Yellowjackets (Season 2), Episode 7: Birds flocking has never been brought forth anything but a bad omen. And the survivors of the Canadian wilderness in Yellowjackets herding together does not inspire good fortune either. Repressed monstrosities and truths overtaking are likely to make up the 3 more episodes we would be walking through together. Before that, there’s some healing to do yet.
Yellowjackets (Season 2), Episode 7 Recap:
Death Is Hungry
One of the most overlooked yet undeniably fascinating ordeals in the cabin has been Coach Ben’s faltering psyche. Whether it’s starvation that is affecting his brain or it’s the crushing psychological torture of waiting for death, or maybe it’s both, Ben is losing control of himself, and the reaper awaits right around the corner.
Ben’s psychosis untethers him from the shared trauma of everyone watching Shauna’s newborn die. In the aftermath, Shauna may seem to be doing better than expected, but the cracks in the grieving mother will start to surface soon enough. Present-day Shauna, on the other, seems to be way more in tune with her truth than her friends, who have all congregated in Lottie’s therapeutic retreat.
Mending The Present With The Past
Misty didn’t really fool everyone with her story of losing sight of Crystal when the snowstorm came their way. Of all the people in the cabin and in Lottie’s retreat, Misty may be the only one who is a flawless blend of wholesome and sociopathic. She craves approval as earnestly as she gives into her disastrous impulses.
The smile on Misty’s face as she overhears her friends, validating the courage she had shown during the acute tension of Shauna’s labor, transforms into a look of dread almost instantly when they communicate their suspicion about Crystal’s fate. Misty’s honey-voiced friend lies frozen underneath the rubble of her murderous instinct as Misty makes everyone huddle up and go out to look for her. It’s hard to say just how much Misty really believed in the lies she told then and just how badly she’s deluding herself even now when Shauna calls her out.
Saving Lives Then And Now
There’s goodness in the oddest people if you linger around them long enough for them to show it. While “odd” may be an understatement for Misty’s fatalistic quirks, I doubt that anyone else would’ve stopped to save a life and hold on for long enough to ascertain the person’s safety. It was a death that came for Ben in the form of the recurrent hallucinations he had about his boyfriend. One wrong move and the walls of his life came collapsing all around him.
So when it got too hard for him to bear, Ben was at peace, knowing whatever awaited down the cliff he was planning to jump from was better than another day in the wilderness. That is until Misty connected to the self-sacrificing side of him that wouldn’t want another death to burden the girls’ conscience, and he was forced to change his mind. In the therapeutic tank that Misty is submerged in, she’s visited with validating visions that speak of things Misty is too insecure to believe.
But the personified embodiment of her beloved bird is way more convincing for her than even herself. So she calls Walter, and being her most wacko self is how she warns him of what he’s about to get into should he choose to go forward with their romantic dynamic.
Yellowjackets (Season 2), Episode 7 Ending, Explained:
What Awaits The Group Of Questionable Warriors?
One easily overlooked similarity between the survivors is how equally uplifting and destructive they all can be. It really makes you wonder if this specific quality wasn’t within them, to begin with, and only got to see the light of day after the consequential plane crash and the subsequent excruciating survival. Lottie’s list of therapies, however, is dismissed at first by her friends, who end up providing surprisingly personalized help for them all.
The answers they were looking for were always inside them, waiting to be sought. All Lottie did was expertly guide them through the process and help them out when they were drowning in self-doubt. Shauna faced the truth about how fragmented her life since the rescue has been. Misty embraced her peculiarities, and her sense of self-worth reached a relatively healthy height. Taissa was pushed to accept her “bad one” as an innocent yet supremely powerful child who has been throwing vicious tantrums to rebel against the lack of acceptance and love.
Van tragically has only months granted by her terminal cancer–quite an ironic turn of fate considering all that she had endured, survived, and risen out of. The only one still lost at the end of the day is the queen bee herself. While her peers and the closest ones have been riding the coattails of the soul-searching she has commenced, Lottie’s hallucinations have reached the alarming point of her envisioning the dark spirit of the woods as her therapist.
If anything, Lottie is warned that the survivors coming together is going to be as individually healing as it would be cumulatively devastating. The sacrifice the young Lottie made when she volunteered to be the punching bag for aggrieved Shauna to relieve herself of her anger is mirrored in Lottie’s act of giving in and embracing her friends in their time of need. Her bleeding, swollen face back then is not too different from her smile as she danced through her all-engulfing fear of what was to come.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are one or more impending deaths, however much I may wish against it. It’s impressive as well as nerve-wracking at the same time for Yellowjackets to still keep the existential condition of the spirit of the wilderness an enigma. What I can say for sure is all of their lives are about to get caught up in a whirlwind of chaos–much more demanding than they could have ever predicted. The first one facing the maw of the monster that is karma is Shauna. With the cops locating Adam’s remains which I doubt were dumped as carefully as they had thought, chances are, Shauna is in big trouble.
