WELCOME TO YOUR YELLOWJACKETS 307 RECAP. I AM WRITING THIS INTRO IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THIS IS ONE OF THE WILDEST EPISODES OF TELEVISION I’VE EVER SEEN (COMPLIMENTARY) AND I FEEL LIKE I’M STILL COMING DOWN FROM IT. Okay, I’ll stop for now. Below, find a painstaking breakdown of all things “Croak,” written by Alisha Brophy and Ameni Rozsa and directed by Jennifer Morrison. Can’t wait to chat in the comments! If your comment includes spoilers, just include a few non-spoiler sentences at the beginning so they don’t appear in the recent comments box on the homepage. Read past recaps! Take my Yellowjackets personality quiz! Let’s fucking gooooooo!
Heading into “Croak,” I wondered how it might sit with the shocking cliffhanger of last episode. Would we move down into a lower register to allow for a breather? Would we match “Thanksgiving (Canada)”‘s scream? “Croak” offers a brief respite in its prelude, a deft turning of the dial to tell a completely different story in a completely different tone, driving home the fact that the difference between humor and horror often comes down to context. After that, “Croak” doesn’t merely match the energy of last week’s post-Ben barbaric yawp. It turns up the volume, yielding one of the most bonkers episodes of television I’ve ever seen that still strikingly feels grounded in the world constructed by the show. I basically watched the entire thing with my jaw on the floor.
The episode opens by answering one of the season’s pressing questions: What the fuck is up with those wild ass sounds in the wilderness? The answer? Fucking frogs. As in literally frogs that are fucking. I live in central Florida and can verify I’ve often described the chorus of sounds of mating frogs as “screaming.” If I’d been malnourished and isolate for a long period of time like the Yellowjackets, I’d probably interpret those screams as even more ominous, too. The episode begins three days before the Yellowjackets are discovered dancing and screaming around Ben’s head on a spike, the first time Yellowjackets has employed this particular time device. We see close-ups of the frogs and their titular sounds. They’re being studied by a pair of scientists, a couple named Edwin and Hannah, played by Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton. They’re accompanied by Kodiak, a comically serious and gruff crossbow-toting wilderness guide who likes to suck on cigarettes while leaning against trees.
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Kodi kills a rabbit for the trio to eat. Edwin tends to his torn up feet, the result of wearing too-small shoes, so Kodi asks Hannah to fetch the plates. As she’s walking back, Kodi takes off his outer layer to reveal muscles bulging out from a tank top. Hannah literally trips from ogling him. This is so fun! Mere miles away from the Yellowjackets and their world is this other, smaller, lower stakes diorama of drama between three people. My wife often talks about how the difference between humor and horror can be just the slightest turn of the wheel. Set the trailer to The Shining to different music with new narration, for example, and you’ve got a wacky family comedy. Yellowjackets often excels at these tonal shifts and bending its own genre. But this little prelude with Hannah, Edwin, and Kodiak is an overt example of that turning of the dial. A toxic love triangle between two scientists and a mystery man! All happening in the Yellowjackets’ figurative backyard!
“The wilderness provides,” Kodi says about the barbecued rabbit. These words in a new context take on a comical cadence rather than a haunting one as it does when any of the Yellowjackets say something like it.
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Later in the tent, Hannah tries to get Kodiak to answer some personal questions, but he remains elusive. He tells one of Aesop’s fables: “The Frogs Who Desired a King,” of the frogs who prayed to Zeus to send them a king. Zeus sent them a heron, who killed the frogs. It’s a fitting tale in the context of the Yellowjackets, who are desperate for a leader, an Antler Queen. But that leadership only ever leads to death.
Kodiak admits he doesn’t know anything about frogs but a thing or two about horticulture. Weed. He’s talking about weed. He produces a joint, and the three proceed to get high in their tent in the rain while “Fly” by Sugar Ray plays. They talk about the frogs they’re studying, who manage to stay frozen before waking up to have a big ol’ orgy. This suggests they’re studying wood frogs, who spend the winter frozen. Edwin says something about the “arctic banshee frog,” but I can’t find any information on if this is an actual species.
Edwin has the idea to call Miss Cleo, the call-in psychic from the late 90s. He’s just kidding, but Hannah wants to do it for real. They struggle over the satellite phone until the antenna snaps. “This is our lifeline!” Edwin laments. “Relax,” Kodi says. “I’m your lifeline.”
Now it’s THE DAY the trio discovers the Yellowjackets. But first, Hannah and Edwin bicker about Kodi mere feet behind him. Kodi seems amused by it. Edwin says to Hannah that Kodi could rob and murder them and no one would ever know it. Little do they know, Kodi isn’t the danger lurking in these woods. “You’re smitten,” Edwin says when he clocks the way Hannah looks at Kodi. The camera pulls back from the group and settles on a tree where the symbol is written.
