I had assumed it was a 10 episode season, so I said to my wife late in the episode "wow, this feels like a season finale, where are they going next episode", and I was genuinely excited to see what twists could happen immediately after all this. But she told me it was the finale and I felt let down. This season felt like it abandoned character arcs for plot, and I was hoping a 10th episode would show the personal fallout of all of this whilst setting up the next big thing. In my mind, all of the modern day events just spiral out of control even further, with Walter's machinations not being as clever and pat as he seems to think they are (the evidence, should anyone bother to look at it, is going to tell a much different story then what everyone is trying to sell)
I keep wondering...Isn't Tai state senator now? Doesn't she have stuff to do? Wouldn't all the drama she's been partaking in be under much more public scrutiny? There's been no mention of her responsibilities. Isn't her wife in a coma? Who's looking after the kid? Everyone else is untethered enough to go hang out at a commune for days but, Tai can't just disappear without it being a bigger public issue, and now tied to a cult where a police corruption scandal, murder and overdose collide? Not a good look for a politician.
May 27, 2023·edited May 27, 2023Liked by Ben Rosenstock
I liked and enjoyed the Coach Ben stuff. He knows that the girls essentially murdered a child to cannibalize him (Nat admits that to him). He has also been witness to bizarre and monstrous behavior by them and has good reason to believe this is only going to get worse.
For me, him trying to kill them all was twofold 1) He thinks killing them before they do worse things is doing everyone a kindness. 2) Self-preservation... he knows that he is very likely next on the menu and can't defend himself.
Overall I still continue to like the 1996 stuff but am completely over the 2021 timeline. The resolution to the Adam storyline was groan-worthy (why even have that as a storyline this season if you just wanna shove it aside at the end, literally no one at the end of season 1 was asking for it). In general the 2021 stuff doesn't really have verisimilitude for me, it all feels so convenient and make-believe that I don't really have much immersion in it.
I agree that the season was a disappointment and my expectations for this show going forward are now much more muted compared to what they were at the beginning of the season.
My one wish for the next season is that they split entire episodes by timeline so that there is not all this intercutting between the tense, serious and dramatic 1996 timeline and the completely goofy and trying to be funny 2021 timeline. All those cuts took so much out of the tension of the 1996 timeline for me (this episode for example they cut from Travis being pressured into eating his own brother by Van in 1996 to the goofy scene between Elijah Wood and Kevyn). I am not saying they can't have humor but humor has to fit in with the tone of the 1996 stuff (and there were some very good darkly funny moments in 1996 like "Tai, you ate her face"), intersplicing the harrowing stuff in 1996 with attempts at broad humor like what happens in 2021 is not it and doesn't do the 1996 timeline justice.
Maybe S3 will address this but I was surprised that Lisa disappeared as soon as Nat took Misty's needle for her. She heard them admit to committing several murders and then one of them tried to kill her, and then...nothing? I've really enjoyed her and Nat this season and liked Nat's sacrifice in that sense but it didn't solve anything in the way that Javi's death did. If the adult Yellowjackets wanted to walk away from this clean, Lisa still needed to die. If she didn't, how was that resolved? And if she did, I would've wanted to see them grapple with the decision to kill Lisa anyway after Nat died to save her.
This was bothering me too, and I'm worried that they'll pick this up next season but in an Adam Martin 2.0 way, i.e. dragging it out after audiences have moved on and want to focus on the rest of the story. The time to have grappled with it was now (or in an episode 10).
Part of the reason the final minutes don’t work for me is bc the show as a text did not appear to acknowledge any of the ways in which the various cover ups and schemes at which it arrived were paper thin; it seemed to earnestly present its present day resolutions as resolutions.
Am I as a viewer supposed to do my own work in projecting unease and precarity onto that ending? There are obviously levels to a show like this which invite interpretation and speculation. But here, the story feels like it has arrived at an end to its present-day plots, to the extent that we might expect next season to start, at least in the near term, at square one. That puts me in a position of not necessarily expecting a development within an ongoing narrative and being surprised with a different development or outcome — that’s the fun of mysteries and thrillers — but of expecting *anything at all* to happen and being surprised when nothing does.
The latter is what DEXTER constantly did, and for various reasons it’s on my mind. The real agony of that show was that it set up potentially interesting premises and conflicts, and then nearly without fail, viewers given to following and speculating on the plot of the show were revealed to have taken it more seriously and, honestly, paid more attention to it than the people making it had. Which is a singularly terrible feeling to have as a viewer! It punishes active, participatory investment in the story. And the way this season ended with the present day timeline… it really had those vibes.
Sarah DJ has come into her own this season and I hope they play more off of Lottie's cryptic comments about her. Legacy passed to children is one of my favorite horror as social commentary tropes.
Yeah I think I’m done with this show after that season. In addition to all of the character problems Ben outlined, which caused me to lose a lot of my investment in them, I also feel like the show has mostly astonishingly boring? It wasn’t even messy in a way that was fun or interesting to talk about, it was just consistently tedious (even in the 1996 storyline!) to the point that I basically had to force myself to sit down and power through the season’s back half.
I feel increasingly like it was a mistake to introduce new survivors to the adult storyline; it really should have just been only the main four and Travis who made it out of the woods. Neither adult Van or Lottie added much; especially Lottie, but sidelining Tai’s family this season in favor of having her reunite with Van felt like fanservice more than anything else. And now what’s left for the teen timeline, am I supposed to care when Mari or Akilah or Coach Ben inevitably die? Because I won’t!
