Yellowjackets Season Two Loses Its Sting

july 19 2023

I arrived a little late to the Yellowjackets craze, watching the first season a couple weeks before the second season began airing. It was a classic case of me putting off engaging with a hyped piece of media because I'm afraid it won't live up (I have an illness). Cannibalism, survival horror, lesbianism— it was right up my alley, and I wanted it to be good so badly. I finally was spurred into watching the show after finishing (and loving) season one of AMC's The Terror, which also heavily features cannibalism and survival horror (and homosexuality) and wanting something else like it. The shows are ultimately very, very different, but I liked season one of Yellowjackets as well.

Season one has a nice balance of genuine horror and humor, with great performances by every single cast member, and a pretty well written storyline with a satisfying ending. There were some cracks for me (biggest complaint being that the adult storyline was often much less exciting than the teen timeline and also restricts what the writers can do with the teens because we ultimately know the core six survive), but nothing that I thought couldn't be improved on or fixed in season two. Unfortunately, those cracks only widened in season two, and I was much less impressed with the direction the show started to move in.

Spoilers past this point— you have been warned!

The first two episodes focusing on Shauna's grief for Jackie and the group's cannibalism of Jackie were really good. I loved "Edible Complex" especially, and liked that these episodes were very emotionally driven. The imagery of the group eating Jackie being alternated with a Bacchanalia was very cool, and there were actually a few moments of very strong and striking imagery throughout the season. The reveal (I think around episode six or seven) that the main area of Lottie's commune is arranged in the shape of the wilderness symbol, visible from above, was very neat. I also like the adult's party in the present being intercut with the card ceremony in the past. I felt this season's visuals were very cool when they weren't relying on VHS transitions and flashback cuts.

When looking at the writing and storyliens, I thought that Shauna's pregnancy (though it dragged a little) had a great resolution and Sophie Nelisse is an absolute acting powerhouse. Her reaction to having to butcher Javi is great too, and speaking of Javi, I also loved Travis eating Javi's heart. Although I hated Ben's hallucinations, I thought his overall arc this season, culminating in him burning the cabin, was good. In the present day timeline, I enjoyed the Shipman-Sadecki failfamily relationship and loved Callie's "redemption" as she's brought into the family crimes. Her character is much more interesting when she's allowed to actually participate in the main storylines instead of being relegated to "bitch daughter." Adult Shauna's realization that she was afraid to fully love Callie because of her losing the baby in the wilderness was also very emotionally impactful.

I have mixed feelings on teen Nat being crowned the antler queen. On one hand, I think this season really hammered in that Lottie does not want to be in any kind of position of power and mostly wants to be left alone. Even as a spiritual leader, she seems uncomfortable leading more than one or two people, and a lot of the tension between Lottie v Nat comes from other people treating Lottie as some kind of ultimate authority. The whole reason they have that hunt where they both nearly die is because Mari claims Lottie is a better hunter than Nat. Sure, Lottie goes along with it, but it was mostly just to keep from going against the crowd. So I think it does make sense for her to hand off power to someone else, especially to Nat.

Nat also doesn't crave power, but that is why she would make a good leader. She isn't really a natural leader who forces everyone else behind her, but she's the leader that they need. She has a big heart, but is also practical. She's the hunter, the patriarch, the provider for the family. It does make sense for her to step into that role of leader— not because she wants to, but because someone else asked her to do it.

But on the other hand, it feels like Nat was only crowned the antler queen because the writers thought Lottie being the antler queen was too obvious. ALthough, I guess it's too early to understand how the antler queen as a role functions. It's possible that it changes over time and Lottie does end up being the antler queen. It just seemed so perfectly set up that way in season one, and it felt like in season two the writers didn't want to take the "obvious" route, even though it's obvious because it's well planned. If they had to make someone else the antler queen, Nat makes the most sense, but it still feels like a senseless bait and switch. I can be brought around to it, but I'll need to see how it plays out.

The biggest problem with this season is that it had majorly weird pacing; everything in the past felt like it was happening too quickly and the present felt like it was happening too slowly. There were whole episodes where one timeline felt like filler, or like the plot and characters weren't moving forward at all, but you couldn't just skip the episode because something of vital importance is going down in the other timeline. This leads to a lot of interesting and thematically important details, like the reactions to the cannibalism of Jackie, merely brushed off or glossed over. There's very little internal strife among the Yellowjackets about now being cannibals, and the only outward struggle/justification we see is among two (brand new) background characters (we will also talk about the background character problem in a moment).