At night, Edwin is still on one about trying to prove Kodi isn’t who he says he is. Edwin smells fire and thinks they should go check it out. “Wouldn’t recommend it,” Kodi says. “This far from civilization?” Edwin doesn’t care. He wants to go check it out. Hannah and Kodi go with.
And, well, we know what happens next. The trio hears the girls screaming from a distance at first. Then Hannah starts recording, and we hear the beginning of the DAT tape that’ll be played by Shauna, Tai, and Van in the future. When Lottie sees the group, she shouts “NO!!” We end on Edwin’s “what the fuck?” from last episode’s ending, and then Van exclaims in disbelief “we’re going home.” Cut to theme song.
When we return to this fraught scene at camp, Hannah apologizes and says they didn’t mean to interrupt and are just leaving. Her instincts are clearly telling her to run. Misty tries to say Ben died of natural causes. Edwin seems to piece together who they are, but then Hannah’s instincts are confirmed by what happens next: Lottie axes Edwin in the back of the head, and he collapses.
“Holy shit,” Shauna says, glee all over her face. “Lottie, what did you do?” Nat asks. “They don’t belong,” Lottie says. “It doesn’t want them here.”
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Kodi tells Hannah to run, so they do. Nat yells at the others to bring them back alive, but the way they’re suiting up and making animal sounds suggests they’re prepared to hunt not gather. Kodi shoots his crossbow and hits Melissa in the shoulder. She begs for Shauna not to leave her, but Shauna tasks Mari with taking care of her: “She dies, you die,” she tells Mari. Nat instructs them all to clean up the Edwin scene because they don’t know who else could be coming. It’s sheer chaos.
In present day, Shauna sits on the toilet and listens to the DAT tape, hearing the moment when Edwin was struck by Lottie. But then she skips through the tape and lands on a part where Hannah talks to someone about how she wants them to be proud of her, not just see her as some mom who had a teenage pregnancy. So, it sounds like Hannah has/had a kid. We’ll circle back to this.
Shauna tells Jeff to stop spending time in the lobby, because circumstances have changed. She, meanwhile, is heading out. Jeff laments that she’s able to do whatever she wants while he just has to stay put. “I appreciate that secrecy, that’s your love language,” Jeff says. That’s not a love language, Jeff!
“I don’t deserve you, you know,” Shauna says before asking him to do something for her. She wants him to keep an eye on Callie. Shauna doesn’t know that Callie already has access to the tape. She’s also listening from the other side of the door while she searches the web for Unsolved Missing Persons + Canada + 1990s. She’s certainly not backing the fuck off like Shauna wants her to.
At the hotel where they’re staying, Van watches over a sleeping Tai, clearly still unnerved from Tai’s outburst in the middle of the night. Misty fucking Quigley then barges in unannounced, prompting Van to grab a…butter knife as a weapon. Misty drops the info that Tai met with Lottie the day she died. “You did?” Van asks. Tai says she met up with her to have a private conversation and that it doesn’t mean she murdered her.
Misty brings up that Tai has a history of “doing crazy shit and not even knowing about it.” Tai drops that it’s obvious whoever sent Shauna the tape murdered Lottie, but this is the first Misty is hearing of the tape.
Back in the chaos of the wilderness, Hannah and Kodi are running, the girls in close pursuit. Hannah wants to head back to camp, but Kodi points out they’re as good as dead if they do that and that if she wants to survive she’ll have to actually rely on her instincts. “Stick with me or you’re on your own!” he says, before splitting off. Hannah runs another way.
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
The girls run and growl, caw, snarl. Nat breaks up the group. They’re treating this like a sport, strategizing as if it were a soccer game. A chunk of Hannah’s hair gets caught on a tree. She ducks behind a log and starts recording the message Shauna will later hear, a message for her “sweet baby Alex.”
In the present, Shauna’s intercepted by Tai, Van, and Misty. She tells them there was more on the tape than just what Lottie did. Shauna, struggling initially to call Hannah by name, informs the group that she had a daughter who has clearly gotten ahold of the tape and is now out to punish them for what they did. Shauna wants to go stop her. Van asks her what she plans to do with her, and Shauna sarcastically says she’s going to sit her down and have a calm conversation with her. Van says they’re going with her, to Richmond, Virginia, where Shauna has apparently tracked down this Alex. This impresses Misty greatly. A new citizen detective has been born!
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
It’s time for a road trip! Shauna plays the rest of the tape for the group. Misty points out there was no mention of any offspring in Hannah’s obituary, but Shauna says it’s because it was a teenage pregnancy where the child was then adopted. Misty wonders why they didn’t know about the kid in the first place. “Someone did,” Van points out. Someone, after all, would have had to have gotten that tape to her. Tai says that Gen and Melissa got pretty close to Hannah, but Van points out they’re both dead. So, that’s that! It seems as if Hilary Swank As Melissa hints were a red herring. Melissa is dead. Perhaps there are no additional survivors after all. It seems much more likely now that Hilary Swank is playing this Alex character.