Part of me wonders whether this is a CARNIVALE situation… LOST was largely pilloried for improvising its serial elements through to is end and the holes / messes that method made, but (though few remember it) CARNIVALE was a show meticulously plotted out, beat for beat, over seasons’ worth of TV. And while it had its merits in terms of acting and production design and general atmosphere, there can be no denying that it really fucking dragged through its core conflicts and plots (the two main characters didn’t even meet face to face in S1), in what felt like a direct result of its planned structure. Even through the second season, which seemed to realize and try to improve upon how slow the first was, it only ever tapped the gas. This show is doing the same thing.
I tried picking up Carnivale long after it was cancelled - it's got all that HBO sheen, but yeah I couldn't really even finish season 1. It's really interesting to read the wiki pages on what was going on and what the plan for the series was, really cool stuff, but man they needed to get audiences invested sooner.
I'm not sure how Yellowjackets compares because it's still a bit muddled in my head. I think the central contradiction in my mind is... yeah, it has been boring at times and feels like it's dragging through a predetermined (and spread out) story. And yet - things have been happening! They haven't held back on the cannibalism or escalating the wilderness story. It's feeling a bit like the worst of both worlds now in that they're hitting certain beats but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Maybe it's also the split timelines - I have quibbles with the wilderness story, but the present-day timeline *really* dragged.
I think the show’s load bearing beam is still the cold open of S1E1, which is imo the heart of what Ben (the reviewer) is getting at with mention of the show running out of things to look forward to.
That vision of the team going Full Cannibal Druid functions as a horizon for the ‘96 timeline, and it creates frisson as we wonder how what we see develops into that vision no matter how what we see relates to the near-term. If we didn’t have that promise, the listlessness of the ‘21 timeline would be as acutely felt in ‘96… and tbh, my feeling with this season is that the show is rapidly running out of its credit in that regard.
If we have truly crossed a threshold for the ‘96ers, then they sort of have to close the book on any further agonizing over what they’ve become and if they are losing themselves; the internal conflicts w/r/t cannibalism as a necessary practice and the embrace of ritual mysticism have been resolved. So much of the ‘96 timeline has been about the team losing their minds. What’s left to lose in that regard?
And if there is no obvious progression, what is the gulf between what they are now and what they end up being by (presumably) the following winter? Schisms in the church, so to speak? Quibbles over hunting Coach? What stakes are left? We only have a few redshirts left, it’s not like there’s a ton of drama over what’s going to happen to Aqilah. Are we returning to a more pure episode-to-episode narrative of surviving another day? They have a fuck ton of animal pelts in the cold open.
So they’re survivors of a plane crash, they landed in a place with (maybe) supernatural powers, and they just introduced an underground bunker-type location?
What are the odds that season 3 ends with Lottie telling Shauna that they have to go back to the woods?
I felt like we actually had this Lost-esque moment when Lottie suggested that one of them had to die (and be eaten?). It wasn't about literally going back, but it was about returning to that frame of mind. I think the line was "And just like before, the only way through it is to give ourselves to it".
There were, in isolation, things I liked about this episode. I thought 1996 basically all worked. I even appreciated Misty's little exposition speech to Lottie explaining how and why they decided to proceed with their little ritual last week (which bothered the hell out of me, with how seemingly abrupt and savage it was). Anything helps!
But killing Natalie is a *disaster*. It is an epic cock up two times over. First, just in terms of the "how," it unfolded like a complete farce. Literally farcical. People may as well been chasing each other through doors and coming out doors on the other side of the hall like a Scooby Doo episode. The utter, gross *convenience* of everything happening the way it did was laughable. And trying to inject that little emotional component of saving Lisa tying back to not saving Javi? Makes no sense whatsoever but regardless, I felt no emotion other than annoyance when she died.
Even worse - teenage Natalie has never been in a *more* interesting position. There's a lot of thumbs on the scale to arrive at her assuming the Antler Queen mantle but it largely works and Sophie Thatcher is, as ever, amazing. And setting up some weird resentment from teenage Shauna over it should be super interesting to watch! But having *no* tie-in to an adult Natalie? Particularly when adult Natalie had *zero* to do this season? Sucks.
I'm convinced they killed Natalie because they just didn't know what to do with her. And that's the worst reason possible.
One more note. The present-day hunt. The only way I can allow myself to read that scene was that everyone was just sort of going along with it, to humor Lottie. And that no one would *really* have let harm come to Shauna. Because the alternative is just too stupid to contemplate.
It sort of brings up a question frequently asked in first draft fiction workshops: why does this story start here, now? The ‘96 timeline has a very obvious answer to that question. The ‘21 timeline, on the other hand…
I say this because the show seems to want us to focus on how these people are making bad decisions because they are extremely maladapted. Which, obviously that’s a true statement about the characters. But the longer and more pronouncedly their bad judgment spins out, the more confusing the question of “why start here?” becomes. Because, even with a fictional world that maintains (after Twin Peaks) an often absurd and even deranged quality to its logic, it becomes harder to figure why they started making such insane messes of their lives just recently, and how they managed to arrive at their relatively stable (give or take a Nat) ‘21 starting points, if they truly always have been the people they are now.
Now that I think about it, it actually brings up a minor nitpick I had: Coach Ben tells Natalie that she’s different from the other girls (would have a different tenor, that statement, if he wasn’t gay) and that’s certainly true in that, per the ‘21 timeline, she’s the only person whose obvious mental health issues run roughshod over her ability to live, and I think this along with her abrasiveness is (was, sigh) coded as a result of her having both a stronger conscience and less capacity or willingness to compartmentalize than the others.