The pacing also struggled because of too much miscellaneous background plot that doesn't really add significantly to the story. A lot of the filler plot lines feel especially useless considering they center around men— so much time is spent introducing Walter, showing us every detail of Ben's hallucinations, and playing out a tired cop plotline before ultimately resolving it with zero consequences for our main characters. Why spend so much time on this police plotline with the threat of Shauna getting caught if it's ultimately going to do nothing? Why spend so much time focusing on men when most people are watching this show for teen girl cannibalism?

To be fair, the unnecessary plotlines weren't only centered around men. One of the bigger issues is Crystal, a new character who is suddenly introduced as Misty's best friend. Crystal is a theatre kid who sings while she does chores and puts on musical numbers for the other Yellowjackets. Her and Misty bond over being loud, passionate, and unliked by the other girls. Here's the problem: we've never seen Crystal before. Listen, I get that the show had background Yellowjackets in the first season, and they just didn't show them because they didn't have the time or budget. But the speed at which Crystal is promoted from "never seen" to "prominent side character" to "dead" is breakneck, and makes it hard to care about her and her story/relationship with Misty.

Crystal dies after accidentally backing off a cliff after Misty reveals to her that she sabotaged the plane's blackbox, and Misty has a little arc where the other Yellowjackets suspect she did something to Crystal, and she has to hide the evidence/get them off her back. We don't really see Misty have any kind of internal reaction to Crystal's death, even though it was an accident. It's clear that Misty has some kind of empathy disorder and struggles to understand other people's emotions, but it would have been nice to see this impacting her, even if it was just her struggling with not feeling guilty and upset. Crystal's death (Misty "killing her best friend") is clearly meant to be a parallel to her killing Nat in the finale, but both fall flat because they're simply accidents. Misty is more at fault for Nat's death, but Crystal's was really not her fault in any way.

Tt would have been more impactful if Misty had made the decision, whether on purpose or just in panic, to push Crystal off the cliff, because it would have been more interesting and would have given the parallel somewhere to go, some meaning (does it make me sounds evil to wish teen Misty committed more premeditated murder?). As it stands, the parallel falls flat because it's simply repeating actions, with Nat's death being a little more emotionally impactful because she's a character we actually know and like. Crystal was simply not set up and introduced well enough for us to care about her.

While I think that episode to episode, the adult timeline moves too slowly, I think in the grand scheme of things they're moving a little too quickly. I think they really jumped the gun on introducing adult Van and getting the adult core six back together. Van really had no reason to be there other than she was needed for the plot, and her and Tai end up getting relegated to background characters because they had to split screentime and share with all of the other random plot bullshit.

Unlike the other main characters, neither Van nor Tai have any detailed backstory, and they don't have anything going on that's not related to the other person. It felt like the writers were wrestling with the plot and characters to get them back together, considering they had to literally put Tai's wife, Simone, in a coma to get Tai to leave. And then Simone is only mentioned one or two times as part of Van's reasoning why Tai and her shouldn't get back together. It feels like this was an arc that should have happened over a much longer period of time, and without Simone being unceremoniously shunted aside. It feels like they could have had the exact same plotline with Simone and Tai simply being separated, which they already were when the crash happens!

In addition, adult Nat's character felt all over the place and not very consistent. She wasn't inconsistent in a way where it felt like she was purposefully supposed to be a conflicted character, but in a way where it felt like she just flipped to be whatever the plot needed her to be at any given moment. Her feelings on Lottie's cult were especially jumbled. At times, she acts like hates the cult and thinks they're all brainwashed victims of Lottie. But other times, she goes above and beyond to help Lisa, and seems to genuinely like Lottie and think the cult is helping her. She doesn't really have anything to do at the cult and it's hard to tell what her actual gameplan is.

At first she just wants to escape, and then she seems to be staying around to catch Lottie in a crime, but very early on in the season it's made obvious that Lottie has no ill intentions and that everyone who is in her cult is there because they want to be. There's no tax fraud or kidnapping or anything like that going on. But Nat stays at the community for no clear reason, and it's not even because she wants to reunite with the other Yellowjackets, because she doesn't know they're coming and even tells Misty to go home. Why does she do that? Aren't her and Misty partners in crime? Adult Nat doesn't really seem like the person who would forgive her own kidnapping that quickly, even if she ultimately decided that Lottie's cult aren't bad guys.