Misty wonders why this Alex woman would wait 25 years to enact her revenge. I have the same question!
While they stop for gas, Van confronts Tai and asks if she was ever going to tell her about going to see Lottie. Tai says she went to see Lottie to ask her to clarify more about what she meant when she said “it” was pleased for them after Nat died. “You promise you didn’t do it?” Van asks, and Tai does not answer.
Tai and Van come across Edwin, Hannah, and Kodi’s camp. They hear something in one of the tents, but it’s just a frog rattling in a jar. Van frees it and says “you’re okay, you’re free.” It’s ironic in the context of the fact that they could be free, too, if they weren’t busy hunting their way out of here. They find the satellite phone, and Van frantically tries to dial her mom. They seem, suddenly, so young again, like the boys discovered at the end of Lord of the Flies abruptly reconciling with their own youth and innocence again.
Akilah and Travis are looking through the woods together. Akilah says Lottie must have had a good reason to kill Edwin, like having a vision he was a bad guy or something. Misty approaches them and has an idea: They can corner Kodi at the “shit ridge.” Travis suggests they split up, so he and Akilah go left while Misty goes right. Travis fires a few shots to through Kodi off, and Hannah assumes it’s Kodi being shot. Shauna finds the chunk of Hannah’s hair on a branch and pockets it. Nat finds one of Hannah’s footprints, and Shauna takes out her knife.
Hannah slowly emerges and asks them not to hurt her. Nat says it’ll be okay, but Shauna of course grabs her and holds her knife against her, accusing her of shooting an arrow through Melissa. Hannah says it wasn’t her, that she has no weapons, that it was the guide they hired. Nat and Van come across them, too, and Nat tries to deescalate the whole situation. Shauna says they can still get rescued without leaving any witnesses. When a search party is sent looking for the scientists, they’ll find the Yellowjackets. Her plan is…short-sighted to say the least. Hannah says she knows where there’s first aid supplies to help Melissa. She has her leverage.
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
In the present Misty finds a receipt for the Lincoln tunnel in Shauna’s car and pockets it. She gets a call from Walter, who tells her the DNA results from under Lottie’s nails match the hair he took from Shauna’s hat. He thinks Shauna is Lottie’s murderer. I’m still wondering if a DNA match could also indicate it was Callie! Misty frantically texts Tai and Van that Shauna killed Lottie. They’re all trapped in the car together, wondering if they’re being driven around by a murderer.
“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” Shauna asks. She makes them tell her what the fuck is going on, but before they can, Van coughs up a bunch of blood.
In the wilderness, Misty screeches while running and is almost crossbowed by Kodi. When she ducks, she loses her glasses. If we’re sticking with the Lord of the Flies comparisons for this episode, it’s like when Piggy’s glasses are stolen.
Akilah and Travis indeed corner Kodi at the cliff, and Travis aims his gun at him. “Save your bullet,” Kodi says, implying he’s going to let go and crash to his death. But they tell him to stop and help him up. “Take us back with you,” Travis says.
The women rush Van to the hospital. Tai tells the front desk she has metastatic cancer, and this is the first Misty and Shauna are hearing of it. Tai pretends to be her wife so she can go in with her. Shauna says it seems so unfair that Van has cancer, and Misty tells her to stop pretending to care, accusing her of killing Lottie. Shauna is unfazed by Misty revealing the DNA match, pointing out Lottie stayed with her so naturally would have some of her DNA on her. Based on Shauna’s reactions, I genuinely don’t think she killed Lottie. I’m all in on the Callie theory at the moment. But I also know people clocked Jeff’s indifference to the reveal Lottie was killed last episode. Is it possible he’s helping cover up for his daughter? Would he be wiling to take the blame? Past behavior indicates yes!
Shauna abandons the others at the hospital. She clearly wants to finish off the job she started.
In the hospital, Tai sits with Van. She makes an under-her-breath comment about wanting to kill the guy who is screaming in the bed next to them, and Van clutches her hand and says “don’t.” Van isn’t sure what Tai is capable of, especially if Tai thinks that sacrificing someone could save her. Van closes her eyes and hears teen Lottie saying “take a breath, now what do you hear?” We slip into a dreamstate where Adult Van encounters her teenage self. “We never actually cheated death,” Teen Van says. “It was always an even trade.” Teen Van sets fire to Van’s hospital bed. The way they’ve been engulfing Van in fire so much this season really does suggest she had something to do with the cabin fire. When she wakes up in her hospital room, she sees Tai as Other Tai, mouth covered in dirt. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t let them take your eyes.”
