Recap: 'Yellowjackets' Season 2 Premiere Ate (Literally)
Friends, Romans, Countrymen…lend me your ears!
Hey, ladykins! Stick around after the Yellowjackets recap for ‘The Elephant in the Werkroom’!
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰✰
Romance ✰✰✰
Sex ✰✰✰
Storytelling ✰✰✰✰
Performance ✰✰✰✰
Yearning ✰✰✰✰✰
This review contains heavy (🥵) spoilers for Season 1 and the Season 2 premiere of Yellowjackets.
**Trigger warning for discussion of gore, death, cannibalism, murder, and general violence.**
Written by Ali Romig
Buzz, buzz, bitches!!! I have been eagerly, desperately, bravely awaiting the second season of Showtime’s verified hit Yellowjackets ever since the Season 1 finale cut to black. And now…it’s finally here. Let its sweet, horrifying, blood-soaked1 rivers wash over us and rejoice!
Too much? Maybe. To be honest, if you’re like me, you’re probably at least a little wary of sophomore seasons—especially if the first season of the show in question was a runaway success. With that kind of build up, it almost feels like—no matter what the poor showrunners do—there will inevitably be disappointment. It’s hard to strike the right balance between giving the audience more of what they love, and satisfyingly moving the narrative forward in new and exciting directions.
When I think of past second-season flops, I think of The O.C., The Wilds2, Felicity, Twin Peaks, Big Little Lies…the list goes on. All this is to say, I have been burned before—as I’m sure you have—by lackluster second offerings.
With only one episode out, it’s near impossible to say what Yellowjackets Season 2 has in store for us. Already, I’ve noticed a few marked differences—the production value is crisper, more polished, and humor is being utilized freely and in bigger, more obvious ways—probably to provide some tonal balance for the increasingly gruesome themes. The show has always been cheeky, but the jokes in the premiere feel a little like winks to the show’s now-passionate fanbase. Neither of these changes are bad, they just are! And rather than make me sweat, these choices seem to foreshadow how the writers are still looking to surprise ravenous fans.
As we once again traverse the wilderness3 with our girlies, I thought it might be a good idea to remind viewers of where we’ve been, where we are, and where we might be going on this ghastly journey. So come, walk with me…
Where We’ve Been: Season 1
When Yellowjackets premiered in November 2021, I’m not sure that Showtime knew what a hit they had on their hands. The show had the special sauce (mysteries + nostalgia + romance + the promise of teen cannibalism) to quickly become a word-of-mouth success. Not only did Yellowjackets deliver on performance and story, it cleverly cast a group of actors most famous for roles they’d played in the 90s (Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress, and Christina Ricci, who are all absolute treats to watch) as the adult counterparts to the earlier timeline, i.e. a group of 90s-teens. All this and a killer soundtrack made it irresistible to TV-Twitter and critics alike.
To me, one of the best things about the first season of Yellowjackets was the online conversation that surrounded it. Reddit threads, tweets, blogs, and videos on YouTube and TikTok all spent hours combing through scenes and dissecting every little clue for possible answers to the many questions posed in each episode. This fervor shocked creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, who weren’t expecting such a rabid response. In fact, even the most minuscule details, like the movies listed in Jackie’s diary, caused commotion online. In a painful scene in Episode 6, present day Shauna goes to Jackie’s parents house to celebrate her deceased friend’s birthday. When she sneaks away to Jackie’s room, she picks up one of her old journals and flips through it. Under a section labeled, “Movie Characters I’d Like To Be” there are characters from Bring It On (2000) and American Beauty (1999)—both films would’ve come out after the Yellowjackets had returned from the wilderness. This led certain “citizen detectives” online to theorize Jackie must’ve survived; but when asked about it, the creators said that they simply didn’t think “people [would be] screen-shotting that the way they did.” But screenshot they did.
