Summary
Yellowjackets Season 3 gets off to an odd start in Episodes 1 & 2, almost soft-rebooting the past timeline but sagging in pace in the present day.
Are we being lured into a false sense of security? That’s the vibe I get from the Season 3 premiere of Yellowjackets, which debuts in Episodes 1 & 2 with the vibe of a soft reboot after Season 2 went a little off the rails. There’s a big time skip in the past timeline and a more modest one in the present day, but while some exposition helpfully fills in the blanks, “It Girl” and “Dislocation” feel keen to get things moving in a slightly new direction.
Whether that’ll end up being for better or worse is up for debate. This two-part premiere undeniably has some pacing issues and feels bogged down already, which isn’t ideal, but it also raises some interesting threads that could easily bear ripe fruit down the line. So, we’ll just have to see.
Time skip notwithstanding, though, Yellowjackets hasn’t forgotten its history – unchanged opening title credits dotted with long-dead characters reiterate that, and so does an opening that directly parallels the Pit Girl opening from the very first episode, tracking a girl running through the woods in a panic (certain details are reversed, the observant among you will have noticed.) This time the girl is identified, though – it’s Mari being chased by the others in a game of capture the flag. We’ve now reached summer in the wilderness, which has completely changed the look and vibe of the flashback sequences. From the ashes of the cabin that burned down at the end of Season 2, new shelters have been built by Tai, and animals are being raised for food. But dysfunction still reigns supreme.
Most of that dysfunction is bundled up in Mari and Shauna, who are at serious loggerheads for slightly unspecified reasons. But to be fair, the entire gang’s basically a cult at this point, all under Lottie’s spiritual sway, with some chemical assistance for good measure. The vibes are off. Everyone’s dressed in capes, calling on the lost for guidance, drinking mushroom-infused tea, and hearing the trees scream. The key mystery of the flashback sequences – what is “it” and how worried should we be about it? – remains intact.
If you were to really break it down – which I am, of course, obligated to do – there are two main threads in the flashbacks across both Episode 1 and 2; Coach Ben’s hobbling exploration alone in the woods, during which he discovers a hatch containing supplies, which he leaves open, and Shauna’s rivalry with Mari, which is hilariously bitter to the extent of the former spitting in the latter’s food right in front of her, just for the fun of it. Naturally, these two things quickly overlap.
How they overlap brings us back to that opening – Ben wakes up to find Mari trapped in the open hatch. Now, Ben is on the hook for burning down the cabin in Season 2 and is deliberately isolating himself, which makes his interactions with Mari a little complicated since he can’t just let her return to camp and tell the others that he’s out and about. The tension here comes from us not knowing quite how much the isolation has addled his brain, and how much danger Mari might be in, while back at camp Misty begins to suspect that Nat has known where Ben was all along. But we’ll return to the wilderness timeline at the end. For now, let’s catch up with things in the present day.
Still from Yellowjackets Season 3 | Image via Showtime
So, the deal here is that it’s around six weeks after the Season 2 finale and Natalie has been cremated. Everyone’s dealing with that in slightly different ways but for the most part, the present-day timeline is much more easy-going than the scenes set in the past. For instance, quite a lot of time is devoted to Misty feeling sorry for herself and getting drunk, a lot of which is played for laughs (like attempting to set a guy on fire with an unlit candle.)
The nearest thing to a threat here is Walter, and even then only because he’s trying to be so aggressively nice and friendly to Misty that it seems sinister. He’s quick to tell her that none of her so-called friends picked up when the bartender called to tell them she had passed out drunk and continually reiterates to Misty that they’re ignoring her obvious cries for help because they don’t care about her. He even tries to stop Misty from going to Shauna’s when she invites her over.
You can see this lack of urgency with Taissa and Van, too, who’re now living together as a sort of quasi-couple and trying to make the most of the time available to them, which mostly consists of dashing from a restaurant without paying and making out in an alley. It’s perfectly fine and inoffensive and I’m sure it’s going somewhere, but it doesn’t exactly get this double-bill premiere off to a rip-roaring start.
If you ask me, the most interesting part of Yellowjackets Season 3, at least in Episodes 1 and 2, is everything involving Shauna and Callie. And this makes sense because Callie’s proximity to the events of the Season 2 finale means she’s the likeliest to suffer some genuinely adverse effects from it, and that’s the angle we go with in these early stages.
When Callie overhears some girls at school peddling the age-old rumors that the Yellowjackets turned to cannibalism, she purchases a load of animal guts and then dumps them over the girls’ table. Given the general unpleasantness of that act, especially the use of offal, the assumption is that Callie has gone postal, but when she explains that she was just giving the girls a fitting comeuppance – proving her point by showing Shauna a video of the incident taken by a friend – it’s kind of brushed under the carpet.
But Callie is still obviously and deeply interested in the truth of what the Yellowjackets did out in the wilderness, so when Lottie shows up at Shauna’s place after being released from her psychiatric care, Callie pushes Shauna to let her stay and then pumps her for information. This is why Shauna invites Misty over – her job is to keep Callie from being alone with Lottie, which annoyingly justifies some of Walter’s concerns.
Misty takes her responsibility seriously but is consistently thwarted by social ineptitude and the fact Callie doses her drink with cough syrup. But Lottie is so vague about things that Callie doesn’t really learn anything of serious consequence except a vague reference to “It”, coupled with a reassurance that things out in the wilderness weren’t anything like what people say.
The reason Shauna isn’t present for this is that she’s at a work dinner with Jeff, which is funny for how she chews out the two smug hoteliers that Jeff is trying to cut a deal with but mostly exists to set up the first cliffhanger of Yellowjackets Season 3. After hearing someone moving around in the bathroom, she finds a phone in the next stall, which she turns in to the bartender.
Later, Shauna inquires about whether anyone claimed the phone, which is where the flashbacks cut back in to strongly imply that the phone belongs to Melissa. In the past sequences, we see her and Shauna having a rather intense make-out session in the woods after Shauna held a knife to her throat. Since it’s rarely flourishing, healthy relationships that begin that way, Shauna might be in for some drama in the near future.