Day breaks out in the wilderness, and Gen and Mari are trying to get the arrow out of Melissa. Lottie is bent over Edwin’s dead body, spreading his blood on their face. Gen and Mari realize they have to push the arrow through. Lottie asks to help, but Gen points out she has done enough. “Those strangers, they were going to ruin everything,” Lottie says. “Go fuck your blood-dirt, Lottie,” Mari responds.
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
They push the arrow through Melissa and extract it. We see the same shot of Lottie’s face covered in blood that appears in “Did Tai Do That?” Shauna, Tai, Van, and Nat show up back at camp with Hannah in tow. “Hi, I’m Hannah,” she says, clearly alarmed.
Callie walks in on Jeff inspecting the bed for bedbugs. She tells him that they keep telling themselves Shauna is a good person and that all the bad things that happen to her couldn’t be helped. “What if she’s actually a bad person?” Callie asks. She asks Jeff if Shauna has ever mentioned crossing paths with two frog scientists. Callie has clearly been doing a lot of citizen detective work of her own. Jeff’s reaction suggests he does already know all this. I mean, it’s reasonable to assume Shauna would have written about this in her journal, right?
Shauna arrives at her destination and slowly extracts a brand new hunting knife as “Blood Bitch” by Cocteau Twins kicks in.
I mean…what an episode! The Yellowjackets have been really keeping me on my toes this season in the most fun way imaginable. The thrills of this episode are absolutely bonkers, and the characters are behaving so wildly, but it still ultimately tracks with who they are and the journeys they’ve been on this season. Like the frogs of the fable, the Yellowjackets have over-invested in the idea of governance and leadership. All of their ruinous actions with Ben have led to this moment of them not just fumbling their chance at a rescue but actively destroying it — in Lottie’s case, killing it. The frogs were sent the king they asked for, and they suffered death as a result. Whether it’s giving too much power to Lottie’s visions or giving too much power to someone on a rage rampage like Shauna, the group is actively harming themselves by choosing these societal structures that mimic the outside world instead of truly coming together. They treat the big chase of this episode every bit as seriously as they treat the game of soccer or the bone game from earlier this season, only with this turn of the wheel, it’s much scarier.
The arrival of outside people to the wilderness further reiterates just how distant the Yellowjackets have become from the previous versions of themselves. Violence has become second nature to them. The relentlessly high intensity cadence of the episode makes for a thrilling experience, and every second of this season seems to be inching us closer to the haunting tone of the series’ opening scene.
I know some people have been struggling with the characterization of Teen Shauna as a bloodthirsty rage monster, but it has honestly been one of my favorite parts of the season. I do see the two Shauna arcs in each timeline as being very aligned, and this episode is a great example of that. In both, Shauna wants to go rogue and ignore group consensus in order to enact violence as a way of “solving” her problems. Teen Shauna wants to kill the frog crew under the assumption a rescue party sent for them will find them instead. No witnesses. Adult Shauna wants to solve the mystery of who has supposedly been targeting her with a hunting knife. Every time, she chooses self-preservation over survival. Every time, her trauma response is to pick up a knife. I didn’t know the group’s actions in the wilderness could get much worse than watching Javi die, but here we are this season, with Ben, with these outsiders who are targeted just for being that. But for as intensely violent as this episode is, in true Yellowjackets fashion we also get more than that, a turn of the wheel to give us some three-person melodrama. Edwin, Hannah, and Kodi (if that is his real name) were just living lives of minor squabbles and sexual tension until they happened across the Yellowjackets. My how fast the wheel can turn.
Last buzz:
- I ended up saying it in the comments last week but meant to work it into the main recap, but Ben’s head on a stake really feels like a reference to the “beast”‘s head on a stake in Lord of the Flies. Much like the beast in the book, our characters have found a vessel to project their own worst instincts onto, not realizing that the beast is actually within.
- Jeff’s emphasis of “poorly furnished” is too good.
- “Late. And rudely.”
- It looked like Tai also found a map of some sort in the tent.
- “I am not family, but we have a very intense trauma bond.”
- Before he’s killed, Edwin seems to recognize who the girls are. I do wonder what kind of media coverage they’ve been receiving. They seem like catnip for the tabloids — high achieving, suburban, mostly white, mostly girls gone missing mysteriously.
- So, I know a lot of us went all in on the outsiders being birders and mapped some bird metaphors onto the narrative, but let’s pivot to frogs!!!! For some reason, the fact of them being FROG scientists is so funny to me? I think just because it’s somehow giving DORK even more than birders. These poor dorks! Plus Kodi, who I’m very entertained by.
I think I saw Arctic Banshee Frog open for TV on the Radio back in 2012. And those The Soup reruns will never be the same after seeing Jacked McHa, I mean, Joel McHale big bearing around in the wilderness.