The first season’s premise may sound simple, but in reality it’s a Russian nesting doll of secrets and horror. To prepare for the second season’s premiere, I rewatched the entirety of Season 1, which I would definitely recommend doing. But if you’d rather catch a quick run down, you can watch any number of helpful YouTube videos that will hit all the highlights. Season 1 asked a number of questions, and even answered a few: Did Jackie survive? (No); Who is blackmailing the adult Yellowjackets? (Jeff); Who is “the bad one” Taissa’s son keeps talking about (Taissa); Who else survived the wilderness? (So far, we can add Van and Lottie to that list); Who is Adam? (Just some guy).
But for every question the show answered, it seemed to ask two more. What Season 1 didn’t answer: Who was the girl who died in the pilot? Where’s Javi? What happened to Shauna’s baby? Are the Yellowjackets alone in the woods? Was Travis murdered? Will they start eating each other? And most importantly…who THE FUCK is Lottie Matthews?4
This brings us to…
Where We Are: Season 2 Premiere
[Cue Sharon Van Etten’s “Seventeen”]
Winter isn’t coming, it’s here. Two months have passed in the wilderness since we last saw our Yellowjackets—enough time for them to become even more hardened, if not yet unrecognizable as the fresh-faced soccer teens they were when they first crashed. Also enough time for Jackie’s dead body to become a fleshpop that they keep stowed in the makeshift meat shack. Before the sun rises, we watch Natalie and Travis get ready to hunt. Lottie stops them to perform a protective ritual, in which they drink a cup of tea with her blood mixed into it. Natalie seems unimpressed, while Travis goes along with it (even though, in Season 1, adult Natalie claims that Travis never believed in any of “that stuff”... interesting!).
First time jump of the season! Next we see short clips from 1998, where the survivors are post-rescue and being ushered onto a plane, hoods and hats covering most of their faces. Narratively, this is probably to protect them from prying eyes, but it also serves to hide some of the survivors from us, the viewers, so we don’t know who all makes it out. As reporters and paparazzi hurl questions at the team, Lottie turns and releases a primal scream. Shortly after she returns home, her parents send her to a psychiatric ward where she’s subjected to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). While there, she “heals” other patients, either still convinced that there’s something divine within her, or desperately trying to recapture the power she had in the woods. Time will tell. Present day, we see our first glimpse of the adult Lottie, who is regaling a group of purple-clad followers with cult-like jargon. “We are the ones making ourselves sick,” she tells them confidently. This is all making me sick, that’s for sure!
While I’d normally skip over the opening credits in a recap, I feel it necessary to mention them here for a few reasons—the first being, I just love these credits. And as expected, they’ve been updated for Season 2, including glimpses of the new adult characters, as well as clues for what’s to come. While I most certainly didn’t catch every single Easter egg, something that stuck with me were the shots of the adult women dancing freely around a burning fire in what looks like the snowy wilderness. Do we think they return to the habits of their wilder, younger selves at some point this season?
Let me know what you caught from the new credits in the comments!
As the episode continues, we follow the same narrative structure that we became used to in Season 1, switching between the adult and teen timelines. Present day, we learn that Shauna is still trying to cover her tracks after murdering Adam. With her husband Jeff’s help, she breaks into Adam’s art studio to destroy the numerous paintings of her that he’d done (creepy) and have rather unpleasant-looking sex with her husband (am I the only one who felt it didn’t hit the way it was supposed to?). She also tearfully burns all of her old journals along with Adam’s ID—do we think the tears are for Adam or her journals?—using the embers to cook her family hot dogs. Still resourceful, that one! Shauna’s daughter Callie, however, isn’t having it—“it” being her parents’ new “everything’s fine!” attitudes, or the hot dogs. A suspicious Callie later digs through the ashes in the grill and finds a remnant of the burned ID.
Callie is such an outlier to me. Compared to the fully fleshed out (no pun intended) teens we see in the 90s-timeline, Callie comes off almost like a caricature. Bratty and angsty to the point that she doesn’t seem real. I feel like this might be meant as a commentary on how cushy her life is compared to her mom, who spent those same formative years rationing bear meat, but I would love to see some more depth from Callie. For a show that does such a good job showcasing all of the complicated realities, mixed emotions, and confusing impulses that accompany teenage girlhood, it would be nice to see them take a closer look at her. What motivates her and how does she really see her mom?
