Welcome back to the wilderness, darlings.
“Yellowjackets” is back and we’re — wait, what is this? Are we having fun? Can that be possible in a show that ended its last season with multiple devastating deaths? With an adolescent’s heart being eaten? If Season 2 got bogged down in the dour, Season 3 is promising to bring some levity back into the proceedings — despite, you know, the cannibalism.
Based on this first episode back, “Yellowjackets” seems to be trying to recapture the juicy magic of its breakout first season, which sucked us in with its tale of bloodthirsty would-be high school soccer stars. Right off the bat, this premiere is a little goofier, a little cattier and a little less self-serious.
The very first images we see onscreen hint toward the reset. We get a mirror image of the opening scene from the pilot — one of the reasons we got hooked on this show. A dark-haired girl is being chased through the woods.
But now it’s immediately clear who is running and who is pursuing. Teen Mari (Alexa Barajas), the team’s resident mean girl, is trying to escape Teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), who tackles her and bites her hand. This, however, is no creepy ritual. Rather, it’s a game of the poorly named “capture the bone,” a cannibal’s riff on “capture the flag.” Mari is a decoy, leading her team to victory. At the end of the chase, no one dies, and everyone cheers.
The vibes in the forest are actually pretty good. This is shocking considering Season 2 ended with the girls’ being stranded without shelter because their cabin burned down. But now the snow has cleared, and the Yellowjackets have built new living spaces, artful looking huts. They have a garden with ducks and rabbits. Food is plentiful. Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), previously crowned the queen of their toxic group, rules benevolently. They talk of how their sacrifices led to miracles.
For the most part everyone is pretty happy. Everyone except for Shauna, that is. Shauna is furious that her teammates are not wracked with guilt over their misdeeds. Her anger is understandable, of course. She is probably struggling with depression after having given birth to a son and lost him, and she isn’t into the kumbaya spirit that seems to be taking over. She is especially mad at Mari, who taunts her.
Shauna’s misery in the past makes for a curious parallel with the nonchalance of Grown-up Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) in the present day. That version of Shauna also has a lot to worry about — she watched Adult Natalie (Juliette Lewis) die in front of her; her other friends chased her with knives; and her daughter, Callie (Sarah Desjardins), knows her mom is a murder. But instead of stewing, she’s just trying to avoid reality.
She takes daytime shots with Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose) after Natalie’s extremely minimal memorial service, then she goes through Callie’s room to steal her pot. This means that when she gets a call from the high school principal to say that Callie dumped animal guts on some rival teens, Shauna’s reaction is mostly to giggle. In fact, when Callie shows her the video of what happened, Shauna is delighted.
The distance between the elder and younger Shauna lend an intriguing tension between the two timelines. How did this embittered, pained Shauna transform into the Shauna who can laugh at the darkness? How did she regain her (albeit somewhat disturbed) joy? Or is it just compartmentalization?
These are some of the human mysteries we’ll be dealing with this season. The episode also spends a lot of time setting up the more supernatural ones.
A major frustration with “Yellowjackets” so far has been its coyness with its spooky secrets. Sure, the second season didn’t hold back answering the question of: Did they eat people? (Uh, yeah, they really did.) But it didn’t lead us any closer to learning whether there is something other than base human instinct driving these gals (and a few men) among the trees.
We are inching closer to that now, though. All sorts of suspicious behavior abounds in the present. At the bar after Natalie’s service, there appears to be someone watching the ladies. Later, Callie finds an envelope at her front door addressed to her mom. Inside? A strange tape. Meanwhile, just before making out with Van after they dine and dash, Tai sees her old friend, the man with no eyes.
What’s he doing there? And is he related to the fact that the waiter who chases after them seemingly dies?
In the 1990s thread, the hints are even more explicit. Travis takes mushrooms and hears the trees screaming. And, sure, that’s something a high person might think — maybe while listening to the band Screaming Trees in the ’90s. But then later, everyone else hears the sound. It comes while they are doing a ceremony memorializing their dead.
Perhaps the trees are wailing because they know that the Yellowjackets’ sorrowful actions are just a way for them to live with the terrible crimes they have committed. Or perhaps we’re finally going to meet whoever or whatever has been causing all this havoc.
We do know there is at least one person out in the wild: Coach Ben, who is presumed dead by most of his fellow plane crash survivors. (I’m pretty sure Natalie knows he is alive but is throwing everyone else off the scent.) He has been prowling the land and setting up animal traps, a task that leads him to stumble across a mysterious pit. Buried there is a veritable treasure trove of supplies in green cases that look militaristic and contain the label “K.U.H.” Now Ben has a lucky supply of protein bars, and we have a new puzzle to unpack: What’s all this stuff doing out there?
I doubt we’ll know any time soon, but at least in the meantime Ben has some company. Mari, having become fed up with Shauna, takes a stroll and falls into Ben’s new discovery. It’s another image that evokes the pilot. At the very beginning of this saga, that unknown girl, who looks an awful lot like Mari from behind, meets her end falling into a pit not unlike the one Ben found.
It’s a nice parallel that serves to say: “Yellowjackets” is back in business, baby.
More to chew on
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The return of “Yellowjackets” means the return of the “Yellowjackets” soundtrack. Hello, Bush’s “Glycerine.”
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The posters in both Callie and Misty’s bedrooms are on point. Callie has some Lana Del Rey. Misty has “Phantom of the Opera” and “La Cage Aux Folles,” a nod to her love of musicals.
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Love that Jeff still calls weed “chronic.”
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Present day Misty’s story line is currently existing on its own wavelength as she grieves Natalie — whom she was responsible for killing. It’s more fun when she is in the thick of the action, so I’m eager to see how that happens.
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Walter: Still creepy.
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