Now to the spoilers…
I don’t think we’ve ever seen Shauna as happy as she was when Lottie put that ax into Ed’s head. Van’s instant desire to call her mother, knowing what their relationship was like, was heartbreaking. Tai, Van, and Misty texting each other about Shauna while in the car with her and thinking she wouldn’t realize that they were texting each other made me laugh out loud.
I am not a person who watches a show or movie and tries to pick up clues or figure out twists along the way. Watching YellowJackets makes me very glad that I am not that kind of viewer. I would have pulled my hair out already if I were.
haha despite what these recaps suggest, i really am also the type of viewer to just let things wash over me without trying to dig for clues or over-analyze. i watch Severance that way, too! but that’s why i also love my privilege of being able to see episodes early — I can watch once to let it just wash over and then a second time to take notes for the recap
I’m pretty sure Artic Banshee Frog were the openers at a Toad the Wet Sprocket club show I saw back in ’95. I’m pretty sure they were founded by two former members of Fine Young Cannibals, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it or anything… 🐸🐝🐝🐝
“Who wants to go halfsies on some floss picks?” I’m down so bad for misty quigley.
Sure hope that doesn’t age poorly!
I love your observation that the yellowjackets are punished when they revert to social conditioning! Moreover I’d say they thrive when they act as a non-hierarchical community. Love to see my favorite philosophy represented onscreen.
I think vans repeated fire imagery has more to do with burning to death being likely her greatest fear since she narrowly escaped it in the pilot. Also teen!Melissa is almost certainly alive bc there was a line in the car to the effect of
“gen and Melissa got pretty close to Hannah”
“But they’re both dead”
So I think she makes it, at least for a while!
I totally buy Jiff would take the fall for Callie, he’s a good dad, but I am not so sure Callie did it anymore. I think she’s genuinely wrestling with the idea that her mom (and by extension she) is a bad person. That shot me back to the convo in s2 between Jiff and her where she learns about her brother. By the way that scene is one of my absolute favorites. It was also touching how Callie was observant enough to clock Jiff’s panic itching.
yeah true, Van has always been surrounded by fire imagery ever since she almost died in the beginning. it just seems to have REALLY ramped up this season.
JIFF
dont forget, they also tried to light Van on fire when they thought she died from the wolf mauling! i had forgotten that untik i read these comments.
Yeah, it’s still possible that Melissa made it out of the wilderness but died some other way in the ensuing 25 years.
sometimes i’m so stressed about an episode that i read a recap before i watch it. this was one of those times.
“the last team hid a stash somewhere” – was the supplies ben found from FROG SCIENTISTS instead of CABIN GUY? crazy. (not the craziest thing that happened in this episode, by a lot. but stood out to me!)
does shauna see herself in hannah, a little? “not just a mom who had a teenage pregnancy” – she replays this! that’s the defining trauma of her life! i remain obsessed with shauna.
i paused on hannah’s obituary. she founded her high school’s ultimate frisbee team and led them to regional championships! slay.
your points about the yellowjackets recreating punitive state justice and other oppressive societal structures of “civilization” just gets more and more salient as the season goes on – and i feel like it works so well as a way to look at the entire series. ironically, the more they recreate these structures, the less human their behaviour becomes.
yes, maybe I’ll go long on this in the next recap, but increasingly I am viewing the series through this lens of like what IS “civilization?” a surface-level reading of the Yellowjackets is that they have become “uncivilized,” but really so much of their current behaviors — fear of “outsiders,” which leads to violence; desire for clearly organized hierarchies; rituals and traditions that are strictly enforced; retributive “justice” — are all things enshrined and reinforced by their suburban lives! so actually it’s when they’re bringing “civilization” into the wilderness when things get very fucked up
Go long, Kayla! Go long!
Oh, yeah I noticed that about the supplies as well! I bet if we went back and looked at the supplies, they would have some type of identifying mark that indicates they are the scientists stash. To me, it makes more sense than cabin guy, not sure why but something always felt a little too industrial about the packaging or something, but I brushed it off at the time. Now it makes more sense.
While I am not certain who killed Jeff, I now feel pretty sure that the person for whom Lottie was rehearsing apologies in the mirror is Hannah’s daughter. That’s something that has always stuck in my mind because I really didn’t think she’d do that for anyone we knew on the canvas. The show wanted us to think it was Lisa, but in her case I feel Lottie would have considered it sufficient to just throw 50K and an offhand “sorry” at her.
But Hannah’s daughter? Yes, I can see Lottie feeling like she has to grovel, whether out of genuine remorse or out of fear of what Hannah’s daughter might say to the police or the media, if she had that tape.
oh interesting this hadn’t occurred to me!
Loooove this theory!
I literally live for these recaps and this episode is my new all time favorite.