Newly elected State Senator Taissa adopts a puppy, Steve, still oblivious to the fact that she sacrificed her previous dog for political power while sleepwalking…and he’s still decomposing in her basement. That is until her estranged wife, Simone, tells her as much while shielding their son from getting anywhere near her. Simone demands that Tai step down from office and get real help—a fair request, IMHO—or lose them both. Meanwhile, Misty is still licking her extensive community wounds by cementing herself as an accomplice in Adam’s murder, instead of running the other way. She spends her time combing the Citizen Detectives’ online message board, seeing if anyone suspects them. We get our first short introduction to Elijah Wood’s upcoming character in the form of a voice over. He suggests that they should be looking at “the girlfriend” in Adam’s case, and Misty does her part as protective “friend” by angrily downvoting the comment. She then doubles down on investigating Nat’s disappearance, returning to the motel where Nat was kidnapped at the end of Season 1.
As suspected, Lottie’s lot were behind Nat’s kidnapping and are now keeping her tied up in a summer camp-like cabin. Natalie is able to manipulate one of Lottie’s young followers using only her complicated, withering charm and a table fork (ouch). After escaping from the room, she runs through what looks like a cult compound trying to escape. I will never tire of Juliette Lewis’ physical embodiment of this character. Her exaggerated movements and mannerisms aren’t slapstick; they’re spot on. Eventually, Natalie approaches a clearing where Lottie is overseeing an eerily familiar ritual. Are they reenacting what happened in the wilderness all those years ago? Lottie steps into view and Nat confronts her, only to be met with a smile from her “old friend.”
As we continue to meet the surviving adults and learn more about the Yellowjackets’ time in the wilderness, I am eager to see how the interpersonal relationships between these people develop, devolve, combust, or come together. When they left the woods, what kind of terms were they all on? Who was who’s ally out there? Alliances were ever-shifting in the first season, how will they continue to change or grow moving forward? Nothing feels solid at this point.
Speaking of alliances, back in the 90s, we see new ones form. Travis and Natalie’s hunts are proving fruitless (both in terms of scoring food or finding Javi). Natalie thinks Travis’ younger brother is most definitely dead by now, a fact that Travis is aware of, causing a subtle rift between the two. While in the grips of a panic attack, Travis receives a calming hand from Lottie, who tells him that his brother is still alive. This may lead to a desperate Travis—who is already pretty willing to do what Lottie says—becoming an even more zealous believer.
While Natalie and Travis seem distant, our other love birds, Tai and Van, are closer than ever: literally attached at the wrists. In an effort to keep Tai from sleepwalking, Van agrees to sleep tied to her. Van and Tai’s interactions in this episode are so fucking sweet (can I say that? Even though we all know everything will inevitably go to shit?) 🥺 They’ve clearly each begun to see the other as a true partner. I am really happy to see the show giving them more screen time to develop the relationship this season, especially since the actors have such an easy chemistry. In a moment of incredible sapphic sappiness, after Tai bites Van while sleepwalking, Van uses the pooling blood to write “I <3 U” on Tai’s arm and reassures her that they’ll get through this together. It’s a clear parallel to what Tai is going through as an adult. In the present day, Tai is sleepwalking again, but she’s left alone to deal with her mess—there’s no Van in her life to hold onto. (Yet…)
Finally, we have Shauna. Shauna, Shauna, Shauna. She spends most of her days in the meat shack, hallucinating conversations with Jackie. In her mind, Jackie is there, grilling her about her relationship with Jeff and playing MASH. But in reality, Jackie is a blueberry popsicle. These scenes make me think again of the whole diary fiasco from last season, and especially about Showrunner Jonathan Lisco’s comments on it; in a later interview, he claimed that including Bring It On and American Beauty in Jackie’s notes was never a mistake. In the Season 2 premiere, through their imagined conversations, we see the ways Shauna deludes herself into imagining what a continued life with Jackie might look like—who’s to say that behavior stopped when she left the woods? Maybe Shauna continues to imagine that Jackie is with her, writing in her diary as if Jackie were there…or maybe, as if she were Jackie?
