Yellowjackets (TV Program)

A familiar face comes back into the picture, but it’s a face with a different name. And questionable motives.Season 3, Episode 8: ‘A Normal, Boring Life’This week, we tackle what the question of a “normal” life looks like for a Yellowjacket. Meet Adult Melissa, otherwise known as Kelly, played by Hilary Swank.Adult Melissa thinks she has it pretty good. How did she achieve this? First, she faked her own death and changed her name. Then she married Hannah’s daughter, whom she ended up falling in love with despite initially semi-stalking her to make sure she was safe. Now, they have a kid, go to church and live in a house with a cheesy sign that says, “The Kitchen Is the Heart of the Family.” She still likes to wear backward baseball caps.Melissa-slash-Kelly believes that she is pretty well-adjusted despite it all, and compared to Shauna, who broke into her home to kill her wife, she certainly seems to be. In order to move forward, Melissa erased the past, started completely fresh. And when the past came back to haunt her, she decided to exorcise it again. That’s why she sent the tape to Shauna after she learned about Adult Natalie’s death. It wasn’t, she says, a threat. It was a way to absolve herself, to keep the guilt at bay.Shauna doesn’t necessarily believe that, and I’m not sure I do either. Melissa is almost a little too at ease with her transformation. But sitting across the table from each other, these former lovers seem like polar opposites. Shauna is jittery and paranoid, constantly thinking someone is out to get her; Melissa is calm, just wanting to maintain the peaceful existence she fought hard to create for herself.Their dynamic in the present day is mirrored by the fracture we see in the ’90s story line this episode. With the arrival of Hannah and Kodiak, some of the Yellowjackets are thrilled to be heading home, dreaming of the “normal” lives they’ll have when they get back to civilization. Meanwhile, another camp is, perhaps rightly, unsure that normalcy will ever be an option.All of this is brought into stark relief during a sequence set to Supergrass’s “Alright,” which has the jaunty lyrics “We are young, we run green, keep our teeth nice and clean.” (You might know it best from the “Clueless” soundtrack.) As the song plays, we see how some of the girls fantasize about the creature comforts they’ve been missing. Mari’s water bottle turns into a Slurpee. Misty imagines sitting on a toilet and using real toilet paper. Van falls into a fluffy bed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Our new arrivals smell something sizzling in the woods. Here comes a meal with all the fixin’s.Season 3, Episode 7: ‘Croak’R.I.P. Edwin. We hardly knew you.The timid herpetologist (Nelson Franklin) who finds the Yellowjackets dancing by the fire in their cannibalistic ritual meets a quick end this week.Almost immediately after his cheery greeting — followed by his revulsion upon discovering Ben’s decapitated noggin — Lottie creeps up behind him and whacks him in the back of the head with a hatchet. That’s what the Wilderness wants, she declares. All the other Yellowjackets are rightfully upset. Finally, they have contact with the outside world, and she immediately goes and murders someone? What gives?But Edwin wasn’t the only visitor to the Yellowjackets camp. He arrived with two other souls who end up in the Yellowjackets’ custody: His girlfriend and fellow scientist, Hannah (Ashley Sutton), and their guide, the mysterious loner Kodiak (Joel McHale, even more sardonic and surly than usual). If the end of Episode 6 was a thrilling tease, Episode 7 is the confirmation that “Yellowjackets” is moving its plot forward both in the past and the present.All of that revolves around the arrival of these new figures, whom we’re introduced to in a prologue of sorts that begins three days before they meet our deranged soccer team. Edwin and Hannah are deep in the woods studying the mating habits of “Arctic banshee frogs.” The hilariously-named Kodiak is their guide.Hannah is intrigued and somewhat aroused by Kodiak. Edwin is deeply suspicious of him. One night, after smelling what he thinks is “barbecue,” Edwin goes wandering off looking for other souls in this forest. He finds the Yellowjackets.He instantly dies thanks to Lottie. Kodiak shoots Melissa with one of his arrows and he and Hannah start running, pursued by our girls and Travis with torches. Their hunt for Kodiak and Hannah has a double purpose. On one hand, they can’t leave any witnesses behind; on the other, they need people to get back to civilization.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Coach Ben goes on a hunger strike. Young Natalie goes rogue.Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Thanksgiving (Canada)’Let’s just start with this week’s big shocker: The girls and Travis are not alone in the woods. I’m not talking about there being spirits out there with them, though there very well may be spooky stuff hiding in the trees. I’m talking about real human people, wearing outdoorsy gear.The man (Nelson Franklin) holds up his hand and says, “Hello.” The Yellowjackets’ faces are a mixture of joy and horror. Finally, there is some sign of civilization. But also, oh God, civilization arrived at the worst possible moment.After all, the gang has just carved up Ben and eaten him while doing some ritualistic yelling. They can’t really hide that because their new friend sees the head and jumps back, terrified and cursing.It’s an exciting conclusion to a jam-packed episode. Midway through, I feared it might hang on another frustrating tease involving the mysterious tape that was left on Adult Shauna’s doorstep and found by her daughter, Callie.For the Adult Yellowjackets, the main story line follows Shauna, who has (finally!) determined that her family is at risk. The cherry that tops her suspicions is Callie’s revelation that she was keeping this retro-looking audio file a secret. So the Sadeckis move out of their house into a motel, and Shauna recruits Van, with her love of old-fashioned technology, to help her listen to the tape.Although we see Shauna, Tai and Van all pressing play, we don’t hear the full extent of what is contained on that audio file. Instead, there’s just a lot of screaming and more unanswered questions. At least Callie is as annoyed as I am at how withholding her mom is, planting her iPhone in Shauna’s bag to record whatever was on the tape.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The teens make a tough decision about Coach Ben. The adults say goodbye the only way they know how.Season 3, Episode 5: ‘Did Tai Do That?’The title of this week’s episode of “Yellowjackets” is a bit goofy, particularly for an installment in which the girls decide to kill Ben by firing squad.The episode is called “Did Tai Do That?” — which you have to say in the voice of Steve Urkel, from the ’90s sitcom “Family Matters,” for it to make sense. The title is a homage to a reference that Teen Van makes to Teen Tai in the woods. After drawing the King of Hearts from a deck of cards, Tai has been tasked with firing the gun that will kill their coach. Despite believing he is guilty, she is, of course, struggling with this.Van suggests bringing out the sleepwalking version of Tai, who is haunted by the man with no eyes. The idea is that if Tai became possessed by this mysterious other, she could kill Coach Ben without feeling bad about it. Van compares it to when the dorky Steve Urkel transformed into his suave alter ego, Stefan Urquelle.The contrast between the darkness of the circumstances and the silliness of the analogy is jarring, but so is the entire episode, which jolts back and forth between horror in the ’90s and quirky caper in the 2020s. It also reflects the Yellowjackets’ changing attitudes toward death. As teens they still seek ways to manage the deep pain they feel over any decision to take a person’s life. As adults they have become numb.In the present, they barely seem to have any sorrow over Lottie’s death. They react to the news with a shrug. Her demise is just another mystery for them to solve. In the past, they are agonizing over their decision to murder Ben. Over the years, they have grown so accustomed to — and traumatized by — having people they know perish that death has just become a game for them.That’s at least how both Misty and Shauna seem to treat the news of Lottie’s deadly fall. Misty goes immediately into citizen detective mode, visiting Lottie’s body at the morgue and then gathering her former teammates together to announce that she is launching an investigation. Shauna, still reeling from her own near-death freezer experience, points the finger at Misty, who, in turn, is so offended that she tries to storm out of her own house.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The girls (and Travis) put Coach Ben on trial. The stakes are very high, the legal qualifications very low.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis’What does justice look like to the Yellowjackets? It’s not pretty, it’s not logical, it’s often deeply unfair, and it’s all on display in this week’s episode.The centerpiece is a trial in the woods in the 1990s. The girls, having now found Ben, elect to decide his fate by mimicking an episode “Law & Order.” They choose lawyers — Tai is the prosecutor and Misty is the defense — and fashion a makeshift courtroom.It’s unclear what they plan to do with Ben if they find him guilty, but death is surely on the table. And yet, they also seem like kids playing dress up — which they are. As is familiar for “Yellowjackets,” childlike behavior and real stakes make for a potent concoction.We watch as the Yellowjackets’ warped sense of justice extends into the present day. There are two threads that emphasize that. First, there is Jeff and Shauna. Jeff is worried about his and Shauna’s massively bad karma, so he signs them up to volunteer at the senior home where Misty works. That becomes too emotionally intense for Shauna after she winds up locked inside a walk-in freezer, so she decides to replace a local cat that has been missing for years by just adopting a different cat. Sure, that will work.And then there’s Tai and Van, who find