Once again, I have deeply mixed feelings about Yellowjackets. The show was so great in Season 1 and such a trainwreck in Season 2, it gave me and many other viewers whiplash. Had completely new writers come onboard? Was only the first season really plotted out in any meaningful way? And now, in Season 3, so many of the second season’s problems persist.
I was a little heartened by last week’s episode, but Episode 4 fell back into old, bad habits while simultaneously jumping the proverbial shark. Spoilers ahead.
Before we get to the specifics of this episode, I think it’s worth pointing out all the many ways this show has dropped the ball, specifically in all the many storylines it’s seemingly dropped or that its writers have forgotten about. Adult Tai’s storyline in Season 1 was one of the most compelling parts of the show, but in Season 2 she abandons her wife, her son and her career to go find Van and then . . . go hang out at Lottie’s cozy cult. We could have had a really interesting story where Tai won the state senate race and then Other Tai started asserting herself in much bigger, more nefarious ways. Instead, we now have Tai and Van following a guy who I guess Tai wants to kill so that his death will help heal Van’s cancer. The whole split between Tai and Other Tai is an afterthought at this point, much like her wife and child. It’s all very weird.
Javi had a friend when he disappeared for weeks. What happened to that friend? Was it just his imagination? Was it someone in the cave? Was Ben talking to this person or to himself when Mari was his prisoner?
Meanwhile, the whole Lottie plot has gone from bad to worse. At the end of Season 1, we were all prepared for some crazy Lottie stuff. Surely, she was behind Travis’s death and all sorts of bad, Wilderness-cult shenanigans. But then it turned out that Travis’s death was just an accident, and Lottie’s cult was pretty nice. And now, to top it all off, they’ve gone and killed Lottie off in the most bizarre and underwhelming way imaginable. Sure, it’s shocking that she’s dead, but not in a good way. I didn’t even like Adult Lottie simply because she seems nothing whatsoever like Teen Lottie, but I still think this is yet another really absurd way to kill off a character, and Adult Nat’s death last season (and her appalling funeral this season) was bad enough.
Then there is Ben’s trial, in which the girls act out what they imagine an actual trial might be like, mostly based off of what they’ve seen on TV. There’s some good moments during this trial, but for reasons I can only attribute to laziness on the part of the writers, Misty (the defense lawyer) never mentions that Ben just saved three of the Yellowjackets in the cave, despite the fact that they were hunting him! He valiantly saved Shauna, Akilah and Van from poisonous gas with just one leg and nobody even brings it up during his trial! Seriously?
I’m not sure how to feel about the trial’s outcome, either. The whole “It needs to be a two-thirds majority” was silly. First off, that would make sense for conviction, but it doesn’t make sense for innocence. In a real trial, you need a unanimous vote to determine guilt. But in this wilderness setting, it really ought to be majority rule since they have no options for a hung jury or a retrial or any of that stuff. The whole “vote over and over and over again” bit was silly. Eventually, Shauna basically pressures everyone into voting her way, though I think most of the changed votes only happened when Lottie changed hers, and I think Lottie only changed hers because she sensed the Wilderness wanted her to, not Shauna.
Shauna, by the way, has become far and away the least likable character there is, just an awful human being especially in the teen storyline, but not much better in the adult storyline. I used to sympathize with her, but now she’s just vile and selfish and cruel. Coach Ben just saved her life but she wants blood and she doesn’t care. I guess this is how she’s coping with the loss of her child, but whatever sympathy I had for her over that ordeal has long since dried up.
The adult storyline continues to be a mess. I find it so weird how much of it is now played for laughs. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jeff but I don’t really understand why comic relief (either in the form of Jeff or sometimes Walter or often Misty) has become something like 50% of the modern storyline. The whole nursing home bit was just goofy, and I think it’s goofy from a plot perspective that whoever is stalking Shauna was able to find her in the kitchen and sneakily shut the walk-in freezer door to trap her inside. First of all, you can open those from the inside! And clearly it wasn’t jammed from the outside, since Randy was able to open it without issue.
Whoever did this and left the phone in the bathroom for Shauna and probably sabotaged her brakes, is almost certainly the same person who killed Lottie, but having a brand new stalker plotline feels kind of weird since this wasn’t a thing in Season 1 or 2, and we already had the blackmail plotline in Season 1.
Of course, this is where it all starts to feel like most of these stories were tacked on after the first season because they’ve written themselves into a corner and don’t know what to do. This all started with peculiar decisions like bringing Adult Van into the picture. Why wasn’t she at the class reunion in Season 1? Why didn’t anyone think to ask her if she’d gotten one of the blackmail notes? If they knew she was alive and just hanging out doing her thing in Season 1, why not loop her in then? Lottie I understand since they all thought she was locked up in a mental institution, but Van? And what other adult versions are still out there that everyone just conveniently forgot about?
I was about to type “Hopefully we get some answers soon” but I’m honestly not sure that any answers to any of these questions will really be satisfying at this point, simply because so many threads have been dropped, so many others make no sense, and the entire tone and tenor of the show has changed so radically from Season 1 that it just doesn’t feel like the same terrifying series we fell in love with in the first place. It’s all such a huge shame.
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