Review: Yellowjackets, “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” | Season 1, Episode 10

A heartbreaking season finale risks anticlimax but stays focused on what matters

Screenshot: Showtime

Starting next week, Ben will be covering season two of Yellowjackets on Fridays as episodes stream on Showtime. To read those reviews and catch up his Remindercaps of season one, become a paid subscriber. In the meantime, here’s a free look at his review of the first season finale.

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When I first pitched covering Yellowjackets for Episodic Medium, I singled out “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” as the episode that had really stuck with me in the year since this first season aired. Of course, endings tend to be what we remember best, especially in the long wait for a new season. (I also haven’t stopped thinking about the Severance finale.) But there’s so much about this episode that impresses me, especially on this re-watch.

It’s not that it’s a perfectly satisfying finale, definitively resolving most (or even many) of the mysteries that have accumulated over the first nine episodes. Compared to the aforementioned Severance finale or any season finale of Lost, there are few moments of brain-breaking ecstasy here; like any Yellowjackets episode, this one raises as many questions as it answers. Even more notably, it doesn’t feature any cannibalism, which the whole season has arguably been building toward. Teen girls eating each other is one of the central hooks for this series, promised from practically the first scene. And yet even though I came into this episode a little skeptical about the sustainability of the series’ premise, I left feeling reassured.

Because the fact remains: Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson are going forward with their five-season plan, confirmed by Lyle as recently as this month. And while I’m always down for a sprawling mystery box show, five seasons feels ambitious for a story like this—especially with dual timelines constraining the number of directions the “primary” one can go. Will we have to wait until season four or five to get to the cannibalism?

“Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” doesn’t answer that question, but it also makes it feel surprisingly incidental. With winter looming, hunger will clearly be a problem in the near future, and the bear that Lottie kills is only a temporary solution. In the meantime, there are still people hurting, all going through their own experiences of this awful thing that happened to them. In this episode, the clearest example of that is Jackie Taylor—and while I never specifically thought of Jackie as the main character, in retrospect this season sort of feels like her story.

Jackie is perhaps the clearest example of someone who just couldn’t cope with living in the wilderness—she went from queen bee status to the bottom of the food chain, with the personal betrayal of her best friend making her feel even more alone. Selfless communal living didn’t come easy to her, and I don’t say that out of judgment; Jackie isn’t a bad person, just a young and realistically self-centered one. She’s somebody who, with a bit more time and perspective, likely would’ve grown up and lived a calm, content life—maybe not one that could top her high-school peak, but a peaceful one.

It’s tragically appropriate that Jackie dies after failing to light a fire by herself, too prideful to get help just like Shauna is too prideful to offer it. All of this grows organically out of the tensions that have been gestating between Shauna and Jackie since long before the plane crash. And their inevitable explosive fight is just heartbreaking to watch; as in any serious fight between best friends, these two people know exactly how they can inflict the most pain. There’s a lot of truth to both of their cruel diagnoses.

After it’s all over, this ending for Jackie feels like the only way it could’ve happened. Many of us were fixated on the possibility of Jackie being the flashforward victim, but her arc has always been a more grounded story about unwittingly becoming a lone wolf, cast out from her pack. You don’t need human traps and cannibalistic rituals to see how that can kill a person. Particularly gutting is the nightmarish glimpse at Jackie’s final fantasies as she freezes to death: Shauna apologizing and inviting her into the warmth, with her whole team lined up to tell her how much they love her.

The episode makes this sequence even more emotional by continuously reminding us how long this pain will linger for Shauna, cross-cutting with the high school reunion 25 years later. Another of this season’s greatest accomplishments has been just how seamlessly it connects two stories in vastly different settings, and this is a great example: the side-by-side scenes have a direct relationship, with the past still existing in the present moment for the surviving Yellowjackets. In fact, the past feels realer than the actual present.

I also always admire this show’s ability to balance tones, and I’m relieved that this finale features a decent amount of comedy, especially during the body disposal scenes. And yet the show doesn’t downplay the seriousness of what’s happening here; Shauna and Taissa may appear casual about covering up a murder, but after it’s over they both go home and separately break into sobs. Shauna’s description of her numbness and paranoia even helps Nat realize that Travis probably did kill himself, a reveal keeping with this finale’s pattern of slightly subverting the expected thrilling ending in favor of sticking to what makes sense emotionally.