Shauna is not just someone who has killed before, she is a serial killer. It has been staring us in the face this whole time but it took the chaos of this context to see it. I LOVE it. It fits so perfectly with the storyline and Misty’s character, a CITIZEN DETECTIVE obsessed with solving unsolved murders!!!!
Every week, I have the same pattern… watch the episode, and immediately read your recap.
It’s things like this: “post-Ben barbaric yawp” that are the cherry on the beautiful blog cake.
Okay, I hope that’s enough…
IS HANNAH PIT GIRL? She 100% fits the look, and based on the car conversations, she’s with them a while. And clearly she doesn’t make it out of the wilderness.
Also, I spent the first 5 minutes wondering if Kodiak was just the ghost of Cabin Guy, but I guess he’s probably not. Would’ve been fun, though!
I’m all in that theory, which shall not be repeated for front-page purposes. Didn’t occur to me until now but makes sense!
That was my immediate thought about Hannah being Pit Girl also! Definitely a possibility. I also considered whether Kodiak was related in some way to Cabin Guy. Maybe he even stayed in the cabin at some point. Maybe he is the reason for the missing fingers or even the reason for cabin guy’s death?! He is super evasive and seems to know the area really well, so it’s not completely implausible that he has a connection.
lol to both “what the frogs” and “barbaric yawp”
Hi Joel McHale! Kodiak isn’t NOT Jeff Winger given a few more years of misfortune, I can see it
I just had a wild thought… what if Hannah’s teen-pregnancy-adopted-daughter turns out to be one of the Yellowjackets??? It would mean a name change somewhere along the way and would require even more suspension of disbelief, but whatever we’re there anyway and that would be a bananas twist I’d cheer for
LOVE these recaps. I always pull them up immediately after watching.
Okay, hoping that is enough space to avoid spoilers. Does anyone else think that calling Alex Hannah’s daughter was a bit of a red herring? The name is pretty gender neutral. My personal theory is that Alex is Walter.
This episode has made me realise how amazing it is going to be to go back and rewatch the whole show once we have the entire knowledge of the time in the Wilderness. Knowing who had what role, the specifics of that trauma – I am already looking forward to it!
I was literally on the edge of my seat during this episode. The different tone at the start and meeting these other characters. Such a horror movie set up with the yellowjackets as the bad guys.
With Travis and Akilah asking Kodak to go back with him – i wonder if there’s any chance they seperate from the rest of the group?
Interesting parrallels with Shauna and Melissa and Shauna and her family. What Melissa wanted was Shauna to be with her, and Shauna instead leaves to be a ‘protector’. Similarly what Jeff and Callie want is to be with and close to Shauna, when her instinct is to go and be a ‘protector’. I wonder how much of that is because of the baby loss, specifically in relation to the feeling she has of not protecting the baby from the other yellowjackets.
I was thinking the same thing about doing a full rewatch at the end. I really enjoyed rewatching the first two seasons before season 3 launch. It’s very cool to look at it through the lens of what we know now, and it’s also fun to notice Easter eggs that were planted in the first season that come to fruition in seasons 2 and 3.
this show is way too intense for me so i read the recaps and am so grateful for them & you Kayla & the commentators!
yay thanks for being here!
the other obvious reference for the head on the stake is Pentheus in The Bacchae…
A few things:
1. I’m pretty sure Swank is Melissa. If you watch Shauna’s face when Van says Gen and Melissa are dead, she looks shifty. The others think she’s dead but I suspect Shauna knows she isn’t. Also, the previews show Swank in blue eye contacts, and someone else was credited as “Alex” in this episode, so she’s not Alex.
2. I don’t know why the “Van and/or Tai burned down the cabin” is such a popular theory. It makes literally no sense. Van was DEVASTATED when the cabin burned down, and then filled with righteous anger at Ben who she’s convinced tried to kill them in their sleep. Liv is not playing those scenes that in any way indicates Van is lying or hiding anything. Fire is a motif for Van because she was nearly burned alive, THREE TIMES. Why on earth would she or Tai want to burn down their only source of shelter? Also, if you watch and read cast and crew interviews, it doesn’t seem like there’s a big twist coming about the source of the cabin fire. Liv and Jasmin don’t know. Steven doesn’t know. Sophie doesn’t know. We’re meant to assume it was either Ben (Steven said he played it like Ben was guilty), or it was an accident. It makes the most sense that it was an accident and the girls needed someone to blame, playing into themes of false persecution and paranoia that are also present in the adult timeline.
