The girls hunt them like predators, going quiet and snuffing out their torches, communicating nonverbally and listening to the sounds of the forest. Travis and Akilah chase Kodiak to the edge of a cliff, offering to save him from a fall if he’ll “bring us with you.” Meanwhile, Van and Tai find the researchers’ tent and defunct satphone.
Hannah evades the team a bit longer, enough time to record a message on the DAT recorder to the daughter (Alex) she put up for adoption before Shauna sniffs her out and drags her back to camp, where she sheepishly introduces herself to her captors and more savvily promises to lead them to the first-aid kit for Melissa.
In the present, the adult Yellowjackets embark on an impromptu road trip, flanking Shauna on her search for Hannah’s adult daughter in Richmond, Virginia. Some googling has revealed that none of the frog research team were ever heard from again, and Shauna thinks she might have sent the tape as some sort of threat.
Their road trip gets off to a rocky start with Misty getting intel from Walter that Shauna’s DNA was under Lottie’s nails. Before she can fully accuse her of murder (only side-text with Taissa and Van without her), Van starts vomiting up blood and they must detour to the closest hospital. There, she goes into crisis and has a vision—of both her younger self setting fire to her hospital bed as well as adult Other Tai, who promises that “I won’t let them take your eyes.” Eek!
In the waiting room, Misty confronts Shauna about her citizen detective suspicions, only for Shauna to brush off the accusation and then make a shoddy excuse to strand everyone at the hospital and get back in her car. By the time she makes it to Richmond, everyone in Alex’s house is turning in for the evening. Little do they know they’re about to have a visit from Shauna Sadecki née Shipman and her brand-new hunting knife.
Back at the Jolly Hitcher, poor Jeff is having stress eczema from being in denial about Shauna’s darker side. At least, that’s Callie’s armchair diagnosis after hearing her mom chillingly suggest that her husband keep their daughter out of her business. Combine with some googling about the missing researchers, and the other two Sadeckis think they may need to branch off into their own faction, for their own survival.
Commentary
Frogs?! Listen, I love it. The demystifying of the Wilderness, rationalizing the supposedly supernatural with a completely reasonable explanation, is so much more interesting than some malevolent force. Though I do also appreciate that while this episode also explains about the supplies stash Ben found (Kodiak mentions the prior research team had left it behind), it hasn’t even scratched the mystery of the cabin and the symbols.
Also, what the actual fuck, Lottie? In his final moments, it seemed as if Edwin had recognized the Yellowjackets, because of course their plane crash would have been national news. Yes, they made a terrible first impression, but this is a world (presumably) in which only twenty-five years prior that the Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes mountains and had to resort to cannibalism. There was precedent! Maybe not for propping your coach’s head on a stump and “honoring” him with a feast, but still.
Instead, Lottie goes completely rogue and makes their rescue so much more complicated. It’s hard to believe that the adult Yellowjackets would have even entertained interacting with her as much as they did last season, now that we know what she did, so I’m waiting to see who else winds up sharing her sentiment of wanting to remain in their self-contained village and better control when they leave. Watching the girls hunt in such chilling cooperation supports that notion; this was not the kind of behavior we saw them practicing in the season premiere’s Capture the Bone game.
Though that said, my heart broke when poor Van’s first instinct was to try and call her mom on the satellite phone. Minutes before, she’d been one of the snarling wolves prowling the woods, and then she reverted back to a vulnerable teenage girl hoping against hope that her mom would pick up.
Teen Van tells her adult self in the vision, “We never actually cheated death; it was always an even trade.” Aside from sounding very Final Destination—a 2000 film that I’m imagining the girls did not rent on their first post-Wilderness sleepover!—I’m not sure what it’s meant to tell us that we don’t already know. Van and Tai have been operating on this logic for several episodes already, that they must go all “an eye for an eye” if they have any hope of staving off her cancer. What’s more interesting is Van’s mumbled “How long has it been you?” to Other Tai, implying that the darker self has taken over potentially this entire season, maybe even as long as Taissa and Simone’s car accident last season.
Speaking of cars and vital information, Van claims that Hannah became the closest with Gena and Melissa at the camp, which implies that they kept her alive for a decent amount of time—then adds, “But they’re both dead.” Do we really think a throwaway line is enough to confirm this for Melissa’s sake? I’m not convinced, if only because the arrow metaphor was so strong: The only way out is through. The Yellowjackets realized that you have to create an exit wound to avoid risking infection or tearing; I think that’s very telling for the remaining episodes this season, including Shauna confronting Alex and whoever Hilary Swank is playing, while figuring out which one of them has been stalking her.
Fingers and Ears
- Line of the episode, I’m torn between “I’m not family, but we have a very intense trauma bond” (Misty) and “Go fuck your blood-dirt, Lottie” (Mari).
- Jeff calling out Shauna’s secrecy as her love language was so him and also so off-base. You in danger, girl.
- Nat was still clearly leading in the chase scene, though there was a clear moment where she and Shauna branch off into paths that felt like a metaphor for Shauna taking over as Antler Queen next episode.
- Other portents include Misty’s broken glasses, which we glimpsed in the pilot. Shit’s about to get real-real.
- What does it mean that I find The Bear Joel McHale more sociopathic than Kodiak? That said, I definitely think he could have been referring to his own variation on the capital-W Wilderness, and I want to know how he got those scars.
This week was mostly bringing us up to speed, and we only have so many episodes left, so now it’s just a matter of waiting for next week’s deliberation re: poor Hannah’s fate.