I guess the trouble is, she still went cannibal with the rest of the girls in the woods, and while certainly they had a confidence in S1, I don’t quite follow how Ben singled out Nat among the group as particularly good… It feels at least in part a contrivance to add effect to her ‘21 death (though I don’t think that dog will hunt).
Sophie Thatcher plays her part in those scenes well, though. Not sure I’ll miss J Lewis, but having identified Nat implicitly in one timeline and explicitly in the other as the heart of the group, it’s certainly a Choice to kill her in one of them. And assuming Lewis doesn’t come back for hallucinations, can Nat, presumably making big moves in the past, haunt the present the way she ought to?
A lot of good stuff - I would just say, I think it's absolutely clear they have no real idea what story they want to tell in the present and never did. I'm now convinced it's all just filler until - as people have half-joked - they pull a "We have to go back!"
I guess they could always have Thatcher do the haunting? Idk. But I agree with literally every sentence you’ve written here, even though I’m late to the party
Everyone's kind of said everything, so just adding a few stray points:
1) Sad that we're losing Juliette Lewis. IMO the show's casting of the young/older versions of the characters has been great, but Natalie's has been most interesting to me because they've also had to bridge how visually different they've decided to make young vs older Nat. I've really enjoyed the little touches of similarities (like how they speak), and the way that visual gap lets you infer what's happened in the time since. And other little details like Young Nat's dark hair slowing growing out (and presumably eventually crowding out her blonde).
2) Poor Kevyn, he deserved better. And surely there's a richer story to mine with Kevyn slowly getting drawn into the Yellowjackets' histories, than just having his story end here (or worse, having Saracusa take over that role).
3) Going into s2 I assume lots of viewers thought we'd see Lottie running some cult conspiracy group that tied in more explicitly with the mysterious symbol and worship of the supposed supernatural. I get this might have been a bit predictable and not the most interesting choice the show could make. But looking at what we got, this might have been more satisfying. I respect the throughline the show was (I think?) trying to do with Adult Lottie: she's a bit woo-woo, but self-aware of her mental health problems, and increasingly worried that they *aren't* mental health problems but a real supernatural influence instead. The problem is that a Big Bad Lottie would've likely functioned as a much better convergence point for the other survivors, whereas Self Aware But Ultimately Tragic Lottie ... was not.
Definitely agree RE: trying to cram everything into the final two episodes. It really felt like the series had a strong start, but then spent the entire middle of the season treading water before everything could be wrapped up in the last episode. The fact that we spent so much time this season faffing around with the Adam Martin subplot is just infuriating, especially considering what was cut (the background to the sacrifice ritual) and how it was resolved. It's not exactly a fresh take to say that the present day storyline is miles behind the past storyline, but that's just become more glaring this season. It feels like they had the idea of "we'll tell the story of plane crash survivors while also following the characters in the modern day" (which, to be clear, is a great premise) but have struggled to find a way to put those modern day characters in situations which are consistently engaging.
I think the Javi plot line actually frustrates me more in a way though. Why have Javi be missing, have him reappear, and then die again? I can see the logic of giving him more screen time so his death hits harder, but that kind of falls apart when post-reappearance he doesn't really do anything but be out of focus in the background. It seems like such an easy fix - have him be missing in the first few episode, the girls find him, but he dies before they can get him back to the cabin. You can even have him die in the same way, with the girls letting him die because they realise they can eat him. If that was in halfway through the season we'd have more time to develop Travis' grief, more time to see Ben's paranoia grow, and it would provide a much needed second step in the development of the cannibalism - right now they've gone straight from eating their friend who was already dead to going out of their way to murder someone in cold blood (even if that plan didn't work out). But because all the stories *have* to be resolved in the finale, we need Javi to stand around in the background for several episodes just so we know he's still there, and then the teenage girls seemingly lose all their reservations about murder offscreen.
Worst thing is, there are parts of this finale that I actually really, really liked. Shauna's cutting up of Javi had a really uncomfortable mix of sadness of horror which the subject matter demands, and I liked how they really took their time with it. Likewise everything with Travis was *great* (even if that Zombie needle drop probably detracted from the emotion more than adding to it). I also actually disagree with Ben in that I liked the burning of the cabin. We've been seeing Coach Ben losing touch with reality all season, along with his increasing horror and resentment towards the girls, so burning the cabin seems like something he would do in his state (even if it maybe could've been built up better). There are other things like that which mean I am still able excited going forwards because the writers clearly still know what they're doing, but man I hope they can sort out their pacing moving forward.
Also did anybody else totally see Nat's death coming? Juliette Lewis has felt pretty checked out to me this season, and the behind the scenes material makes it pretty clear she hasn't particularly enjoyed being on the show (I haven't seen her doing any promo for S2) so I sort of thought she'd be written out. It's a shame because she was fantastic in S1 and she ended up with an almost comically contrived death, but I guess thats what happens sometimes.
Call me crazy, but as someone who has broadly disliked this season for the reasons everyone has covered, I kind of loved this episode?
It rushes things for sure, but character beats like Lottie explaining she can’t lead the group and passing the mantle to Natalie worked really well. Natalie’s death worked emotionally for me, I loved the flash montage of her guilt leading to her take the figurative bullet for whatever her cultist friend’s name is (like I said, didn’t love most of the season.)
