Christina Ricci Thinks The 'Wilderness' Is A Crutch For The Yellowjackets Characters
This post contains spoilers for the "Yellowjackets" season 2 finale.
"The wilderness chose." For the characters of "Yellowjackets," this simple phrase is a means of equivocating, the way a person might gloss over something bad by saying, "It is what it is." In the show's flashback scenes, that means girls' soccer players hunting and cannibalizing their teammates in the wilderness where their plane has crashed. Some of them, like the adult Lottie (Simone Kessell), believe the wilderness is a dark force that follows them back to civilization and demands appeasement even in a place where cannibalism is no longer necessary for survival. Others, like Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), believe Lottie is crazy, and they have only themselves to blame for the continuing murder and mayhem in their lives.
Christina Ricci, for one, sees the wilderness as a convenient out for her character, Misty, as she deals with the guilt of having killed her best friend, Crystal, after a confrontation that made Samantha Hanratty (teen Misty) feel like a method actor. In an interview with Variety following the "Yellowjackets" season 2 finale, Ricci said:
"I don't think that Misty believes that it's her fault. I think certain characters can conveniently apply the 'wilderness' and its power and willfulness when needed to not feel responsible for certain things. We do see most of the characters pick and choose when they decide that it was the wilderness doing something, and not them. I think that's one of those instances where she would deal with it in that way, so as to not really, intellectually, feel bad about it. Of course, subconsciously she does — that's why she doesn't want anything to do with Walter [Elijah Wood] once he reveals that he knows who she is. But I don't think that's a conscious thought for her."
'The wilderness made me do it'
Christina Ricci's comments about characters in "Yellowjackets" blaming the wilderness when they need "to not feel responsible for certain things" brings to mind another old phrase, "The devil made me do it," which served as the title of "The Conjuring 3" two years ago, when "Yellowjackets" made its series premiere.
In the "Yellowjackets" season 2 finale, "Storytelling," the teen version of Van (Liv Hewson) begins telling a "once upon a time" story about the wilderness by the fireplace, only for the teen Lottie (Courtney Eaton) to interrupt her with the reveal that she "never wanted to be in charge." Before that, Van says the wilderness "was beautiful and full of life, but it was also lonely and violent and misunderstood."
You could apply those same words to the characters of "Yellowjackets." In the season 2 finale, Shauna seems to refute the ongoing question of whether there's anything supernatural happening in the wilderness, as she says, "You know there's no 'it,' right? 'It' was just us." Lottie retorts, "Is there a difference?" which seems to suggest that even if there is a devil or some external dark force they're interacting with, it doesn't matter, because the girls still decided to do what they did and let that force guide them internally. Saying "the wilderness chose" really means they chose.
"Yellowjackets" season 2 is now streaming in its entirety on Showtime.