After sitting with the finale of yellow jacket Season 2, I kept coming back with one thought, resounding in my mind: It’s not fair. There are countless layers to extract from that one sentiment and I will cover all of them in this summary. But my biggest lesson is yellow jacket loves to remind us of the inequality in life, and it did so throughout the season.
Things are not fair when a group of teenagers land in the wilderness, resorting to violent means to survive. They’re not fair that the TV is so smart Produced in Part 1 went down in Season 2, faster than that fictional plane crashed. And nothing is remotely fair about this season’s finale, which leaves every character scorned by the cruelty of life and is the show’s most notable symbol of hope in a dark world. dead.
Sure, the world isn’t fair. But the absolute gloom yellow jacket ended its second season as a disservice to fans as well as critics. We’ve gone through this, hoping for some indication that the screenwriters will find a way to get the show out of its dreary dullness. Last season’s final may be just as dark, but at least there is a sign that its central group of women have found strength in each other. Above all, there is a path open for the program to move forward. I just hope that yellow jacket Part 2 can stick landing. Instead, it completely exceeded its limits.
That’s made clear only from the finale’s opening scene, where the Yellow Jacket teenagers bring Javi’s corpse back from the frozen lake where he fell during his violent hunt. group. This slow-motion sequence is set to “The Zombie” of Cranberries, a shot of needles that is both artificially obvious and regrettably abused. It’s a song about conflict that leads to violence, so it certainly fits the context, but it feels like a cheap emotional game.
However, as Teen Natalie, Sophie Thatcher sold the scene entirely. She has to tell Travis that his brother is, again, gone – a delightful flashback to how she had to do the same, earlier in the season, when she lied about finding the set. Javi’s bloodstained clothes in the forest. Here, with Javi’s corpse hanging from a tree branch behind, one could hear the fatigue in her voice hoarse and evident in her face. Natalie couldn’t even look Travis in the eye until she was done telling him his brother was dead, a wise acting choice by Thatcher.
Kailey Schwerman/Showtime
In the present day, Adult Lottery still believes that her group of old friends are back together again because the darkness followed them from the forest as teenagers. The only way to appease it was to do another hunt, the same way they did. Shauna buys the group a day’s time by pretending to be on Lottie’s side, then proposes that they restore their hunt in 24 hours. That gave the remaining women time to hatch a plan for Lottie to commit to psychiatric care and save their own lives. This included getting the police off Shauna’s back, after they recovered Adam Martin’s body. To do this, Misty uses the shady skills of her best friend Walter, who has finally made himself interesting for the first time this season.
For a much more successful season that focuses on younger partners, dating back to the ’90s, spending the last part of the majority for today is a bold choice. The adult versions of these characters all have garbled storylines, and this episode does nothing to fix that. In fact, this season’s final entry brought today’s storyline to a complete halt at the end. Back in the ’90s, Travis was dealing with emotions when he had to bite his brother’s mouth. heart. The group is eating food for the first time in weeks, but it’s their human flesh! Can’t we check with them?
No, we must be the object of this hunt instead. Adult Van, who completely unexpectedly revealed in the previous episode that she has cancer, has completely lost her will to live in just a few short days. She hastily made the necessary draw, hoping that one of them would eventually pick the queen of hearts from the deck and be chased with knives. The final draw scene also gives us an overview of how the group’s rituals evolved as they spent more time in the woods, but not by much. Shauna entices the queen, and the party chases after her for 10 seconds, before Callie, Shauna’s daughter from nowhere, intervenes, shooting Lottie in the shoulder. Why did the rest of the grown-up Yellowjackets suddenly decide to play at Lottie’s hunting request, after all agreed that it was bogus and that Lottie was very sick, it never was. explain.
The group stood around, scrambling to see if there was really a spirit following them. Shauna yelled at Lottie, “You know there’s no ‘It,’ right? That’s just us. Lottie responded by asking her if there was any difference. That’s the show’s big question: Is there really supernatural intervention or is it all just metaphor? It would be lovely if the writers could decide and tell us one way or the other, instead of dancing in the nasty middle ground.
During the group’s debate, Lisa – the woman at Lottie’s block Natalie befriended this season – approaches with a shotgun, demanding to know what’s going on. Natalie tried her best to reassure Lisa but to no avail. Trying to save her best friend from being blown away by a double barrel, Misty attempts to disarm and stab Lisa with a syringe filled with drugs, but Natalie moves Lisa at the last second, taking the tube. Misty’s injection in the shoulder during the chaos. .