The death plane hit great, gave me major Leftovers vibes. And “it’s not evil, it’s just hungry” is completely my shit. To be fair, I’m a huge fan of weird fiction and cosmic horror, so that angle on an uncaring deity feeding on humanity is always gonna work for me. Almost as much as the original Yellowjackets pitch if “Lord of the Flies but with girls and there’s also a greatest hits collection of cool actresses” did in the first place hahaha
Oh and I liked Ben burning the cabin down! It sets up a great new status quo for season 3, and it felt organic to me. He’s undoubtably influenced by the wilderness too (or just delirious from starvation) and saw these girls turning into monsters.
Idk, I thought I was done with this show circa ep 7 but I’m back in!
I wanted to mention that in addition to Van's likely cancer disappearance next season, Tai's alter ego will possibly go dormant again as well, allowing her to get her life back. That would create two in the remaining group who have reason to believe the ritual is still necessary and useful even now. You could even toss Shauna and Misty into the mix, as their legal entanglements are apparently over.
Basically everyone's (Lottie excluded) lives will have improved post ritual, and it's only a matter of time before they all admit that to each other.
Wow there was so much going on in this finale, it really made me miss the fluidity and cohesiveness of season 1. Felt like too many plates spinning (are we supposed to sympathize with Lottie or not? The Mexican standoff in the woods was a lot) and definitely agree that there needed to be more of a runway for the plot line of the adults reverting back to their feral ways, in addition to Ben making the decision to murder. It’s *almost* giving Game of Thrones series finale, with the character turns that seemingly come out of nowhere and major events lacking the necessary emotional weight.
“It’s just disappointing, both because Juliette Lewis has brought so much to the show and because it punishes a character who actually put in the work and improved as a person.”
This, x 100. If Juliette has movies or other work to do, good for her, but she was so great on the show and I’ll miss adult Nat. :(
Am I the only one who thought Ben burned down the cottage not necessarily to kill the girls but so that someone somewhere would see the smoke and come for help? That aerial shot of the fumes rising in the air seemed pretty significant.
To me it wasn’t a nod to the Terror, necessarily, but it was going for the same effect as what that show would do at points when it zoomed out from the frozen-in ships: These people are really and truly alone, in the middle of nowhere.
It is with a heavy, juicy heart that I announce YELLOWJACKETS has been diagnosed with a progressive case of Showtime’s Disease. The onset of delirium has already begun, but we’ve yet to reach the “unnatural longevity” stage just yet.
- Part of my dissatisfaction is the fulfillment kind of meta expectation which makes the unexpected (but not all that dramatic?) death of Nat sort of obvious — J Lewis was vocally irate about her character in season one, and is generally ornery as a person. So if any particular actor was going to be written out, it would be her. It feels like an even greater waste of character than Javi to me; Nat was isolated this season, literally, with most of her conflict internal in a way that works on paper but didn’t give her much to do onscreen. Which only further sapped the death scene of drama or even portent.
- Further to that, the question of “Where’s present day Jackie?” generated some heat in S1 when it was a mystery. I’m not sure how the show will handle a major character being alive in one timeline and dead in the other without that sense of mystery. Frankly I doubt they’ll do it well.
- Forget “where’s Crystal”, where’s LISA? She must have gotten with the program extremely quickly and / or never questioned by the cops because I have 0 confidence she would maintain the gang’s (several!) rickety fictions. Even if they hadn’t tried to murder her, which they clearly did, or had time to coach her, which they clearly did not.
- Further to that, given their bond I’d imagine Lisa would have serious misgivings in the first place about (presumably) making up a story in which Nat shot Lottie and succumbed to an OD. Casting an addict in recovery as an OD case when she was basically clean (though her addictions mostly receded behind the trauma until the show needed them) is a kind of second death.
- Not that I particularly expect accuracy from this show, but there’s basically no way a forensic medical examiner clocks Nat as a straight fentanyl OD.
- I would have had a better feeling had I any idea whatsoever about where the third season is going in present day. Trying to maintain the conspiracy’s lies is only going to get more tedious and contrived, but it’s the only focus for the modern plot line that seems evident here (and they don’t even make a particular point to imply how precarious this resolution is). There’s no escalation of any kind to bait us, the way Callie’s realization that Shauna killed Adam was.
There’s something about Showtime which lends its shows to plots that will not end — really, the only TV show ever to have *gained momentum* from breathlessly jumping from complication to complication, period, was BREAKING BAD, and I think that was down to Vince Gilligan being a battle-hardened network TV creative who knew exactly how to run an efficient, focused writer’s room. That sort of experience has pretty much vanished from Hollywood in the last 20 years.
- I love Walter and Jeff (whose “the gun is in a safe place” followed immediately by Callie giving away that it’s right there is the best beat of the episode) and if I think this show had any bead on its characters, I would be excited about Walter as a potential antagonist — associated as he is with a cat, I would expect him to be impossible to control and enthusiastic about cruel mischief — but they don’t have such a bead. This much is clear to me.
- Just generally, there was too much shit happening with not enough build-up and no room for it to breathe or reverberate. Everything feels weightless because plot has fully taken over the show, to the detriment of character and performance. The characters are no longer driving the narrative. The characters are making choices based on (and the actors being asked to sell) what the plot requires. When the acting is good, I feel sorry it has to be used in this way.
We have to face facts. DEXTER is happening again. HOMELAND is happening again. Showtime programming: it’s happening again. If you are not questioning why this show exists now, you will be soon enough (plus however long it takes before the writers get what they need and return to work).
