Summary
Yellowjackets Season 3 really gets moving in Episode 6, which provides the key developments we’ve been waiting for.
Yellowjackets Season 3 felt like it was starting to get going in the previous episode, even though it was lacking those big, key developments. Well, Episode 6, “Thanksgiving (Canada)”, is where those developments occur. And they provide a very welcome shake-up of the whole thing, capitalizing on that increasing momentum with some actual payoff. It’s getting interesting in both timelines and, refreshingly, I have no idea where it’s all going.
Weirdly enough this is also a surprisingly funny episode while also being exceptionally bleak, especially as it relates to poor old Ben. Most of the funny stuff is in the present day because the stuff in the past is so determinedly awful that it’s hard to see the funny side. But it is pretty gripping, nonetheless.
As it turns out the trial sealed Ben’s fate after all. But instead of the relative mercy of a firing squad, he’s instead consigned to a very slow entropy as a captive in the animal pen. He’s left alone to fester with his sliced Achilles tendon, languishing in the dirt, and his existence becomes so grim that he attempts to starve himself to death. This is, weirdly, quite offensive to the girls, who can’t quite fathom that he doesn’t buy into the idea that he’s their savior quite as much as they do.
I’ll happily express that Yellowjackets blindsided me a bit here. I earnestly – and perhaps naïvely, in hindsight – thought that the arc here was going to be that Ben’s predicament opened the girls’ eyes to their savagery. I thought they might treat Ben with some dignity and perhaps even welcome him back into the fold a little bit, giving him the opportunity to try and finesse an escape. This is most assuredly not what happens. Instead, they force-feed him through a tube.
Natalie, who is ostensibly the leader of this group, decides enough is enough and takes it upon herself to mercy-kill Ben and put him out of his misery, against the wishes of the others. While Travis keeps watch, she sticks a knife in his heart at Ben’s urging, and then steps out covered in his blood, ready to face the consequences. And the consequences turn out to be fairly significant, since they involve Shauna being promoted to the group’s new leader, and her first official act in that capacity is to order a giant feast that Natalie will prepare.
Needless to say, despite all the animals they’re breeding and trapping, it’s Ben who’s on the menu.
The Yellowjackets, in masks, prepare to force feed Ben | Image via Showtime
With this, it’s not difficult to understand why someone would be trying to kill present-day Shauna. And they definitely are. She’s had a problem with her brakes, being trapped in the freezer, and now, after finally finding out about Lottie’s death, Callie has shown her the tape she found in the premiere. Shauna is convinced, so she moves her family into hiding and calls Van and Tai for help in acquiring a DAT player.
Van is much more keen to help than Tai is. In fact, Tai barely seems bothered at all, which Van calls her out on. She’d much rather lounge around in their swanky hotel and order very expensive room service, ostensibly to best enjoy the limited time that Van might have left. But… there’s a bit more to this. Tai is obviously grappling with “Other” Tai, and on a couple of occasions, the alter-ego creeps through. It’s particularly noticeable when Tai wakes up screaming from a nightmare and then her demeanor suddenly changes, but there’s a more telling scene earlier when Van finds an old phone that rings despite not being plugged in. On the other end of the line, she hears Tai’s voice begging for help. This suggests to me that Tai is almost a captive in her own body and that “Other” Tai is very much in control. But to what end?
The tape, for what it’s worth, contains a recording of the teen Yellowjackets howling and laughing, but it remains a mystery for now since the only people who know about the tape are either dead or present (or Misty). This will be picked up later, I’m sure.
But I mentioned Misty. She’s worth looking at since she’s still investigating Lottie’s death, and the clues lead her to Lisa, Lottie’s former follower whom Misty was trying to kill when she ended up killing Natalie instead. Lisa reveals that the $50K Lottie withdrew was for her, but also that she saw Tai with Lottie on the day she died. This, of course, meshes very nicely with what we theorized earlier about Tai being controlled by her dark half, so we might have a viable suspect in Lottie’s murder here.
But the biggest development in Yellowjackets Season 3, Episode 6 occurs right at the end. Back in the past, the girls use the feast as an excuse to really lean into the feral wilderness devotee gimmick, chanting and dancing and laughing like maniacs. It’s exactly the wrong time for someone else to arrive, but someone does – a man who greets the survivors with a cautious “Hello” before spotting Ben’s severed head. The girls are going to have some explaining to do.
