Yellowjacketskicked off its second season with a stellar first episode, and it’s only upward from there as Episode 2 goes to surprising new heights. It’s jam-packed with wall-to-wall drama and intrigue, and further proves that Season 2 is not here to mess around. Everyone is up to something, and the story only grows deliciously darker. We get to see much more of Lottie’s “intentional community,” as she puts it, and, through a powerful sequence with Natalie (Juliette Lewis), learn answers to one of Season 1’s biggest mysteries. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) has to put her Misty-led (Christina Ricci) interrogation training to use, Taissa’s (Tawny Cypress) sleepwalking takes an eerie turn, and the team finally gets to fill their stomachs — but with what?
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A Whole Lot of Confrontation
One of the biggest questions Season 1 tackled was what exactly happened to Travis (Andres Soto)? Did he really commit suicide or was he murdered? We finally get an answer in this episode, but it’s not as cut and dry as one may expect. During a sharing session at Lottie’s (Simone Kessell) “intentional community,” she reveals the events of the night Travis died. She tells Natalie that Travis called her that night and told her he needed to get as close as possible to death to find the truth, because when both Lottie (Courtney Eaton) and Van (Liv Hewson) almost died they saw visions.
When Lottie showed up, she found Travis had made the symbol out of candles and told her he was going to hang himself until he passed out just so he could talk to whatever it is that’s been haunting him. She reluctantly agreed to help him and said that as soon as he fell unconscious she would lower him back down. But as fate would have it the button stuck, and she couldn’t get him down. The candles started going haywire, and Lottie started seeing visions, specifically hauntingly scary versions of Laura Lee (Jane Widdop). When she finally managed to snap out of them and turned back around, Travis was dangling higher off the ground, and she wasn’t able to save him. Natalie becomes incredibly angry with her and insists that she is going to stop her, meaning we’ll likely see much more Natalie and Lottie showdowns in future episodes.
Misty is still on the hunt for Natalie but no one is answering her phone calls, meaning she’s still going it alone. Or is she? While at work she finds a note in the fridge with her name on it, only, it’s blank, and she has no idea who it’s from. But this is Misty we’re talking about and while she may be a little on the wacky side, she is quite smart and realizes that the note is written to only be seen under blacklight. It’s from none other than the Redditor she’s been downvoting over the Adam Martin (Peter Gadiot) theories. It seems like she may finally find a partner in (solving?) crime, and whoever this mystery person is is bound to lead viewers and Misty on quite the ride.
As for Shauna, she’s visited by Kevyn Tan (Alex Wyndham), who asks her if she knew Adam Martin. She stumbles a bit over her answers before being saved by Callie (Sarah Desjardins) nagging her about false plans they had made, which thankfully gets Kevyn out of their hair for the time being. However, tensions are still high between the mother and daughter, especially since Callie found the one piece of Adam’s driver’s license that didn’t burn at the end of the previous episode. It’s seemingly taken quite a toll on her, as she’s vaping excessively and even breaks up with her boyfriend. But the true rebellion comes later on when she strolls up to an older man at the bar and begins flirting with him. They chat all about their family problems and Callie even reveals her mother was having an affair. It’s then revealed later on that the man she was talking to is an undercover police officer working with Kevyn on Adam’s case. After all the information Callie so willingly offered up, the case against Shauna is becoming harder and harder to brush off.
Tai is on quite the ride herself. After discovering the Biscuit shrine in the basement (RIP Biscuit, we miss you!) she’s been exercising and throwing back coffee to avoid falling asleep and in turn, sleepwalking. But then Sammy (Aiden Stoxx) surprises her, having walked from school, and she promptly calls Simone (Rukiya Bernard) to let her know. When Simone arrives, though, Sammy is nowhere to be found and his window is wide open. The pair then take off in search of Sammy and on the way Simone receives a call from the school informing her that Sammy has been sitting in the principal’s office for two hours waiting to be picked up. This naturally freaks Simone out and only shows just how far gone Tai is at this point. More than that, though? Tai stares Simone down with a devilish, eerie look, and she looks like she might just do something terrible to her before they’re involved in an intense car accident. Tai’s sleepwalking has been a freaky piece of the show for a while now, but it feels the more she tries to control it the more out of hand it becomes, and this may only be the beginning of much worse things to come.
