Unpacking Showtime’s ‘Yellowjackets’ finale

It feels like we only just embraced the brilliance of Yellowjackets, yet the time has come to say goodbye for now. The Showtime drama closed out its first season Sunday night with a final hour that left us shocked, terrified, and — as always — hungry for more.

Season 1, episode 10 “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” raises more questions than it answers, but it does show Yellowjackets‘ hand for Season 2 and a lot of what’s to come.

In the present, adult Yellowjackets, now including Misty, destroy and dispose of Adam’s body before cleaning up (and crying) and heading to their 25-year high school reunion. Their entrance scene is spectacular — simultaneously something out of a very different kind of show and yet entirely of a piece with Yellowjackets entire ethos of juxtaposing young womanhood with abject horror.

They saunter into the gym just like they did in the pilot, maybe stirring something up in the people who once envied them for being soccer stars, and now fear who the Yellowjackets are and what they’ve been through. The message is clear, especially with Adam’s blood barely washed clean: Decades later, these women are still a team.

Back in the woods, everyone is recovering from Doomcoming. Travis refuses to acknowledge what the girls almost did to him—and he barely has time to, because Javi is missing. Jackie blames the other girls and their every action grates on her. They still can’t believe she had sex with Travis, and tension rises until Jackie and Shauna have a fight that’s months, if not years overdue. Jackie ends up leaving the cabin to sleep outside, both parties too proud and upset to go back on their word.

The morning comes too late.

O captain, my captain

This was unexpected.
Credit: Kailey Schwerman / Showtime

Yellowjackets made it clear that anyone can die out in the wilderness, but we never expected Jackie of all people to go so soon. Besides Laura Lee, she’s the first to die since the crash, and whatever feelings the other girls may have had about her, this is their teammate and captain.

Rewatch Season 1 with knowledge of Jackie’s fate and it all reads differently (but what about the journals??). The Yellowjackets writers meticulously craft this tragic story, one of an admired and envied young girl who should have been on top of the world — and for a brief time, she was, before the crash took her completely out of her element.

The dramatic irony doesn’t excuse the times Jackie is inconsiderate or self-absorbed out in the wilderness, but it changes how you view everything, especially Shauna’s memories of her. Until now, adult Shauna’s guilt — moments like the Jackie hallucination saying “It’s not your fault” — pointed at sleeping with Jeff as a teen or even eating Jackie in the woods. The truth is at once simpler and sadder.

In her final moments, Jackie imagines her best friend welcoming her back into the cabin and all the other Yellowjackets telling her they love her. Adoration was a foregone conclusion of her life before the crash, and rare bordering on impossible after it. She’s used to making people feel happy, motivated, and special, but none of her powers work in the woods.

“You don’t matter anymore,” Lottie told her in “Doomcoming.”

The last person to speak in Jackie’s vision is a man we’ve never seen before, except in the opening credits, leering from the shadows.

“So glad you’re joining us,” he says. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

To say this is loaded is an understatement. This may or may not be some form of the French Canadian, and it’s the only part of Jackie’s vision that doesn’t connect to her life. This might be the French Canadian, or their captor, or someone else entirely. They appear to be speaking on behalf of the dead, or on behalf of whatever else is in the woods. Speaking of which… 

Who lives, who dies, who joins a death cult

Things take a dark turn in the “Yellowjackets” finale.
Credit: Showtime

Van tells Taissa that when the wolf attacked her, she was somewhere between living and dead. She saw something in that in-between state, something that still terrifies her. She doesn’t know what it meant, but she firmly believes something else is in the woods with them. 

The finale’s last shot gives us a chilling peek at shifting tides in the wilderness: Lottie, Van, and Misty kneel before a makeshift altar where Lottie presents a flesh sacrifice to protect them. This is no doubt the beginnings of what we saw in the pilot, but with clearer purpose than before; these girls are not just starving, they’re performing rituals.

Until this episode, we didn’t know for a fact that any of the adult Yellowjackets besides Misty participated in this. The dead girl in the pilot and brewing tensions in this finale point to our survivors splitting up into hunters and hunted. At least four adult Yellowjackets are trying to live normal lives and escape their past, but many more might be alive — either off the grid or still in the woods. Lottie still has power and reach beyond anything we imagined — we can’t be sure she’s alive, but her legacy certainly is.

For a whole season, the adult Yellowjackets have avoided but occasionally referenced their time in the woods. Based on the opening sequence, we thought we understood what this meant: Murder, cannibalism — reasonable stuff to want to leave in the past! Only now we know it’s not in the past at all…

How do you solve a problem like Taissa

Both of these women killed animals this season, but only one is a vegetarian.
Credit: Kailey Schwerman / SHOWTIME

Throughout Season 1, Tai has seemed unequivocally on the side of the other living Yellowjackets she interacts with. Tai is the only one who seemed to have her shit together: A loving family, a blooming career, even a vegetarian diet! We know she hired Jessica to ensure they kept their silence, but that was supposed to be in service of the state senate campaign — not to cover up her own penchant for blood sacrifice. 

Now we know the truth: That Tai still clings to the ways of the woods, to the rituals Lottie and the others began and everyone would eventually either join or flee from. It’s especially jarring given young Tai’s firm rejection of all things supernatural. What happened out there to change her mind so thoroughly — to the point that she can’t shake it 25 years later, thousands of miles away from the woods?

That’s all fine and well (it’s really not), but both past and present timelines leave more pressing matters to attend to. Javi’s disappearance might be the most chilling, and Nat and Travis were still in the woods when we last saw them. Is Misty going to kill Ben in a crime of passion and offer him up to Lottie’s altar? Did the people who kidnapped Nat also kill Travis? Most importantly, when do we get Season 2??

It’s going to be a long time before we get any answers.

Yellowjackets is now streaming on the Showtime app and via Hulu and Amazon.