3. I’m sure recapping is hard and takes a long time and I realise you can’t include everything, but every week I can’t help noticing how much attention in these recaps goes to Shauna and Jeff scenes, and how little love is given to adult Tai and Van. You completely skipped over a huge scene where Tai literally tells Van she’s willing to kill for her, and Van says she doesn’t want to live that way. Huge implications for their relationship and a massive shift for Van’s character. It seems like you’re maybe not that interested in either of them as characters or invested in their relationship, which is personal preference of course, but it’s a little jarring to come to Autostraddle of all places and see the two main lesbian characters skipped over and brushed aside in favour of constant Jeff praise and paragraphs about the straight frog people love triangle. I really don’t get it, especially when Tai and Van are such important characters and Van is literally dying. It’s so hard watching her go through this and their love story is so heartbreaking and crucial to the adult timeline and I wish someone here had more to say about it, tbh.
Point (3) trash
If someone else’s opinion is trash…look no further than your irrelevant comment. OP has a point. Tai says she will kill for Van. She’s gonna go on a kill spree now if she thinks it’ll save Van. Pretty easy jump and relevant, IMO.
Right, that’s been such a major plot point with adult Tai and Van – other Tai taking over and wanting to kill someone to keep Van alive, and Van not wanting to live that way. I’m really scared for what this means for them tbh! Really don’t want her to die but also don’t want Tai to lose her own self in the process of trying to save her with the power of human sacrifice. Very nervous for tonight’s episode…
OK thanks wiloldernuzz
What an incredible episode! Hilary Swank still not showing up is killing me.
Can’t believe we had all this talk about birders and it turns out they are frog scientists. I don’t know why, but it’s like the writers chose the dopiest animal.
I know Shauna said she was going to meet Hannah’s kid, and she’s normally a terrible lier, but idk if I’m buying it. I think Walter killed Lottie just to create the goose chase. That’s a Moriarty move I think? Hannah’s kid is a red herring.
I do think Other Tai went back and killed the guy who picked up the card though.
I still think Swank is Melissa. The way Van said “they’re dead,” implies they were rescued and “died” later. I think the kid is a red herring too but Alex is alive. Since I think Walter killed Lottie to get Misty back in the detective fold, why not agree with someone else that Water is Alex. It’s possible. He did just appear. He’s very much about pulling Misty away from them and sowing the seeds of doubt.
This episode was nuts! (In a good way!) It’s so flinging flanging darkly lit (I mean it *was* nighttime in the woods so I get it) that I missed half of what went on, so I’m glad for your recaps Kayla!
I was stunned most of this episode so the only takeaways I noted were my appreciation at Jeff’s indignation about the hotel’s furnishing, and my own indignation that teen Misty’s hunting calls woke up my dog 😂
I’m glad we’re transparently seeing Other Tai now, too. That confirmation felt very drawn out. Tai babe, I know why you won’t, but see a psychologist!
Lauren Ambrose and Liv Hewson are so good at mirroring each other. Both of their performances have been highlights of this season for me so far. Teen Van’s instinct to call her mom felt so real and heartbreaking.
Spoiler space here: Misty continues to make me laugh out loud with her one-liners and Christina Ricci’s delivery is . I love how fast paced these episodes are, but I do miss the season 1 style where we got some backstory into each character’s life. We still don’t know anything about Shauna or Misty’s pre-crash lives. And as much as Shauna wants to say something fucked Misty up in childhood, I would say the same goes for Shauna (maybe even more so!)
It was great having the reveal of the frogs and finally finding out who Joel Mchale is. He looks so different with a beard and bulked up than he did on Community I almost didn’t recognize him at first.
If Hilary Swank is supposed to be Hannah’s kid, the age doesn’t really match up, because she’s older than the Yellowjackets are. Hilary Swank was 22 in 1997. Hannah doesn’t look old enough to have had a kid that long ago. Even if you stretch it and say Alex was the girls age in 1997, I feel like Hannah doesn’t look old enough to have a kid that age. There’s no date on the obituary, but she would still have to be in her early to mid-30s in order to have a teenager the same age as the YJ team. Or maybe I’m just not very good at guessing ages of people in the dark while covered by dirt, who knows?
I feel like I’m more on the side of thinking Shauna would kill Lottie than Callie, especially after Callie seems freaked out by her mom actually being a bad person. And especially since she was starting to bond with Lottie and didn’t understand why her mom was kicking Lottie out of the house.
I’m so curious how long Hannah stays in their compound and what ends up causing her death, as well as Gen and Melissa. Are Travis and Akilah going to leave with Kodiak instead of going back to camp? More answers = more questions!
Also, I know the creators set this up for a 5 season arc, but I really just don’t know how much further we can go in the present day arc as people are getting killed off left and right. There’s a lot of material to be mined from the past though and I hope we see more of that!
I’ve been wondering about the 5 season arc as well. They’ve really kicked it into high gear this season, and just started killing with abandon!
One area that hasn’t been addressed (outside of a brief Lottie flashback) is the space between their rescue and now. I don’t know how much time they would realistically spend on that, because it kinda seems like a lot of that was just everyone trying to find normal. But the year or so after rescue probably has some great story material.