I had assumed it was a 10 episode season, so I said to my wife late in the episode "wow, this feels like a season finale, where are they going next episode", and I was genuinely excited to see what twists could happen immediately after all this. But she told me it was the finale and I felt let down. This season felt like it abandoned character arcs for plot, and I was hoping a 10th episode would show the personal fallout of all of this whilst setting up the next big thing. In my mind, all of the modern day events just spiral out of control even further, with Walter's machinations not being as clever and pat as he seems to think they are (the evidence, should anyone bother to look at it, is going to tell a much different story then what everyone is trying to sell)
I keep wondering...Isn't Tai state senator now? Doesn't she have stuff to do? Wouldn't all the drama she's been partaking in be under much more public scrutiny? There's been no mention of her responsibilities. Isn't her wife in a coma? Who's looking after the kid? Everyone else is untethered enough to go hang out at a commune for days but, Tai can't just disappear without it being a bigger public issue, and now tied to a cult where a police corruption scandal, murder and overdose collide? Not a good look for a politician.
Nevermind the kid, what about Steve? Tai, you promised it would be different this time! He could be frolicking around with baby goats right now...
Oh no, I totally forgot about Steve, too!
I think Steve is best off as far away from Tai as possible
It's not like State Senator is a full time job in most places. Plus there's always recesses and such.
I liked and enjoyed the Coach Ben stuff. He knows that the girls essentially murdered a child to cannibalize him (Nat admits that to him). He has also been witness to bizarre and monstrous behavior by them and has good reason to believe this is only going to get worse.
For me, him trying to kill them all was twofold 1) He thinks killing them before they do worse things is doing everyone a kindness. 2) Self-preservation... he knows that he is very likely next on the menu and can't defend himself.
Overall I still continue to like the 1996 stuff but am completely over the 2021 timeline. The resolution to the Adam storyline was groan-worthy (why even have that as a storyline this season if you just wanna shove it aside at the end, literally no one at the end of season 1 was asking for it). In general the 2021 stuff doesn't really have verisimilitude for me, it all feels so convenient and make-believe that I don't really have much immersion in it.
I agree that the season was a disappointment and my expectations for this show going forward are now much more muted compared to what they were at the beginning of the season.
My one wish for the next season is that they split entire episodes by timeline so that there is not all this intercutting between the tense, serious and dramatic 1996 timeline and the completely goofy and trying to be funny 2021 timeline. All those cuts took so much out of the tension of the 1996 timeline for me (this episode for example they cut from Travis being pressured into eating his own brother by Van in 1996 to the goofy scene between Elijah Wood and Kevyn). I am not saying they can't have humor but humor has to fit in with the tone of the 1996 stuff (and there were some very good darkly funny moments in 1996 like "Tai, you ate her face"), intersplicing the harrowing stuff in 1996 with attempts at broad humor like what happens in 2021 is not it and doesn't do the 1996 timeline justice.
Maybe S3 will address this but I was surprised that Lisa disappeared as soon as Nat took Misty's needle for her. She heard them admit to committing several murders and then one of them tried to kill her, and then...nothing? I've really enjoyed her and Nat this season and liked Nat's sacrifice in that sense but it didn't solve anything in the way that Javi's death did. If the adult Yellowjackets wanted to walk away from this clean, Lisa still needed to die. If she didn't, how was that resolved? And if she did, I would've wanted to see them grapple with the decision to kill Lisa anyway after Nat died to save her.
This was bothering me too, and I'm worried that they'll pick this up next season but in an Adam Martin 2.0 way, i.e. dragging it out after audiences have moved on and want to focus on the rest of the story. The time to have grappled with it was now (or in an episode 10).
Part of the reason the final minutes don’t work for me is bc the show as a text did not appear to acknowledge any of the ways in which the various cover ups and schemes at which it arrived were paper thin; it seemed to earnestly present its present day resolutions as resolutions.
Am I as a viewer supposed to do my own work in projecting unease and precarity onto that ending? There are obviously levels to a show like this which invite interpretation and speculation. But here, the story feels like it has arrived at an end to its present-day plots, to the extent that we might expect next season to start, at least in the near term, at square one. That puts me in a position of not necessarily expecting a development within an ongoing narrative and being surprised with a different development or outcome — that’s the fun of mysteries and thrillers — but of expecting *anything at all* to happen and being surprised when nothing does.
The latter is what DEXTER constantly did, and for various reasons it’s on my mind. The real agony of that show was that it set up potentially interesting premises and conflicts, and then nearly without fail, viewers given to following and speculating on the plot of the show were revealed to have taken it more seriously and, honestly, paid more attention to it than the people making it had. Which is a singularly terrible feeling to have as a viewer! It punishes active, participatory investment in the story. And the way this season ended with the present day timeline… it really had those vibes.
Sarah DJ has come into her own this season and I hope they play more off of Lottie's cryptic comments about her. Legacy passed to children is one of my favorite horror as social commentary tropes.
Yeah I think I’m done with this show after that season. In addition to all of the character problems Ben outlined, which caused me to lose a lot of my investment in them, I also feel like the show has mostly astonishingly boring? It wasn’t even messy in a way that was fun or interesting to talk about, it was just consistently tedious (even in the 1996 storyline!) to the point that I basically had to force myself to sit down and power through the season’s back half.
I feel increasingly like it was a mistake to introduce new survivors to the adult storyline; it really should have just been only the main four and Travis who made it out of the woods. Neither adult Van or Lottie added much; especially Lottie, but sidelining Tai’s family this season in favor of having her reunite with Van felt like fanservice more than anything else. And now what’s left for the teen timeline, am I supposed to care when Mari or Akilah or Coach Ben inevitably die? Because I won’t!