A lot of people have also criticized Nat's death, because they feel like the choice to kill off a suicidal addict via accidental overdose is in poor taste. I see these criticisms, but I also feel like her death itself just had very little emotional impact for me personally. I've seen people defending the death by pointing out the show is a tragedy, and that it was certainly tragic for Nat to die just as she started to feel like she could live again. But for me, I never really felt like Nat made any progress with her depression or felt like she had something new to live for. Her relationship with Lisa is sweet, yes, and she seems to find purpose in mentoring and befriending Lisa, but this arc mostly acts like Nat wants to help Lisa not be suicidal anymore because Nat herself has been in that position and grown from it. But she hasn't! Did we forget that the reason she's at Lottie's commune is that she recently tried to kill herself? And no real focus is spent on Nat's mental health beyond mere lip service.

So no, I didn't find it that tragic that she died, because it felt like she was getting what she wanted. I found her to be much more tragic in the first season, really. In the first season, the tragedy of Nat's character is that she's the one person who wants to die, but doesn't. Everyone around her wants to live, but drops like flies, while Nat is forced to live on and deal with the consequences. That, to me, is tragic.

The whole finale just felt so... sterile? It didn't feel like any of these things actually had to happen or were an inevitability, which I felt the first season excelled at. In season two, things were just happening because the plot arbitrarily demanded it. They do the hunt, a bunch of people pop out of the woods and complicate things, and then Misty runs at Lisa with her Emergency Fentanyl and Natalie dies by jumping in front of Lisa to protect her. I mean, it's just dumb and feels super muddled.

Listen, I can suspend my disbelief a LOT. I'm willing to accept plot holes or things that don't make perfect logical sense for the sake of character development, entertainment, and emotion. But this is too much to ask, even for me. It doesn't help that the cast were really talking up the finale, stressing how crazy and sick and tragic it was. I didn't feel like it lived up. The season one finale was way more emotionally impactful to me than this, and even within the season I felt "Edible Complex" was much more disturbing and interesting than the finale.

One of my biggest problems with this season was that I just didn't care. About the plot, the new characters, the storylines the old characters were given... a lot of things bored me. And this is a personal thing, I guess, so if you really enjoyed this season and found it compulsively watchable I can't really argue with you. I can just present my own feelings and my own explanations for them. I binged all of season one because I found it so good, so compelling. I thought it had some issues, sure, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. I finished season one the same week season two began airing, and I was so excited! I watched episodes one and two as they came out, and they were great! And then episode three aired, and I just... stopped? Episode three was so dull, so filler to me, that it made me really question what was going on. "Edible Complex" was so good and set up all these interesting questions about cannibalism and Jackie and who was going to be okay with this and who wasn't, and then... nothing happens in episode three? It's no payoff for episode two's setup, and it goes right back into more setup for later episodes.

It took me a really long time to get motivated to finish watching the show, and even then I was struggling through episodes and skipping portions of them. When I watched season one, I finished an episode and instantly looked forward to seeing the next. During season two, I would finish an episode and think, "Well, I guess that sure was an episode of Yellowjackets... Anyways, what's for dinner?" Maybe it's because I knew spoilers like Tai and Van reuniting and Nat's death, but here's the thing: I also knew spoilers for season one. Jackie's death had been spoiled to me a million times, and I knew other spoilers like the fact that Shauna was cheating with Jeff and Laura Lee died. And I still was super invested in the show, so it's not just that spoilers ruined my experience. It's that the show was no longer compelling and interesting on its own.

Overall, I found the second season of Yellowjackets to be a huge disappointment and a big step backwards for the show. I really enjoyed season one and thought it had a ton of potential, but season two basically takes everything I liked about season one and chucks it out the window, while ushering in the door everything about season one that I disliked. I think season two was plagued with some troubled production like sudden renewal (for FIVE SEASONS, okay I know the showrunners said that was always their plan but God that is TOO MANY SEASONS) and certain actresses not being happy with their character directions (which might explain why Nat's death feels so sudden— Juliette Lewis wanted off this show badly).

I won't judge this season too harshly, but it was certainly disappointing to me and I don't know if I'll watch season three. I'll probably keep my ear to the ground about what's going on in the season, which is easy since I have a lot of friends who watch the show as well, and if something sounds intriguing I might pick it back up. In my opinion, though season three is make or break for this show, and will show whether the show has a strong creative vision and good writing and season two was simply an awkward growth spurt, or if this is really the direction they're taking. An aimless direction, palatable entertainment television with none of the edge and spark that made season one so special. But only time will tell.