Yellowjackets Are Pollinating With Premonitions, Possible Saints, And Psychotic Breaks In The Latest Episode
Now that Succession is over and that the show has been renewed for a second season, I'm here to welcome you newbies to the fanclub for the New Jersey state champion varsity girls' soccer team/fine young cannibals known as Yellowjackets. This week's recap brings us to the sixth episode, "Saints," directed by Bille Woodruff (who directed all of your favorite R&B and hip-hop music videos since the '90s) with a script from Chantelle M. Wells ("Jane the Virgin," "Good Girls"). Were my theories from last week correct? Have we finally figured out the true identity of the Antler Queen? Let's dig in the dirt and find out!
Occasionally, "Yellowjackets" hops back even further than 1996 to give us some insight into how the girls were raised, and this week features a very young Lottie having a screaming fit in the backseat of her parents' car, stopping them in the road, only for a massive collision to happen in front of them. Lottie stops screaming and her parents are understandably creeped the f*** out, which leads to mom thinking her daughter has some psychic gift and her dad thinking she's psychotic and declares she's getting put on medication. Given how young she is in this scene, it looks like the post-plane crash survival mode is the first time Lottie's been free of chemical interference that she is actually conscious of. This makes things extra complicated because Lottie keeps seeing the vision of a deer shedding its antlers (which looks like a massacre if you've never seen it before) and thinks she may be going crazy. Press save in your brain, 'cause we're coming back to this.
Shauna's Having Horrifying Pregnancy Dreams
1996 Shauna's subconscious is really putting her through the ringer, as she's dreaming about giving birth in the attic with Jackie playing the supportive partner as she delivers a pulsing cornish game hen, still umbilically connected. Jackie described it as looking "just like his father," and Shauna immediately devours it before waking up in a panic. This isn't the first time this has happened, because her attic-mate Taissa asks if it was "a cheeseburger" again. Why is Taissa up in the first place? I sure am glad you asked!
Taissa and Van have been sneaking out to the lake in the middle of the night to swim naked and be very cute and gay together, but Van calls out Taissa for having filthy fingernails that Taissa doesn't remember getting. PRESS SAVE ON YOUR BRAIN, AGAIN! Van wants to come clean about their relationship with the team, but Taissa is more concerned about survival and wants to head south in the hopes she'll eventually find help. She and Shauna have a heart to heart once she's back in the attic, and Shauna confesses she wants to use an underwire to have an abortion so that Jackie will never find out she's knocked up with Jeff's baby. Oof.
Jackie's Boomer Parents Desperately Need Therapy
Speaking of Shauna and Jeff, the two of them show up for an annual meeting with Jackie's parents on her birthday and it is the worst wealthy, white, emotionally abusive WASPy brunch imaginable. Jackie's mom gifts Shauna a ceramic rabbit, which makes the rabbits covering Shauna and Jeff's home (and Shauna's penchant for skinning them with her bare hands) super unsettling. Jackie's parents have a weird fixation on Callie and even offer to pay for her college because she reminds them so much of Jackie, so Shauna's statement of "I don't even like my daughter," cuts like a knife. These parents have clearly not mourned their daughter, who at this point has likely been dead longer than she was ever alive.
Jackie's parents have kept her bedroom in creepily pristine condition, and Shauna goes through her journal featuring a list of movie characters Jackie identifies with, including Rose from "Titanic," Torrance from "Bring it On," and Angela in "American Beauty." BUT WAIT, BJ, WEREN'T ALL OF THOSE MOVIES RELEASED AFTER 1996? You're damn right they were. Unless someone in production royally screwed up by referencing movies released from 1997-2000, Jackie doesn't die in the woods. They give a toast to Jackie's memory (her parents' eyes upward toward heaven) but then mom throws some SUPER offensive accusations implying Shauna must have had a hard time being friends with someone "so beautiful and smart," and Jeff earns major brownie points by hyping his wife up and shutting them up by confessing that he and Shauna were boinking it while he was dating Jackie.
Timelines are Echoing
After dinner, Shauna and Jeff discuss their marriage in the car and it's pretty clear that Jeff genuinely does love Shauna. He comforts her by assuring her he doesn't secretly wish he'd ended up with Jackie, and laments that he felt she was going to dump him anyway because he would have just been "the high school boyfriend." Big yikes, because we also got a moment in 1996 earlier where Jackie talked to Shauna about genuinely missing him, and feeling bad that she didn't tell him "I love you" back after he'd said it. Uh, it sure seems like Shauna never divulged this information to Jeff, so he's spent the last 25 years not knowing Jackie actually gave a s*** about him. Y'all ... what if Jeff isn't cheating on Shauna? They DO have an anniversary coming up. Oh, man.
Adult Shauna has clearly been feeling the guilt, because she's been dodging Adam's texts all day. Well, that is until Jeff has to go into the office that night and she immediately texts Adam to lay on the bed ass up and she'll be there in 45-minutes. Shauna's a top! I like it!