It would be a shock, if this scene wasn’t hilariously edited. A series of cuts quickly undo all the impact, making it difficult to determine what or how this even happened. The aftermath was clear, with an ambulance arriving to retrieve Natalie’s body, while police tried to figure out what had happened. (The stated cause of death is “medication overdose.”) We do get some interesting pictures of Natalie, though, in some sort of jet purgatory. She’s shaking in the middle seat (like hell than purgatory), awaiting death, and being comforted by Teenager Lottie and her teenage self. It was a hint of something beyond this life—a feeling the Yellow Vests were exposed to when they were young—but nothing more.
Kimberley France/Showtimes
Season 2 ends with a few final details. In the ’90s, Lottie empowered Natalie, naming her the new Antler Queen, after “the wilderness saved her” at the end of the previous episode. They’ll certainly need some guidance, as Coach Ben set the cabin on fire while they were sleeping, leaving them all to fend for themselves in sub-zero temperatures. Witnessing his only consolation them – the place that helps them survive – sinking in the sea of fire is an extremely cruel thing. You can feel the desperation of these characters. But when it all fades to black and those credits roll out, what the hell is left? yellow jacket exchange any kind of explanation about supernatural events, character motives, and about two dozen storylines that hang for the protagonist’s death and a fresh start.
Killing Natalie is not fair; there is no doubt about that. It’s cruel, and so is life. I am well aware that part of the views of yellow jacket is to highlight this seemingly random cruelty. But Natalie is the most completely bold character on this show, the only one whose pre-crash story is truly memorable. Both Juliette Lewis and Sophie Thatcher have done an excellent job of perfecting the body and voice of this character to mimic each other across the two timelines. We saw Natalie miserable, tripping, hitting the bottom of the abyss and crawling out of that hole herself. And while the text in Season 2 may have given Natalie an axial maturity, those glimmers of hope from the first season remain.
Natalie’s plot scum has now been extinguished and her adult character has been thrown out the window. I don’t think wondering if this is a result of Lewis is said to be seemingly unhappy with the way her character’s arc is developed – which she doesn’t think is entirely illogical. . alluded to in 2021 New York Times file—and which one? Many fans have claimed to notice at other press stops. It’s hard to see any other reason as to why the screenwriters would kill off a character they’ve worked so hard to develop into a relatively human, emotional piece of the puzzle. this endless puzzling. It’s even harder to think of the place yellow jacket could go from here without her.
I would not return to this comparison if yellow jacket creator didn’t refer to it firstbut looking back at Part 2, I’m reminded of Double top; David Lynch’s hit classic series got a similarly grueling second season. Despite the thorns of the show, Double top was able to effectively tease something bigger in play, even when it was out of sight. Supernatural malice often takes on some physical form or manifests in surreal scenes that still have a narrative point.
But I struggle to make similar connections with yellow jacket. Remember the pictures of Lottie about Candlelight canal and food court in the mall? yellow jacket treat those strings just like its version Double top‘ Black motel, but the show seems to think that just showing some kind of dreamlike fantasy is enough. It must make sense for the characters; it must continue the plot. IN Double top, these elements are presented as physical locations where you can get stuck or step out, when the right universal elements align. Black Lodge and its accompanying imagery are powerful, because they suggest that evil lurks among us, and that human existence and eternity in the afterlife are not as simple as life and death.
yellow jacket Season 2 runs in circles on its own for nine episodes. But instead of closing the loop, it keeps spinning itself into a spiral. Several plot points were introduced and never made available again. The characters make choices that don’t align with what we already know about them. Their motives were then sloppy reframed in the show’s narrative. Entire episodes go by without moving a single needle. And that can only be applied to Taissa’s character development!
Kimberley France/Showtimes
In my confusion, I kept going back to Natalie, and how she chose to tell Lisa to leave the block before their hunt began. “I appreciate you trying to teach me forgiveness. That’s a good idea,” Nat told her friend. It’s a line where Natalie alludes to some degree of her acceptance of life. But after the end of this season, it’s more like Natalie admitting her defeat. She fought to get through an impossible life of addiction, suicidal thoughts, unimaginable pain and guilt, only to have all that courage and tenacity come to an end. brutally taken. It’s not fair. And after this season, I’m not sure I can learn forgiveness either.