Okay, so this show makes me bonkers in a great way. What if…Swank is Melissa and she’s dating Alex, Hannah’s kid. Why not? Perhaps Melissa took the tape as insurance and never told anyone. They think she’s dead because Shauna made her go away. She listens to the tape, finds Alex, and they get together. Maybe Nat was right and Travis didn’t kill himself after all…can’t rule out Water being “someone’s something” from the wilderness. I love this show so much!!!
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Are predictions spoilers?
I feel like the fact that the hair came from the hat and not Shauna’s head and that Misty just found the receipt in the car points to it being Callie’s DNA and Callie driving. I don’t actually think Callie killed Lottie on purpose, but I think she was there that night and maybe they got in a fight or Lottie fell or something. And plausibly their interaction ended and then someone else killed Lottie or she died a different way, but Callie hasn’t said anything because she knows her mom would be mad at her for going to see Lottie.
Similarly I don’t think Tai killed Lottie or anyone else (yet) because Van is still sick. And I don’t think the show wants to commit one way or the other to whether the sacrifices for Van to live are real or just in their heads. And that uncertainty (especially for Tai) only works if she didn’t kill anyone.
I’m confused about Hannah’s daughter. Was this the child she was pregnant with, in the wilderness? Was this another child Hannah previously had? I wasn’t able to read the date on Hannah’s obituary.
I doubt Callie killed Lottie. I got the inpression she liked Lottie.
She was a teen mom so presumably I’d say Hannah is now a doctoral student (or prof). If we go with that, Hannah is roughly 25-30 when she appears in the wilderness. Her kid should be about 10-15 years old when Hannah meets the Yellowjackets.
OH MY GOD WHAT AN EPISODE HOLY SHIT.
I gotta say as uneasy as I was about the shows trajectory at the beginning for the season this and the last one ep really turned it around for me. We’re back!
I am so happy and vindicated by the frogs screaming. I’m personally attached to “no actual supernatural, it’s all in their heads” so this was a great development for me lol.
Your point about the fine line between horror and comedy really stood out to me this episode too. When the girls are on the hunt and it’s cutting back and forth between Hannah and Kodiak running, Lottie bathing in Edwin’s (rip) blood, and Melissa with the arrow; the point where the girls are arguing over pulling the arrow out or not made me bust out laughing, it felt like a comedy bit. All while feeling a little sick from seeing the brain matter. Same with the heartbreak of hearing Hannah record a message for her kid, and then cutting to the adults at the elevator having to hold it open to argue. Tall about whiplash.
Not a second was wasted this episode. I feel like this episode has some of the most instances of the adults actually acknowledging what happened out there and I am here for it.
Re Callie maybe killing Lottie. I don’t see it going that way, because Callie seemed pretty shaken up by the tape, so I doubt she’d be able to hide a murder. I think the hair was planted, but that’s as far as I got.
Also Van, every scene with adult her is more endearing, she’s so funny. Her desperation over the sat phone was so heart wrenching too. I feel pretty certain she’s getting taken away soon 😭 when she saw her younger self, the same way Nat did, I figured that’s her death knell. Also Tai being so ready to just become a serial killer to try and save Van’s life? I love some messy dykes. I fully thought she was going to go and like, pillow to the face that guy in the hospital.
Thanks for another excellent recap. Can’t wait to see where we go next!
I’ve been reading these recaps and comment sections since the beginning! I also immediately come here after watching to dig in, but this is my first time commenting.
I think. But this is also just spoiler space.
Did anyone else think that was Tai Prime at the very end again, after Van begged AlternaTai to let her through?
LOVE your recaps Kayla! I binged the show the last several weeks (and read the recaps and comments here after every episode) and just now caught up.
A theory that popped into my head. Lottie obviously put the necklace on Callie, so maybe she was planning to kill her (exact reason unknown), there was a struggle, and Lottie accidentally (or not) fell down the stairs.
I really love your recaps, Kayla. I’ve just caught up on your season three ones, and they’re as enjoyable as ever.
[leaving extra spoiler space just in case]
I’ve seen a lot of people comment about Ben’s head being on a spike or a stake, but I don’t think it is! I think the darkness and the angle of that first shot of Edwin and Hannah walking into the camp in ep 6 kinda give that impression, but when I looked closely (and it’s easier to see in the angle of that scene in this episode) his head is actually on a round of wood, more like a plinth, and with flowers and leaves surrounding it. I say this not to nitpick, but because the implications feel really different to me. Like, you’d put your enemies heads on stakes, but the way they’ve laid it out here, kind of beautifully presented (with flowers!) reads a lot more to me like a fucked up kind of honouring of Ben instead – which is exactly what Shauna said they were going to do.