Along those lines, the body disposal story wraps up pretty quickly and efficiently, at least for now, with the stinger resting on Callie’s reaction to the news of Adam’s disappearance. Callie has gone in and out of the narrative, and I’m not sure I have the investment in her to crave a Paige Jennings arc, but it’s an effective enough reminder that nothing can really ever stay buried in the world of Yellowjackets. Same goes for Taissa’s horrifying shrine that her wife discovers in their basement, with poor Biscuit’s head as the centerpiece—a very gnarly image in an episode that mostly eschews anything graphic.

As this season comes to an end, it feels like the writers have pulled off a subtle trick: they’ve successfully drawn our attention away a bit from the larger and most pressing mysteries, keeping us satisfied with emotional resolution. I’d call it a pivot, but really, the focus has always been the characters, and your level of investment in the show will likely depend on caring about them enough to be okay with that. The resolution of the New Jersey Senate election matters because winning could exacerbate Taissa’s severe sleepwalking issues, which now have a death toll; the (partial) resolution of the Travis mystery matters because of the devastating realization that Nat no longer has anybody to blame; Misty’s kidnapping of Jessica ends in the only way it could, with her murder happening in a deliciously twisted, very Misty way.

Of course, there are still exciting cliffhangers here, including the reveal that not only is Lottie alive in the present day, but she was the one who emptied Travis’s bank account after he died. If Nat’s robed kidnappers do indeed belong to a cult run by Lottie, these final moments could be pointing to Lottie as a new Big Bad, proving Nat right about Travis after all. But the truth is likely more complicated; it wouldn’t be true to the ethos of this show to completely renege on Nat’s latest, most haunting realization.

This is a complex show with a lot of narrative strands, but it’s not one to really indulge in byzantine conspiracies, even if the characters themselves do; despite season-long hints of the paranormal, for example, so far nothing has happened that can’t be explained in real-world terms. What’s eerie about seeing Van and Misty kneel at Lottie’s side during her bear heart offering isn’t the idea that they are actually communicating with some forest spirit trapping them there; it’s the sign that they may be the first real recruits of the Antler Queen, the leader who has a whole lineup of willing cannibalistic followers by the time of the opening flashforward. Taissa is probably right when she points out that Van’s embrace of Lottieism is coming from a place of trauma. But that’s not enough to kill the appeal for Van—or for any of the other survivors who have begun to come around to Lottie’s way of thinking. Everybody needs something to survive out here, and I’m not just talking about food.

It’s a sign of the series’ confidence at this point that we’re leaving the season with a clear sense of the type of story we’re experiencing, even with so many ambiguities. Despite the natural constraints of the structural conceit, the possibilities for the next season—or the next four—feel wide open. Sure, there’s still room for growth, and some of the remaining mysteries could get tedious if they linger too long. It’d be foolish to assume a strong debut season guarantees a consistently strong five-season run. Some characters could use more definition, including Lottie, which seems like a crucial task for next season.

But more than anything else, “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” assured me that this show can afford to be a little stingy, as long as it keeps telling grounded, emotional stories the way it has been. I guess that makes it not much different from a Lost finale after all.

Stray observations

• Nat’s lack of bitterness about Travis and Jackie’s hookup is refreshing, and I was very moved by her genuine concern about what he went through, along with his declaration that he “fucking loves her.” Always hoping those crazy kids will make it, even though we know that they, uh, won’t.

• I was legitimately worried Misty would do something creepy or violent to Ben after he rejected her once and for all, but I think that would’ve happened in this episode, so hopefully Ben actually made it out of that situation unscathed (aside from, you know, the leg she chopped off).  

• Okay, what are our biggest questions or predictions going into season two? I’m personally curious when Misty’s destruction of the black box will come up again. That’s a pretty foundational part of the story, but I don’t think it has been referenced since the second episode.

• Nice callback to last episode when Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” plays at the reunion. Beyond the simple pleasures of a throwback ’90s soundtrack, I really like how this show uses songs and other pop cultural touchstones in the present day as visceral reminders of that vivid time in these women’s lives.

• “Well, I hope this cat behaves itself. It’ll wind up in the chili pot.” I love seeing Shauna and Jeff getting along, and it’s a good sign that Jeff is comfortable with dark humor.

• It’s been very fun revisiting this season, and I’m going into season two now even more excited for it than I was already. Looking forward to unpacking it with y’all!