Part of me wonders whether this is a CARNIVALE situation… LOST was largely pilloried for improvising its serial elements through to is end and the holes / messes that method made, but (though few remember it) CARNIVALE was a show meticulously plotted out, beat for beat, over seasons’ worth of TV. And while it had its merits in terms of acting and production design and general atmosphere, there can be no denying that it really fucking dragged through its core conflicts and plots (the two main characters didn’t even meet face to face in S1), in what felt like a direct result of its planned structure. Even through the second season, which seemed to realize and try to improve upon how slow the first was, it only ever tapped the gas. This show is doing the same thing.
I tried picking up Carnivale long after it was cancelled - it's got all that HBO sheen, but yeah I couldn't really even finish season 1. It's really interesting to read the wiki pages on what was going on and what the plan for the series was, really cool stuff, but man they needed to get audiences invested sooner.
I'm not sure how Yellowjackets compares because it's still a bit muddled in my head. I think the central contradiction in my mind is... yeah, it has been boring at times and feels like it's dragging through a predetermined (and spread out) story. And yet - things have been happening! They haven't held back on the cannibalism or escalating the wilderness story. It's feeling a bit like the worst of both worlds now in that they're hitting certain beats but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Maybe it's also the split timelines - I have quibbles with the wilderness story, but the present-day timeline *really* dragged.
I think the show’s load bearing beam is still the cold open of S1E1, which is imo the heart of what Ben (the reviewer) is getting at with mention of the show running out of things to look forward to.
That vision of the team going Full Cannibal Druid functions as a horizon for the ‘96 timeline, and it creates frisson as we wonder how what we see develops into that vision no matter how what we see relates to the near-term. If we didn’t have that promise, the listlessness of the ‘21 timeline would be as acutely felt in ‘96… and tbh, my feeling with this season is that the show is rapidly running out of its credit in that regard.
If we have truly crossed a threshold for the ‘96ers, then they sort of have to close the book on any further agonizing over what they’ve become and if they are losing themselves; the internal conflicts w/r/t cannibalism as a necessary practice and the embrace of ritual mysticism have been resolved. So much of the ‘96 timeline has been about the team losing their minds. What’s left to lose in that regard?
And if there is no obvious progression, what is the gulf between what they are now and what they end up being by (presumably) the following winter? Schisms in the church, so to speak? Quibbles over hunting Coach? What stakes are left? We only have a few redshirts left, it’s not like there’s a ton of drama over what’s going to happen to Aqilah. Are we returning to a more pure episode-to-episode narrative of surviving another day? They have a fuck ton of animal pelts in the cold open.
So they’re survivors of a plane crash, they landed in a place with (maybe) supernatural powers, and they just introduced an underground bunker-type location?
What are the odds that season 3 ends with Lottie telling Shauna that they have to go back to the woods?
I felt like we actually had this Lost-esque moment when Lottie suggested that one of them had to die (and be eaten?). It wasn't about literally going back, but it was about returning to that frame of mind. I think the line was "And just like before, the only way through it is to give ourselves to it".
There were, in isolation, things I liked about this episode. I thought 1996 basically all worked. I even appreciated Misty's little exposition speech to Lottie explaining how and why they decided to proceed with their little ritual last week (which bothered the hell out of me, with how seemingly abrupt and savage it was). Anything helps!
But killing Natalie is a *disaster*. It is an epic cock up two times over. First, just in terms of the "how," it unfolded like a complete farce. Literally farcical. People may as well been chasing each other through doors and coming out doors on the other side of the hall like a Scooby Doo episode. The utter, gross *convenience* of everything happening the way it did was laughable. And trying to inject that little emotional component of saving Lisa tying back to not saving Javi? Makes no sense whatsoever but regardless, I felt no emotion other than annoyance when she died.
Even worse - teenage Natalie has never been in a *more* interesting position. There's a lot of thumbs on the scale to arrive at her assuming the Antler Queen mantle but it largely works and Sophie Thatcher is, as ever, amazing. And setting up some weird resentment from teenage Shauna over it should be super interesting to watch! But having *no* tie-in to an adult Natalie? Particularly when adult Natalie had *zero* to do this season? Sucks.
I'm convinced they killed Natalie because they just didn't know what to do with her. And that's the worst reason possible.
One more note. The present-day hunt. The only way I can allow myself to read that scene was that everyone was just sort of going along with it, to humor Lottie. And that no one would *really* have let harm come to Shauna. Because the alternative is just too stupid to contemplate.
It sort of brings up a question frequently asked in first draft fiction workshops: why does this story start here, now? The ‘96 timeline has a very obvious answer to that question. The ‘21 timeline, on the other hand…
I say this because the show seems to want us to focus on how these people are making bad decisions because they are extremely maladapted. Which, obviously that’s a true statement about the characters. But the longer and more pronouncedly their bad judgment spins out, the more confusing the question of “why start here?” becomes. Because, even with a fictional world that maintains (after Twin Peaks) an often absurd and even deranged quality to its logic, it becomes harder to figure why they started making such insane messes of their lives just recently, and how they managed to arrive at their relatively stable (give or take a Nat) ‘21 starting points, if they truly always have been the people they are now.
Now that I think about it, it actually brings up a minor nitpick I had: Coach Ben tells Natalie that she’s different from the other girls (would have a different tenor, that statement, if he wasn’t gay) and that’s certainly true in that, per the ‘21 timeline, she’s the only person whose obvious mental health issues run roughshod over her ability to live, and I think this along with her abrasiveness is (was, sigh) coded as a result of her having both a stronger conscience and less capacity or willingness to compartmentalize than the others.