themselves wondering whether they should be the arbiters of life and death. They drop a Queen of Hearts from a deck of playing cards on the ground to see if it “chooses” anyone. When a man picks it up, they follow him back to his apartment and Tai nearly makes moves to kill him, thinking that taking his life will give the cancer ridden Van more time.Van stops Tai from going that far, but the mere fact that the possibility was on the table is evidence of how much all this Wilderness woo-woo has affected their minds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The Wilderness is becoming very vocal lately. And awfully demanding, too.Season 3, Episode 3: ‘Them’s the Brakes’In the third episode of this season of “Yellowjackets,” the Wilderness is playing mind games, but so are the girls. Which is worse? The fever dreams involving talking llamas and dangerous slap bracelets? Or the back-stabbing that comes with psychological manipulation? Honestly, it’s a toss up.This week’s episode highlights what has always been the strong suit of “Yellowjackets” — the ways in which being a teenage girl, or an emotionally stunted grown woman, dovetail with fantastical horror. The fights based on interpersonal drama can feel just as operatic as any hallucinogenic nightmare brought on by a mysterious woodland entity.Mari, perhaps the nastiest of the current Teen Yellowjackets, sums it up well when she is trapped in the cave with Ben. In Mari’s attempt to escape, they both were sprayed with mace, leaving them equally in pain and defeated. Ben starts lamenting his current situation, explaining how he only started being a high school substitute after tearing his ACL. He’s just a “normal guy” who goes to Dave Matthews Band concerts even though he doesn’t like them very much, he moans. The Wilderness wails.Mari responds with a story about when, as a 12-year-old, she watched her younger cousin die of cancer. It’s an oddly earnest tale from the usually sarcastic Mari. But she has a point. “I think maybe there are two versions of reality,” she says. “Most of the time the other one, the bad one, is just hiding or waiting, but it’s all real.” For Mari, it’s all one in the same: the supernatural horror they are facing and the cruelty of one another. Perhaps that’s why she herself is so cruel.Still, after what seems to be a shared moment of tenderness, she convinces Ben to let her go, promising to keep his secret. But Mari can’t discard her cynicism. As soon as she gets back to camp, her story falls apart. The other girls catch her in a lie, and she immediately spills Ben’s whereabouts.She invites her bad reality back to Ben. Shauna, furious, leads a witch hunt into the woods to find him with Mari as guide. They may as well be carrying torches and pitchforks. They do eventually find Ben, but they also encounter another terror.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

An unexpected visitor shows up on Adult Shauna’s doorstep, prompting Callie to get ideas. Young Shauna makes a new friend.Season 3, Episode 2: ‘Dislocation’I’ll admit: I had to Google the name of the blonde Yellowjacket (Jenna Burgess) who starts making out with Shauna in this week’s jaw-dropping “Yellowjackets” conclusion. It’s Melissa.Up until this point, Melissa has been one of those Yellowjackets whose presence seemed sort of pointless. She was almost a glorified extra, there just to fill out the scenes in the woods. (She also didn’t show up till Season 2, which we apparently weren’t supposed to notice — and mostly didn’t.)Even the show acknowledged her lack of character development in the premiere this season. After Melissa cracks a mean joke about Mari to Shauna, Shauna says, “Wait, do you, like, actually have a personality?”That’s just what we were all thinking.But Episode 2 confirms that Melissa not only has a personality but is also set to become a major part of the woodland (and likely the present-day) narrative. The final moments set it all up with a sequence in which both timelines collide.In the woods, Melissa follows Shauna with the aim of complimenting her on her resilience. Shauna’s reasonable response? To draw a knife on her. But instead of balking at that threat, Melissa goes in for a kiss. Shauna, shockingly, responds by kissing her back.This is all intercut with a scene of the present day Shauna on a phone call to the manager of the restaurant where she accompanied Jeff to a disastrous work dinner. During that evening, Shauna retreated to the bathroom where, in truly “Yellowjackets” form, something freaky happens. Someone entered, turned off the lights and left a phone in an adjoining stall. The background on the device features a picture of some very familiar looking mountains. And the when the phone rings from an unknown number, it plays the song “Queen of Hearts” by Juice Newton.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The teen Yellowjackets seem to be having fun when we first rejoin them. Taking bets now for which one gets eaten first.Season 3, Episode 1: ‘It Girl’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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More