This article contains spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 2. If you’re not caught up just yet, check out your Yellowjackets Season 1 Story So Far.
After a long, cold winter, Yellowjackets Season 2 is here and it's as brutally brilliant as ever. The premiere reunites us with the survivors of the plane crash in both the '90s and the present day, including a key new addition with the arrival of adult Lottie Matthews (Simone Kessell). Many of Season 1's biggest mysteries revolved around the young woman and her slide towards the supernatural in the wilderness of 1996. While the premiere of Season 2 doesn't tie up those loose threads just yet, it does go a long way to introducing some more context around Lottie and her new organization, while also opening up some big questions about what she's hiding behind her zen facade, her motivations, and how she could shape the season going forward.
What Happened to Lottie After the Yellowjackets Were Rescued?
Seeing as her survival was only properly hinted at in the final moments of the Season 1 finale, we knew nothing about Lottie's life after the crash until the Season 2 premiere. As many had suspected, we meet adult Lottie running some kind of strange organization. But the smiley, nature-focused wellness retreat was a far cry from the blood-thirsty cult that some had expected. Another key reveal is that Lottie's parents put her into some kind of mental health system after the Yellowjackets were rescued, and we see her undergoing Electric Shock Therapy. The show has already established that Lottie was taking drugs for schizophrenia before her time in the forest, and that her parents had a detached way of approaching their daughter’s struggles and visions at best. (Even if those visions did literally save their lives once.) It's clear that didn't change after her time in the woods, something adult Lottie alludes to while giving a speech to her clients at her lakeside retreat. She mentions how those who are working on themselves often blame many others including "the parents that didn't support you."
Though she clearly went through it after returning to civilization in 1998, adult Lottie seems to be thriving in the present. While her professional and organized persona may be a bit of a shock, it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about what she achieved in Season 1. Abduction and bank fraud are no easy feat, and yet Lottie managed both so far as we can tell in the Season 1 premiere. But, you wouldn't guess it from the way that she welcomes Nat into the fold when she breaks out of her captivity at the very familiar looking Camp Green Pine. What's that? Well, funny you should ask.
What is Camp Green Pine?
Camp Green Pine is the residence of Lottie’s apparent cult. It looks a lot like the wilderness where the girls were trapped, though we're yet to discover where it's actually located. Sitting somewhere between a yoga retreat and a summer camp, there's something eerily childlike about the place, which fits as it's clear that to a point Lottie is stuck in 1996 with her friends in the forest. The show's creators told IGN that Camp Green Pine was inspired by multiple things, co-showrunner Ashley Lyle's "fascination" with the summer camps she never got to attend, the real life controversial wellness guru Teal Swan, and Lyle shared "a mutual fascination with the current trend of wellness, which in its varying forms can feel like it's a genuine way to address trauma and mental illness, and just a way to cope with the world around us. And then it can sometimes feel a bit predatory or frankly bullshit." In the premiere those aspects are all at play as we meet adult Lottie.
So, what actually goes on at Camp Green Pine? Well, that's the bigger question. Lottie is clearly wealthy like her family before her. She also uses the wellness aspect of the camp as her public facing persona, offering advice and exercise. But, as we know from the frantic voicemail that Nat got from her ex-AA sponsor at the end of last season, Lottie has power and knows how to wield it. She has an apparent legion of people who are happy to kidnap, abduct, stalk, and potentially murder (R.I.P Travis) at her beck and call. So, while the beatific setting and positive self-talk look more recognizable and less scary than what many of us were expecting, it's clear that Lottie has many layers, and Camp Green Pine could well be a cover for something a lot darker.
Is Lottie Actually Running a Cult at Camp Green Pine?
At this point, this all depends on the way you look at it, as co-showrunner Bart Nickerson referenced while explaining the creative motivations of Camp Green Pine.
"I think the idea of having this sort of a wellness community or a kind of intentional community or I guess cult depending on your perspective, be like a summer camp, what's more wholesome in its ideal than a summer camp?" Nickerson notes.
That juxtaposition of fun, pure, idealistic youth and the more murky aspects that we see in Lottie's collective are intentional and, seeing as one of the creators said the word, it's safe to say that Lottie is running something that is at least akin to cult. The matching outfits, secluded location, kidnapping, and scary folk horror symbol definitely point in that direction. You get even more of that sense when Nat (Juliette Lewis) escapes and the clientele of the retreat run after her like prison guards rather than worried citizens. Lottie's sway rules here, and as night descends onto the camp we get a glimpse into the more feral parts of her teaching.
The aims of Lottie's cult are yet to reveal themselves, but there is a ritual that sees figures in animal masks bury another of their members in the dirt. It all feels directly related to Lottie's time in the forest. The most generous reading is that she feels like she found herself there and is trying to recreate that experience for others. Of course, another option is that her deep spiritual and possibly supernatural connection to the woods still exists, and her cult is there to help her connect with that and channel its power. We know that Tai is somehow connected to and still believes in the bloody rituals of the forest — RIP to Biscuit — and it looks like Lottie could be too. All of that said though, the premiere leaves us in the dark about Lottie's true intent. She could have kidnapped Nat for her own safety after Travis was murdered by another party. We still don't know whether or not she is the Antler Queen and the season could still surprise us by revealing its someone else entirely. If that's the case then her cult once again takes on a different and potentially less dangerous and more altruistic shape.
Did Lottie Kill Travis?
Lottie's potential duality is key to the interest and intrigue that the showrunners wanted to build into Season 2, as Lyle explains how adult Lottie contrasts with her peers.
"I think the one thing that unites [the main cast] in Season 1 is that none of them are dealing with their shit,” Lyle says. “Shauna is sort of punishing herself, putting herself in this stasis of sorts and refusing to move forward. Taissa conversely is charging straight ahead and refusing to look at the past, Natalie is self-medicating, Misty is missing the chip that self-reflection seems to require.
As Yellowjackets' co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco adds, Camp Green Pine and Lottie could end up becoming something of an unexpected hub for the other survivors. "One of the things I like about it is that I think our characters are such silos in a way because of what they've experienced.”
We know that in the wilderness, Lottie turned to blood rituals and the supernatural, and in the '90s sequences of the premiere this week we see how those choices begin to affect the others in the woods and their day to day lives. But, while Travis' murder is still a mystery and her motivations behind kidnapping Nat are vague, it's unclear whether she's the villain we — or at least Natalie — expected. Though, running a cult in the wilds that look suspiciously like where your plane crashed is a red flag at best.
Does Lottie Have Javi and/or Van at the Camp?
Seeing as she had her people kidnap Nat, there's a high likelihood that other survivors could also be at the camp without their consent — or with it if they followed Lottie in the forest — we know that at the end of Season 1, Van was a Lottie believer, so there's a chance she's a core part of Lottie's operations. Or that Lottie may have taken her against her will in order to create some kind of Yellowjackets disaster reunion. Either way we wouldn't be completely surprised if Van appeared at Green Pine Camp at some point soon. As for Javi, seeing as his absence is one of the series' biggest question we don't expect to discover his fate just yet, but if he did survive the wilderness and his brother was involved with Lottie and her crew, there's a chance that Javi could be headed to or already at the camp too.
Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/what-is-lottie-hiding-in-the-yellowjackets-season-2-premiere