Review: Yellowjackets, “It Girl” | Season 3, Episode 1

Welcome back to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Showtime’s Yellowjackets, which returns for a third season. This first review is as always free for all, but subsequent reviews—beginning with the second episode of the season tomorrow—will be exclusively for paid subscribers.

Coming off a rocky season two, there’s a lot of work ahead for Yellowjackets. Those nine episodes still had some devastating and thrilling moments—I’m not someone who thinks the show totally fell off a cliff—but they also lagged a lot in places, especially the present-day storyline. More broadly, the sense of purpose and clarity from season one seemed to slip, especially without a focused character-centric narrative to tie everything together like the tragedy of Shauna and Jackie’s friendship breakup.

We’re heading into this season with much less to look forward to than last time around, as I mentioned in my finale review: the show already ripped off the cannibalism Band-Aid, and revealed the gruesome reality of what happened to Shauna’s baby, and established the origin of the selection ritual and hunts. (It also cut one of its best characters’ arcs short due to everyone collectively losing their minds—but not in a fun, scary way.) There’s a higher degree of difficulty going in, even outside the pressure from disgruntled fans, because nobody in the present timeline has hinted much at anything in particular that happened during the second half of the Yellowjackets’ time in the wilderness. Outside of the first “pit girl” hunt from the opening of the pilot, everything ahead in the past timeline is a blank slate.

Of course, a blank slate could be helpful at this point, with plenty of opportunities for Yellowjackets to get back on its feet. If the show does plan on introducing a new threat (either physical or emotional) or going in a new direction, though, it might take some time. As a premiere, “It Girl” is more of an aftermath episode than anything else, picking up more or less where we left off and establishing the characters’ various emotional states without shaking things up in any real way.

As an aftermath episode, though, it does its job. When Nat died at the end of last season, I was a little too pissed and confused to really grieve her loss, but now watching Misty work through her own feelings away from her teammates gives me the space to do that. Thankfully, a grieving Misty can still be a very funny character, as when she picks a fight after downing seven whiskeys at a dive bar—but she’s becoming isolated from the others again, and it seems her not-quite-boyfriend is eager to push her further in that direction. Will Walter turn out to be the Big Bad of season three? That would make sense.

When it comes to the larger group, there isn’t much direct reckoning with what exactly happened out there that night, and how quickly they agreed to the insane selection ritual. The funeral itself is unsentimental, as is their casual bar-hang afterward. And Shauna actually takes a backseat to Callie as the main driver of the Sadecki family story, continuing to set up the newly complicit (and surprisingly eager) daughter as a potential major player in the series. Her material here isn’t exactly riveting stuff—for one, the cool-girl bullies make extremely easy targets for her pig-guts stunt—but Shauna’s mild (and later actively permissive) reaction to the news of Callie’s prank is a good insight into why the girl gets away with what she does.

There’s also enough good comedy to remind us why the Sadeckis make for such a good hang, even when a particular story (say, the Adam Martin cover-up) outstays its welcome. Warren Kole’s delivery of “Our daughter was suspended for assaulting girls with guts?” alone justifies the existence of this storyline, along with Melanie Lynskey’s nonchalant stoned chip-chomping and the multiple uses of “chronic.” There’s no real urgency in these stories yet, but the character work is solid for what it is, so I’ll reserve my complaints—especially since the premiere hints at some other threats to come, based on the arrival of that package at Shauna’s door.

Now that Taissa’s senatorial run is officially kaput, her present-day story is primarily about reigniting her relationship with Van, which plays out across a couple kind-of charming scenes. The biggest moment here, though, isn’t their slow, passionate kiss after dining and dashing; it’s the moment that shortly precedes it, when the waiter chasing them collapses on the ground after almost getting hit by a truck. Is the man dead, and would that imply something supernatural is afoot, another exchange of souls? What about the brief reappearance of the man with no eyes before Tai kisses Van?

These are the types of vague teases that started to wear out their welcome for me last season, and they’re common to both timelines. Case in point: the loud screeching/growling/roaring sounds that everyone hears at the end of the episode, the most blatant Lost parallel since, I don’t know, ten minutes ago when Coach Ben discovered a big buried case of emergency rations that might as well read “Dharma Initiative” right on the label.

Look, if the debut of this Smoke Monster-esque presence means the show is actually intent on confirming the undeniable existence of a forest spirit—we’ll call it “It,” like they do—I’ll be happy that they’re done pussyfooting around. But I’m still reluctant to really take something like this as “proof,” because the characters themselves still can’t agree on an interpretation, nor does the show feel ready to settle on something. My biggest concern is not just that the flashbacks won’t ever make meaningful progress in that mystery, but that they can’t due to the lingering ambiguities the present-day timeline took pains to establish.

Generally speaking, I’m still putting more stock in the interpersonal drama than the supernatural question, even if I’m skeptical of the potential war to come over Coach Ben. There’s still plenty of potential here, particularly at the intersection of the Shauna-Nat power struggle and the mutual hatred between Shauna and Mari. As Tai warns Nat, everything is life or death out here; a personality mismatch combined with some private psychological turmoil can easily result in murder, especially once food becomes scarce again.

It’s easy to understand Shauna’s fury and isolation in these moments, even if it makes her hard to like. From her perspective, everyone else is deluding themselves with all this talk of sacrifices, miracles, and bravery. After the sheer horror and brutality of what she has experienced in the past almost-year, Shauna doesn’t have the luxury of those coping mechanisms. She needs hope more than anyone else, but she can’t see it anywhere—ironic, since this is the brightest era they’ve experienced out there in the wilderness, between the plentiful food and the warmth of spring.

That dissonance could make for some really interesting character-based conflict in this season, if the show takes advantage of it. If we take it as a given that violence will erupt over the course of these ten episodes, what would trigger it? If indeed it’s true that “the cannibalism cat is out of the bag,” what could happen to justify eating more humans during a time of abundance?

For the time being, the little shelter society formed here in the wake of the cabin burning down makes for a homey new setting to watch these conflicts play out. For those counting on an unequivocal comeback season, this more patient premiere likely won’t deliver enough to win you back; it’s unclear at this point what specifically the story will be about on a narrative or thematic level. At least for me, though, it feels good just to be watching this show again, warts and all.

Stray observations

• Mari running through the woods in the opening, and her fall at the end: foreshadowing that she’ll be the pit girl, or a cheeky reference to that common theory?
• There’s still no real rigorousness when it comes to situating us in the nineties, as demonstrated by Taissa saying “handy lesbians for the win.”
• “Wait, do you like, actually have a personality?” This meta line seems to indicate the show actually plans to develop Melissa as a character. About time! She could work nicely as a new ally to Shauna. We also learn that Gen (previously played by Mya Lowe, now played by Vanessa Prasad) is responsible for hunting the deer that have been keeping them fed. Glad to see the newbs get something to do, though they’re not technically newbs anymore.
• Travis heard those same tree-screeching sounds after drinking the shroom tea, which seems notable. But what I want to talk about most is that scene’s rare look at Lottie talking openly about her mental illness to a friend, something I’ve specifically requested. Travis’s reaction to learning about the medication she stopped taking is interesting. Is he starting to wonder if there’s really anything spiritual to Lottie’s hallucinations after all?
• No on-screen appearance from Taissa’s wife or son, and but we do find out from a phone conversation that Simone is keeping little Sammy away from her. At least that’s something!
• The show always finds a way to keep Randy involved. This time he’s the “SwiftEATS” delivery guy who transports the pig guts to Callie.
• In addition to the envelope Shauna receives, somebody seems to be following her—and Shauna seems to notice in the bar but doesn’t say anything about it. Very intriguing.