"The Last Thing We Need is a Baby"
Nat and Travis are continuing to fool around while they're hunting, turning the crashed plane into their own personal love nest, but as Nat says, "Who hasn't rolled over a broken tray table while making out on a blood-soaked death trap?" The whole team knows the two are canoodling, so Coach Scott gives Travis the condoms he packed for the trip, and it's a RIDICULOUS amount of condoms for someone who was supposed to be on a trip for a week. Why do you have that many condoms, bro? Who were you planning on porking on a trip surrounded by teenage soccer teams?! Don't worry, though, teen Misty is here to make things awkward as usual by whispering to Nat, "I have a secret boyfriend too." Honestly, Coach Scott should have kept some of those condoms because after her poisoning him and sneaking in to touch his morning wood, I'd be wrapping it up 24/7 to make sure she didn't pull something crazy. BECAUSE SHE WILL ABSOLUTELY PULL SOMETHING CRAZY.
Nat and Travis almost have sex for the first time a little bit later in the episode, but not before Nat absolutely lays into him for being weird about how many people she's had sex with. "It's 1996, vaginas have like monologues now." Bless this writing. My god. Spoiler alert: Travis is weird about it because he's a virgin and wants to make sure it'll matter to her. Their sexcapades are interrupted though because they spot a deer ... SHEDDING ITS ANTLERS!
Simone is DONE with Taissa's Antics
After not dropping out of the senate race, Simone is putting her foot down. Something is clearly up with Sammy, so she takes him to a child psychologist who thinks he's going through a lot of stress, because he claims to have no recollection of doing the things like breaking his toy or vandalizing their house. He's still full-in on the tree lady, and honestly, I'm starting to feel bad for calling him weird so much in the first three episodes. He's clearly going through it, and I'm starting to think Taissa's the reason why. Due to the marital strife, she can't get the blackmail money so Nat forever is queen of getting s*** done and sells her Porsche. Kevyn accompanies her and asks if she wants to cash in on the favor she owes him for getting Travis' autopsy report by joining him to his son's soccer game.
She rolls up in Daisy Dukes with fishnet and a bare midriff like a total badass, and even gives Kevyn's son some soccer tips that help him win the game. Seeing her at the soccer game is the happiest we've seen adult Natalie this whole season, but it's short lived because seeing the soccer game stirs up some understandably tough feelings and she has to excuse herself. She apologizes to Kevyn and understands if he wants to keep his kid away from "the crazy lady," to which he says, "You're not crazy. You've been through a lot. That's okay with me." Reader, my Grinch-sized heart grew three sizes.
Is Lottie the Antler Queen?!
Lottie awakens in the middle of the night because she's hearing something strange, and when she grabs the lantern, she stands perfectly in front of a deer skull, making it appear like she's wearing antlers. Is she the Antler Queen from the pilot episode or are they screwing with us? Anyway, she goes outside to investigate the noise and instead of seeing an animal ... sees Taissa, hunched on all fours and shoveling dirt into her mouth with a frenzy. No wonder her fingernails were so dirty.
In the morning, Lottie asks Taissa about it but she blows her off and says "I can't do crazy right now, Lot." Taissa clearly has no recollection of her nightly activities, and Lottie has once again been made to feel crazy for something she knows to be true. The trajectory of Lottie's mental state has been so well written over the course of the last six episodes, and I've been falling right into the traps the writers have set like the first episode's pit girl.
Laura Lee hears her out about her visions and decides to baptize her because of course she does, but while under the water, Lottie has a vision where she's walking through a basement and sees the deer shedding antlers. This vision is interrupted by her seeing a giant ball of fire behind Laura Lee's head. I can't help but feel like this is a premonition for Laura Lee trying to get that plane to fly and dying in a giant fireball. Nat and Travis bring back the deer, confirming Lottie's vision, but when Shauna cuts it open the thing is filled with maggots and worms. Gross.
Where has Misty Been All Episode?
Other than her drug stealing, we don't see a lot of Misty this episode, but the small time she does have on screen makes a hell of an impact. She watches Nat and Kevyn screw in her motel room through the owl camera, kidnaps the reporter while blasting the theme from "Phantom of the Opera," and holds her hostage by chaining her to a bed in the basement. Shauna said it best earlier in the episode, "Misty F****** Quigley."
Surprisingly enough, Misty is not the "craziest" one this week, as the title belongs to Taissa. In the final moments of the episode, we see her in the tree of her backyard, eating dirt, eyes wild, and with a giant bite mark taken out of her own hand. Her cell phone buzzes with a text from Nat which snaps her out of it, but this confirms it. Taissa is the tree lady: confirmed ... and she's eating herself.
Buzzworthy Moments and Additional Thoughts
Instead of highlighting funny lines or any missed moments (PS; Shauna is somehow not being blackmailed??), I want to highlight Shauna and Taissa's attempt to perform a literal backwoods abortion. Sophie Nélisse and Jasmin Savoy Brown deliver one of the most remarkable scenes I've ever seen on television, and I was completely moved to tears by their raw authenticity and emotional dedication to going there. Taissa runs to Shauna's aid because she doesn't want her to go through it alone, and Shauna trusts her to be the one to insert the underwire into her cervix. It's a hard but necessary scene that ends with Shauna in hysterics because she can't follow through with it, because the risk of dying is too high. When Nélisse as Shauna screams out, "I don't want to die," I felt her pain wash over my entire body.
It's particularly moving when put against the backdrop of Roe v. Wade at risk of being overturned in America. This scene shows the type of thing that's going to happen if we lose the access to safe, abortions, straight up. "Yellowjackets" has always been a must-see, but that moment alone should solidify its place in television history and if I ever meet Sophie Nélisse or Jasmin Savoy Brown, I need to thank them for giving me, and so many others this very necessary moment. We can't go back. Not to 1996. Not to pre-1973. Not ever.