After knocking Jackie’s body over by accident, a bit of her ear chips off, and a distressed Shauna stows it in her pocket. Later, she continues to contemplate it, like a graying worry stone, and then…she eats it. Yes, as Tori Amos sings “things are getting kind of gross,” Shauna eats Jackie’s ear. Our first official act of cannibalism. And it’s so complicated.
Throughout Jackie and Shauna’s messy best friendship, the two girls fought for the upper hand, all while also genuinely loving each other. Jackie was beautiful, she was charming, she was popular, and she was wanted. Shauna was smart, she was artistic, and she was determined. Both had qualities to be admired, but as often happens with teenagers incubated in a society of scarcity and comparison, they coveted what they saw in the other, rather than celebrating themselves and each other. By eating Jackie’s ear, Shauna is giving into Jackie’s hand completely: she is promising to never let Jackie go, to carry her with her, to become her. By this logic, it makes sense why Shauna married Jeff, why she stayed in her hometown, why she never went to school, or became a writer, or did whatever it was she’d been planning to do after graduation. Instead, she assumes the life that would’ve been Jackie’s. This is how she deals with her guilt over Jackie’s death. This is her punishment and her penance. This first act of cannibalism has nothing to do with hunger, or even power, and everything to do with grief.
Where we’re going: The Yearning’s official Season 2 Predictions
So, what next? This is Yellowjackets, so…who knows! But we do have a few predictions for the upcoming episodes. We’ll check back here throughout the season to see how many we got right :)
Javi is being kept alive by some other force/humans/beings that are present in the wilderness. Because seriously, there is no other way for that boy to have survived.
The Yellowjackets may get desperate and have to eat the rest of Jackie’s frozen, conveniently preserved body.
The girl who we see die in the Pilot is Mari (I am basing this completely on hair color?)
Someone will realize that Akilah is suddenly a different person (no really, why did they recast her? Does anyone know?)
Adult Van and Tai will kiss!!!!
Shauna’s baby dies during childbirth. Sometimes the most horrific thing is the most realistic.
The “new” JV Yellowjackets that they’ve decided to finally pay attention to will stage a coup and take control.
The first episode of Season 2, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” is available to stream now via Showtime Anytime
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The Elephant in the Werkroom
Episode 13:
The makeover episode! I always love these, even though they can be so cringy. But I like the idea of getting a drag makeover (maybe I just want to be in one of these episodes?)
Loosey choosing herself for the question “who is going home next” in the mini-game because she knew that’s what other people would say…there are many painful layers there.
Ms. Tang not knowing who Jennifer Coolidge is made her appear more like Jennifer Coolidge. You can only get that kind of authenticity through ignorance.
While I agree that Luxx should’ve been in the bottom, the others were all on equal footing in my opinion, which makes it even sadder, really…when you know you’re in the bottom because of your personality, and not your performance that week. That’s rough.
This was my top 4 from the start and I am very happy, but, in the words of Loosey herself, I can’t say that for everyone…
Next week we will be taking a self-prescribed Spring Break, because we are tired girlies. But we’ll be back on the 13th with a very special guest post. Stay tuned, Yearners!
Or is it just iron deposits making it appear red?
RIP Shoni </3
Both literal and symbolic.
We obviously know who Lottie is…but what is she up to?
Excellent review, you really provided some new perspectives to think about. The only thing you forgot to mention is Jeff blasting Papa Roach in his car lololol
I love the points you made about why shauna committed the first act of cannibalism - makes so much sense. That, and the bit about the shrine being the direct cause of taissa’s political win - I never considered that it was a magical shrine!! Wild. I like the show even more now. Good job with this one!