Yellowjackets' Production Designers Are Very Mindful About Keeping Fans Guessing
Spoilers for "Yellowjackets" follow.
Like "Lost" before it, "Yellowjackets" has cultivated a fandom that thrives on piecing together the show's mysteries. The keystone mysteries go back to the Pilot — who is the girl killed in the series' opening scene by falling into a spiked pit? In turn, who are the masked girls who butcher her? The only identity we know for sure is the one with the carpet-like mask who serves the meat to the others — she unmasks herself at the end of the Pilot and turns out to be Misty (Samantha Hanratty).
Even the show's cast has been theorizing right alongside their fans. This means the show's creators work extra hard to keep the surprise alive — and not just the writers either. During season 1, costume designer Marie Schley spoke with GoldDerby about her process and inspirations. Interestingly, Schley notes that the story was written around costume requirements: "For storytelling purposes, we couldn't see who these people were, that's why we had to have a mask. And so it kind of led to the development of whatever this ceremony is."
In designing the masks, Schley noted the idea was that each of the girls' masks corresponds to a specific animal — rabbit, skunk, etc. — while Misty's mask was meant to look like a veil. The so-called "Antler Queen" is meant to be "less amorphic" (and indeed, recent hints suggest the Antler Queen could be something more than human). However, underneath the masks are hints of the girls' original clothes. Schley says this is where she saw opportunities for misdirects.
Identifying clothes
The Pit Girl is mostly free of identifying costume characteristics — she only wears a white nightgown during her death. Mostly is the key word though, because after she falls to her death, there's a close-up of a golden heart-shaped necklace chained around her neck. It wouldn't be a huge leap to then conclude that the owner of that necklace is Pit Girl.
The necklace owner turned out to be Jackie (Ella Purnell), but it was a misdirection. Jackie did die and was posthumously eaten, but she's not Pit Girl. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) currently has the necklace, but we've known from the beginning that she gets out of the wilderness alive. That means the necklace will certainly be changing hands, which removes any certainty about the fate of its owner.
Schley also noted how the Skunk-masked girl who looked down on the dead Pit Girl was wearing pink Converse sneakers. This meant the costume team had to have the sneakers appear beforehand, but they couldn't be tied to a specific character. This turned out easier than you might expect due to the show's setting. Schley explained, "They would be sharing their clothes anyways, sharing their resources as they're living there, grabbing what they can."
It should be noted that Schley left "Yellowjackets" after season 1, but her successor Amy Parris has the same attention to detail. Parris recently spoke to the Daily Beast about balancing an "authentic 90s feel" to the costumes with a need for realism. She explained:
"I could only really incorporate a little bit more in outerwear, because this season they're out there in the winter [...] So, instead of imagining what their winter coats were, it was a question of, "How many light layers can we get away with?"
After all, even teenage girls wouldn't pack 19 months' worth of winter clothes.
Circumstantial evidence
The knowledge that the "Yellowjackets" creative team is trying to throw fans off the truth's scent makes any "evidence" suspect. Even so, theories are half the fun with a show like this (so long as you accept that your ideas can and will turn out to be wrong). So, can we pierce together some answers with what the show has given us?
The Pit Girl is likely one of the Yellowjackets who, as of late season 2, is still alive in the 1996 segments but hasn't shown up in 2021. The Pit Girl also had light-ish skin and black hair. That probably narrows it down to Mari (Alexa Barajas) or Gen (Mya Lowe). What about her killers? Lottie (Courtney Eaton/Simone Kessell) has been heavily telegraphed as the Antler Queen but that's still not set in stone. Some have theorized that since present-day Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) has a rabbit toy collection (and killed/cooked a rabbit in the Pilot), that means she's the butcher in the rabbit mask. Again, though, there's currently no way to say for sure.
"Yellowjackets" is rarely a show where things are exactly what they appear to be and the costume design team has made sure of it.
New episodes of "Yellowjackets" stream on Showtime every Friday and air on television every Sunday.