Yellowjackets isn’t just one of the most popular shows currently airing – it’s one of the most shocking. Warning: This post contains spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 3.
Premiering on Showtime in 2021, the series follows the titular 1996 Wiskayok High School girls’ soccer team after their plane goes down in the Canadian wilderness while enroute to a national tournament. Left to fight for survival and facing limited resources and seemingly supernatural forces, the series chronicles their descent into madness and the extremes they are willing to go to survive.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Although they are rescued after 19 months, “the Wilderness” followed them home and continues to shape their lives well into adulthood.
The series is currently in the midst of its third season, and although Yellowjackets has only aired two dozen episodes, it has been packed with shocking plot twists and jaw-dropping scenes.
The Cabin Burns Down
Season 2 stripped the survivors of their safety net and made them more vulnerable than ever when, in the final moments of the season, their cabin went up in flames, forcing them to face the remainder of winter without shelter.
Although the team managed to escape the flames with only the items they could grab, and while Season 3 opened to reveal they not only managed to survive, but seemingly thrive, the arson storyline continued to hang over their heads into the most recent episodes. Convinced that the missing Coach Scott set the blaze, in Season 3, Episode 4, “12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis,” he is found guilty of attempted murder.
Shauna Murders Adam
A fender bender turned into a steamy affair that turned into murder in Season 1 when Shauna suspected that her secret boyfriend was the person blackmailing the Yellowjackets survivors. In Season 1, Episode 9, Shauna confronts Adam with her suspicions, but before he can defend himself, she stabs him in the stomach, killing him.
Not only was the fact that Shauna murdered Adam shocking, but the coverup, which involved her dismembering him in a bathtub, was a gruesome reminder of her days in the wilderness and how it still haunts her in the present day.
Taissa’s Wife Finds Biscuit
Fans bingeing the first season were just as concerned about one four-legged background character as they were the Yellowjackets surviving in the wilderness: Taissa’s family dog Biscuit. After going missing earlier in the season, Taissa’s wife, Simone, makes the gruesome discovery in “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” that Biscuit has been dead all along. Not only is the lovable pooch dead, but his head has been ritualistically placed on an altar in a hidden room beneath their home. It turns out that sleepwalking Taissa, dubbed “Night Taissa” by some, followed her out of the wilderness and has returned.
Natalie Dies
One of the most shocking moments, and biggest losses, came in the adult timeline. As the adult Yellowjackets find themselves at Lottie’s remote commune participating in an unexpected hunt, they give The Wilderness another sacrifice when Natalie sacrifices herself to save Lisa, who emerged from the trees with a gun after fearing Lottie was in danger. Armed with a syringe of phenobarbital, Misty lunges towards Lisa, only for Natalie to jump in the way and be stabbed with the needle instead.
Natalie’s death is a tragic loss for the remaining survivors, particularly Misty, and made even more heartwrenching by the fact that she died sacrificing herself after sacrificing Javi 25 years earlier.
Pit Girl
Yellowjackets’ opening scene became a defining moment for the show: a terrified girl, dressed in nothing but a thin white gown, running barefoot through snowy woods. Her pursuers, or rather hunters, chase her and taunt her with animalistic noises until the hunt comes to an end when the girl plummets into a trap, becoming impaled on spears, as a masked and cloaked figure steps towards the edge of the pit.
The gruesomeness of that scene not only set up one of the biggest mysteries of the series – who is pit girl? – but also set the tone of the show and foreshadowed what was to come in the wilderness.
Javi Is Sacrificed
In the penultimate episode of Season 2, the group, starving and on the verge of losing their spiritual leader after Shauna beat Lottie, draw cards from a stack to determine who will be sacrificed in order to sustain the group and appease The Wilderness. While it initially seemed that a minor character would be the unlucky one marked for death, fans were left gasping when Natalie drew the Queen of Hearts.
The moment marked their first ritualistic hunt, and featured a second twist when Javi, who was attempting to guide Natalie to safety, falls through the ice. Rather than saving him, Natalie let him drown, sacrificing him so that she could live.
Jackie’s Fate in “Edible Complex”
Fans long suspected that cannibalism would come into play by the time Season 1 wrapped, but nobody was expecting what happened in Season 2. In the second episode of the show’s sophomore run, “Edible Complex,” the team’s efforts to cremate Jackie goes awry when a gust of wind causes snow to drop on her body, essentially smoking it. When the discovery of their mistake is made, their hunger overpowers them, causing the girls to consume her flesh in a scene that transpired as a Greek feast.
The moment ultimately changed the course of the team’s survival in the wilderness, defining the extremes they were willing to take in order to survive. As fans know, “Snackie” was just the beginning…
