One Yellowjackets Scene Makes Misty Quigley Painfully Relatable
This post contains spoilers for the seventh episode of "Yellowjackets" season 2.
Misty Quigley (Samantha Hanratty) is a bit of an odd duck. I recognize that may be a bit of an understatement for the girl who destroyed a crashed plane's black box, went full "Misery" on her crush, and accidentally yeeted her best friend off a cliff. "But Yellowjackets" fans love to describe Misty in the most judgemental, prescriptive terms, seemingly unable to talk about the character's complexities without diagnosing her. Is she a sociopath? A psychopath? Something else entirely? It's not my place to say, but I do know this: she's an odd duck.
In the latest episode of "Yellowjackets," she's also just a scared girl who's grieving. Misty has never been more relatable to me than when she stood at the edge of the cliff, sobbing to Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) not to jump because she's lost so much already. Of course, this is Misty Quigley we're talking about here, so before she gets honest about her own state of mind she takes a manipulative, ethically heinous route by threatening to smear, out, and even eat Ben if he dies. She's nothing if not consistent in her chaos. After that tactic doesn't work, though, the girl forgets about strategy, and her emotions run out in a torrent.
Misty talks Coach Ben off a ledge
"I tried so hard," Misty says, half-yelling in a rush of fear and distress. "I swear to God. I tried so hard to keep the baby alive." She begs Ben not to jump, pleading in a short monologue that feels a bit like her "Steel Magnolias" speech turned real. "Please, Ben," she concludes. "I can't have another death on my hands." It's a rare moment during which Misty seems both entirely empathetic and entirely honest. Moments ago, when she was telling Ben his life is precious, it felt more like the Misty we see most of the time, pretending to say what she thinks she should be saying. Here, she's just letting it all out, and it turns out she's been walloped by cumulative grief.
That's the part of Misty's emotional moment that I found surprisingly relatable, and it's also a topic I'm surprised and impressed to see "Yellowjackets" explore. Cumulative grief is a term for the type of grief a person experiences when they're dealt multiple losses at once, or in quick succession. I experienced it when I lost three relatives in just a few months in 2020, including two just days apart. Cumulative grief is heavy and strange; it's difficult to describe to other people, because it feels so much more existentially threatening than typical grief.
Cumulative grief is real, and it's the worst
If one person dies, they can be mourned. When multiple people die in succession, their loved ones have to mourn their entire worldview. My grief in 2020 felt isolating as I began to feel that life was disturbingly temporary and death upsettingly certain — if not constant. So much personal loss can create a psychological and philosophical shift that's hard to bear. I lost a fourth loved one within a year of the other three losses, and while the circumstances were entirely out of my control, if I could have pleaded with someone to keep that friend alive, I would have in a heartbeat. Three years later, I'm okay, but there was a time when I worried I might not be.
The existential weight of this loss seems to be what Misty's getting at when she screams to Ben that he shouldn't jump. She's already lost Kristen (Nuha Jes Izman), which in many ways was her own fault, but was still a traumatic loss that she's just begun to process. Now, it becomes clear that she blames the death of Shauna's baby on herself, a heartbreaking burden to bear and a rare (if misguided, because the baby's death wasn't her fault) moment of accountability from someone who's not known for it. If a third person dies in front of Misty, it'll be more than she can take, and that's what finally makes Ben step back.
Now we understand why Misty grows up to be so protective
"Yellowjackets" makes it easy to pick on Misty (this show is full of murderers and cannibals, but she gets ostracized as the socially awkward murderer-cannibal), and she's certainly been making questionable decisions from the moment we met her. This is in no way, shape, or form a girlboss moment. Yet it does feel like an important point of connection between teen Misty and her adult counterpart (Christina Ricci), who is determined to keep all the fellow Yellowjackets safe under her watchful eye. She's bonded to the team, not because they love her but because decades ago, her own well-being became entangled with theirs.
Of course, trying to talk Ben down in the first place is its own loaded decision, as is his initial request that she push him. The scene's ending doesn't possess any sense of relief or catharsis; it merely feels like Ben lost his resolve for the time being. The wilderness plot of "Yellowjackets" is increasingly bleak, to the point that Misty saving Ben's life doesn't feel like a win, especially when there will surely still be more loss to come. Still, it does feel like Misty at her most sympathetic, and with Hanratty putting as much heart into the scene as she did with her movie monologue a few episodes earlier, it's not a moment we'll soon forget.
You can watch "Yellowjackets" each Friday on the Showtime app and Paramount+, as well as Sundays on the Showtime channel.