Into the Woods
Like the previous episode, Van is still keeping her wrist tied to Tai’s (Jasmin Savoy Brown) at night to prevent her from sleepwalking. But when she wakes up in the night she finds that Tai has somehow released herself and sets out to find her. We follow Tai as she sleepwalks through the woods and sees a man with no eyes in the distance that she can’t help but feel compelled to follow. It’s the same man she saw when she was a little girl, it’s the same man that seemingly haunts her son Sammy in the present day, and he’s also seen in the show’s credits. But who is he? Whatever, or whoever he is, Tai has some sort of strange connection to him and in her sleepwalking state, she almost follows him off of a cliff. Thankfully Van catches up to her in time and pulls her back, but as the pair head back to the cabin we see the eerie symbol we’ve come to know etched into a tree. Van suggests Tai talk to Lottie and that maybe she could help; after all, she seems to have some sort of otherworldly effect on her, and perhaps it couldn’t hurt to try. Tai is adamantly against it, though, and refuses.
On the other side of things, Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) and Travis (Kevin Alves) are at odds and can’t agree on which way they should go while hunting. They eventually decide to split up but agree to meet back at the clearing before they run out of daylight. It feels like a bad idea from the get-go since these woods seem to have some sort of evil about them that the team isn’t fully aware of. While we’re left anxiously waiting to see if anything happens to these characters, it’s revealed that Natalie had an ulterior motive from the start. She’s already come to terms with the fact that Javi (Luciano Leroux) likely didn’t make it, but knows Travis won’t give up as easily. So, she steals some of Javi’s clothes, brings them out into the woods with her, and cuts herself to spread blood on them. She shows them to Travis, which naturally devastates him, but she hopes he’ll be able to move on now. Her plan seems to work, but Lottie still isn’t convinced and insists that Javi is still alive, which angers Nat but leaves us to wonder if she may just be right.
The Roast of Jackie Taylor
In perhaps the most anticipated storyline of the episode, we pick up withShauna (Sophie Nélisse) once again being haunted by Jackie(Ella Purnell), but this time there’s the added guilt of having eaten Jackie’s ear. Ghost Jackie even confronts her about it, to which Shauna lies and says she buried it, which we of course know is a lie. She tries to fight off the guilt of it by talking to Jackie’s ghost and appeasing her request to do her hair in an attempt to hide her missing ear, but her once semi-peaceful hallucinations quickly turn much more sinister when Jackie begins cutting a piece off of her arm — only, it isn’t Jackie doing it. It’s Shauna. She does stop once she realizes what she’s doing but by that point, the damage is done and one has to wonder if maybe Shauna’s subconscious is trying to tell her something — or rather, wanting her to do something.
The team, aside from Lottie, isn’t quite on board with Shauna’s visits with Jackie. They understand she’s grieving but rightfully believe it’s going a little too far, and for Shauna’s sake need to do something about it. This becomes even more dire when Tai finds Jackie’s corpse with makeup on, further proving to her that Shauna is falling deep into unhealthy coping mechanisms. She decides they need to get rid of Jackie’s body and cremate her, which really feels like something they should’ve done much sooner. Shauna is naturally against the idea, especially when one of the girls suggests they take Jackie’s clothing. It’s during this that Lottie notices the slice in Jackie’s arm and shares a knowing look with Shauna. She stays silent, however, and simply takes Jackie’s necklace and puts it on Shauna once again.
After building the pyre for Jackie’s body, Travis also sets Javi’s clothes on it, regretfully bidding adieu to his brother. Shauna gives a speech before lighting the fire, and everyone goes their separate ways. However, as Natalie and Travis have sex, he begins having visions of Lottie every time Nat touches him. The visions seemingly make their surroundings go haywire, including a candle going crazy, and a tree branch full of snow falling on top of Jackie’s body. The team wakes up shortly after with gurgling stomachs as a scent wafts through the air, and when they walk outsidethey find that Jackie’s body didn’t cremate — it cooked. They stare at the sight before them, contemplation clear on their faces, and in a surprising turn, Shauna is the one who speaks up, announcing that “she wants us to.” And thus Jackie Taylor becomes the team’s first full meal in months. It was never a question of if the team would resort to cannibalism, it was simply a question of when. Now the new question is: who’s next?