I guess the trouble is, she still went cannibal with the rest of the girls in the woods, and while certainly they had a confidence in S1, I don’t quite follow how Ben singled out Nat among the group as particularly good… It feels at least in part a contrivance to add effect to her ‘21 death (though I don’t think that dog will hunt).
Sophie Thatcher plays her part in those scenes well, though. Not sure I’ll miss J Lewis, but having identified Nat implicitly in one timeline and explicitly in the other as the heart of the group, it’s certainly a Choice to kill her in one of them. And assuming Lewis doesn’t come back for hallucinations, can Nat, presumably making big moves in the past, haunt the present the way she ought to?
A lot of good stuff - I would just say, I think it's absolutely clear they have no real idea what story they want to tell in the present and never did. I'm now convinced it's all just filler until - as people have half-joked - they pull a "We have to go back!"
I guess they could always have Thatcher do the haunting? Idk. But I agree with literally every sentence you’ve written here, even though I’m late to the party
Everyone's kind of said everything, so just adding a few stray points:
1) Sad that we're losing Juliette Lewis. IMO the show's casting of the young/older versions of the characters has been great, but Natalie's has been most interesting to me because they've also had to bridge how visually different they've decided to make young vs older Nat. I've really enjoyed the little touches of similarities (like how they speak), and the way that visual gap lets you infer what's happened in the time since. And other little details like Young Nat's dark hair slowing growing out (and presumably eventually crowding out her blonde).
2) Poor Kevyn, he deserved better. And surely there's a richer story to mine with Kevyn slowly getting drawn into the Yellowjackets' histories, than just having his story end here (or worse, having Saracusa take over that role).
3) Going into s2 I assume lots of viewers thought we'd see Lottie running some cult conspiracy group that tied in more explicitly with the mysterious symbol and worship of the supposed supernatural. I get this might have been a bit predictable and not the most interesting choice the show could make. But looking at what we got, this might have been more satisfying. I respect the throughline the show was (I think?) trying to do with Adult Lottie: she's a bit woo-woo, but self-aware of her mental health problems, and increasingly worried that they *aren't* mental health problems but a real supernatural influence instead. The problem is that a Big Bad Lottie would've likely functioned as a much better convergence point for the other survivors, whereas Self Aware But Ultimately Tragic Lottie ... was not.
Definitely agree RE: trying to cram everything into the final two episodes. It really felt like the series had a strong start, but then spent the entire middle of the season treading water before everything could be wrapped up in the last episode. The fact that we spent so much time this season faffing around with the Adam Martin subplot is just infuriating, especially considering what was cut (the background to the sacrifice ritual) and how it was resolved. It's not exactly a fresh take to say that the present day storyline is miles behind the past storyline, but that's just become more glaring this season. It feels like they had the idea of "we'll tell the story of plane crash survivors while also following the characters in the modern day" (which, to be clear, is a great premise) but have struggled to find a way to put those modern day characters in situations which are consistently engaging.
I think the Javi plot line actually frustrates me more in a way though. Why have Javi be missing, have him reappear, and then die again? I can see the logic of giving him more screen time so his death hits harder, but that kind of falls apart when post-reappearance he doesn't really do anything but be out of focus in the background. It seems like such an easy fix - have him be missing in the first few episode, the girls find him, but he dies before they can get him back to the cabin. You can even have him die in the same way, with the girls letting him die because they realise they can eat him. If that was in halfway through the season we'd have more time to develop Travis' grief, more time to see Ben's paranoia grow, and it would provide a much needed second step in the development of the cannibalism - right now they've gone straight from eating their friend who was already dead to going out of their way to murder someone in cold blood (even if that plan didn't work out). But because all the stories *have* to be resolved in the finale, we need Javi to stand around in the background for several episodes just so we know he's still there, and then the teenage girls seemingly lose all their reservations about murder offscreen.
Worst thing is, there are parts of this finale that I actually really, really liked. Shauna's cutting up of Javi had a really uncomfortable mix of sadness of horror which the subject matter demands, and I liked how they really took their time with it. Likewise everything with Travis was *great* (even if that Zombie needle drop probably detracted from the emotion more than adding to it). I also actually disagree with Ben in that I liked the burning of the cabin. We've been seeing Coach Ben losing touch with reality all season, along with his increasing horror and resentment towards the girls, so burning the cabin seems like something he would do in his state (even if it maybe could've been built up better). There are other things like that which mean I am still able excited going forwards because the writers clearly still know what they're doing, but man I hope they can sort out their pacing moving forward.
Also did anybody else totally see Nat's death coming? Juliette Lewis has felt pretty checked out to me this season, and the behind the scenes material makes it pretty clear she hasn't particularly enjoyed being on the show (I haven't seen her doing any promo for S2) so I sort of thought she'd be written out. It's a shame because she was fantastic in S1 and she ended up with an almost comically contrived death, but I guess thats what happens sometimes.
Call me crazy, but as someone who has broadly disliked this season for the reasons everyone has covered, I kind of loved this episode?
It rushes things for sure, but character beats like Lottie explaining she can’t lead the group and passing the mantle to Natalie worked really well. Natalie’s death worked emotionally for me, I loved the flash montage of her guilt leading to her take the figurative bullet for whatever her cultist friend’s name is (like I said, didn’t love most of the season.)
The death plane hit great, gave me major Leftovers vibes. And “it’s not evil, it’s just hungry” is completely my shit. To be fair, I’m a huge fan of weird fiction and cosmic horror, so that angle on an uncaring deity feeding on humanity is always gonna work for me. Almost as much as the original Yellowjackets pitch if “Lord of the Flies but with girls and there’s also a greatest hits collection of cool actresses” did in the first place hahaha
Oh and I liked Ben burning the cabin down! It sets up a great new status quo for season 3, and it felt organic to me. He’s undoubtably influenced by the wilderness too (or just delirious from starvation) and saw these girls turning into monsters.
Idk, I thought I was done with this show circa ep 7 but I’m back in!
I wanted to mention that in addition to Van's likely cancer disappearance next season, Tai's alter ego will possibly go dormant again as well, allowing her to get her life back. That would create two in the remaining group who have reason to believe the ritual is still necessary and useful even now. You could even toss Shauna and Misty into the mix, as their legal entanglements are apparently over.
Basically everyone's (Lottie excluded) lives will have improved post ritual, and it's only a matter of time before they all admit that to each other.
Wow there was so much going on in this finale, it really made me miss the fluidity and cohesiveness of season 1. Felt like too many plates spinning (are we supposed to sympathize with Lottie or not? The Mexican standoff in the woods was a lot) and definitely agree that there needed to be more of a runway for the plot line of the adults reverting back to their feral ways, in addition to Ben making the decision to murder. It’s *almost* giving Game of Thrones series finale, with the character turns that seemingly come out of nowhere and major events lacking the necessary emotional weight.
“It’s just disappointing, both because Juliette Lewis has brought so much to the show and because it punishes a character who actually put in the work and improved as a person.”
This, x 100. If Juliette has movies or other work to do, good for her, but she was so great on the show and I’ll miss adult Nat. :(
Am I the only one who thought Ben burned down the cottage not necessarily to kill the girls but so that someone somewhere would see the smoke and come for help? That aerial shot of the fumes rising in the air seemed pretty significant.
To me it wasn’t a nod to the Terror, necessarily, but it was going for the same effect as what that show would do at points when it zoomed out from the frozen-in ships: These people are really and truly alone, in the middle of nowhere.
I want to believe
It is with a heavy, juicy heart that I announce YELLOWJACKETS has been diagnosed with a progressive case of Showtime’s Disease. The onset of delirium has already begun, but we’ve yet to reach the “unnatural longevity” stage just yet.
- Part of my dissatisfaction is the fulfillment kind of meta expectation which makes the unexpected (but not all that dramatic?) death of Nat sort of obvious — J Lewis was vocally irate about her character in season one, and is generally ornery as a person. So if any particular actor was going to be written out, it would be her. It feels like an even greater waste of character than Javi to me; Nat was isolated this season, literally, with most of her conflict internal in a way that works on paper but didn’t give her much to do onscreen. Which only further sapped the death scene of drama or even portent.
- Further to that, the question of “Where’s present day Jackie?” generated some heat in S1 when it was a mystery. I’m not sure how the show will handle a major character being alive in one timeline and dead in the other without that sense of mystery. Frankly I doubt they’ll do it well.
- Forget “where’s Crystal”, where’s LISA? She must have gotten with the program extremely quickly and / or never questioned by the cops because I have 0 confidence she would maintain the gang’s (several!) rickety fictions. Even if they hadn’t tried to murder her, which they clearly did, or had time to coach her, which they clearly did not.
- Further to that, given their bond I’d imagine Lisa would have serious misgivings in the first place about (presumably) making up a story in which Nat shot Lottie and succumbed to an OD. Casting an addict in recovery as an OD case when she was basically clean (though her addictions mostly receded behind the trauma until the show needed them) is a kind of second death.
- Not that I particularly expect accuracy from this show, but there’s basically no way a forensic medical examiner clocks Nat as a straight fentanyl OD.
- I would have had a better feeling had I any idea whatsoever about where the third season is going in present day. Trying to maintain the conspiracy’s lies is only going to get more tedious and contrived, but it’s the only focus for the modern plot line that seems evident here (and they don’t even make a particular point to imply how precarious this resolution is). There’s no escalation of any kind to bait us, the way Callie’s realization that Shauna killed Adam was.
There’s something about Showtime which lends its shows to plots that will not end — really, the only TV show ever to have *gained momentum* from breathlessly jumping from complication to complication, period, was BREAKING BAD, and I think that was down to Vince Gilligan being a battle-hardened network TV creative who knew exactly how to run an efficient, focused writer’s room. That sort of experience has pretty much vanished from Hollywood in the last 20 years.
- I love Walter and Jeff (whose “the gun is in a safe place” followed immediately by Callie giving away that it’s right there is the best beat of the episode) and if I think this show had any bead on its characters, I would be excited about Walter as a potential antagonist — associated as he is with a cat, I would expect him to be impossible to control and enthusiastic about cruel mischief — but they don’t have such a bead. This much is clear to me.
- Just generally, there was too much shit happening with not enough build-up and no room for it to breathe or reverberate. Everything feels weightless because plot has fully taken over the show, to the detriment of character and performance. The characters are no longer driving the narrative. The characters are making choices based on (and the actors being asked to sell) what the plot requires. When the acting is good, I feel sorry it has to be used in this way.
We have to face facts. DEXTER is happening again. HOMELAND is happening again. Showtime programming: it’s happening again. If you are not questioning why this show exists now, you will be soon enough (plus however long it takes before the writers get what they need and return to work).