This piece contains major spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 2, Episode 2. If you haven't watched yet you can catch up with our Story So Far.
It finally happened. After an internet-breaking first season, a wait that felt far too long, and two new episodes that reintroduced us to the brutality of the wilderness, the full Yellowjackets team committed to the cannibalism that was implied in the opening moments of the show's series premiere. It was a gruesome sequence that hinted at the supernatural or the possibility that two months in the wilds of winter has begun to drive our group of survivors mad. Let's dive into this juicy conversation like the teenage girls dove into the moist flesh of their old teammate.
What Drove the Yellowjackets to Cannibalism?
This has long been one of the core questions at the center of the show. While one obvious answer is hunger, there was a lot more to the act when it finally happened. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is clearly not faring well after the tragic death of her best-friend-turned-frenemy. There's an especially alarming twist when "Jackie" (Ella Purnell) begins to taunt Shauna about her hunger and how she should eat her frozen corpse. Shauna had already broken the cannibal seal in the Season 2 premiere but, rather than being disgusted or horrified, she's still thinking about sampling more of her former best friend’s body.
For the actress who plays Shauna, the scene was a riot. "It was so fun," Sophie Nélisse told IGN. "I thought it was so ironic that Shauna's kind of the first one that taps into the whole cannibalistic idea, especially because it's Jackie, but I think it's a coincidence. The second the ear was put into her pocket, I think the idea was sparked inside her head. And I think it's kind of like an itch you have until you scratch, and she just had to commit to it at some point"
It's clear that all the girls are suffering from hunger that's verging on the edge of starvation. But, most of them are far more averse to Jackie's dead body than Shauna. Everything changes when Tai discovers that Shauna has been braiding Jackie's hair and doing her makeup though. Tai decides that it's time to cremate Jackie and get Shauna out of their meat shed, but their seemingly sensible plan quickly takes a turn for the worse (or better, depending on how hungry you are).
Is There Something Supernatural Happening in Yellowjackets?
After the events of Episode 2, the evidence definitely points towards the supernatural. While much of the power, mystery, and enjoyment of Yellowjackets comes from the subjective nature of how each viewer reads a situation, it really looks like something eerie is afoot in the forest.
After Shauna agrees to burn Jackie's body, it feels like things might get back to normal. Or at least as normal as they can be when you're months into a 19 month survival nightmare. But, while getting rid of Jackie's body is meant to take away Shauna’s urge to spend time with her dead bestie, it offers up a different kind of temptation that changes everything.
As the girls wait in the cabin for Jackie's body to burn on her pyre, a strange and seemingly targeted gust of wind knocks snow onto her body As the fire cooks, the snowpack steams her. In the morning, the wilderness essentially serves Jackie up to the girls perfectly cooked. Her baked body emits a scent so good that it wakes the girls up and leads to every single one of the survivors — minus coach Ben — chowing down on their one time teammate's flesh.
While anything could have made the wind blow the winter snow onto Jackie's body, the showrunners use intentional camera work which makes the wind seem like it has a mission, and that mission is to steam Jackie and tempt the girls with her (apparently) delightfully roasty scent. And it works.
Now, why would the wilderness want the girls to embrace their feral side and eat their friend? We know that Lottie feels connected to the forest in some way, or perhaps the wilderness needed the girls to survive in order to sacrifice them or use them in some way and this was a necessary part of that. Maybe the symbol and the cabin are connected to an already established cult that we've yet to meet and they are manipulating the girls and their situation.
Are the Yellowjackets Suffering From a Shared Delusion?
If we push the supernatural of it all aside and look at this logically, there's a chance that what we saw was a shared delusion that the girls used to essentially explain away what they did. We know that they were starving, and had already survived much longer than anyone expected. All of those things put them in an exceptionally vulnerable situation, making them susceptible to outside influences and potential manipulation. We know that there is at least a partial delusional aspect to their choice to eat Jackie as when they're about to begin eating, we see them dressed as Grecian goddesses about to feast on a delicious meal.
While that could fit into the more mythical and supernatural reading of the situation, the delusional vision of them as Grecian deities about to eat a delicious — non-cannibalistic meal — can also be read as showing how far the kids are away from reality at this point. They'll do anything to survive and to avoid acknowledging what they're actually doing in that moment.
Co-showrunner Jonathon Lisco confirmed this reading to IGN telling us, "The real reason behind it was because there's a mass hallucination at work to try and self-protect. They probably studied Greek civilization in their history class in high school. And they need a way to distance themselves from the harrowing savagery of what they're doing. But the Greco-Roman feast of it all also had the ability to make it truly hedonistic, which is also an aspect of what they're doing because they are genuinely starving and there are probably neurotransmitters in their brains going off when they do eat the flesh that is telling their body that it's a good thing. And we didn't want to shy away from the truthfulness of that either. So it allowed us to do both in the intercut."
As for what it was actually like to film the cannibalism scene, Hewson told IGN that filming the scene feasting on Jackie was pretty terrible. "The bit where we're actually picking at her actual body, was terrible." Hewson's on screen girlfriend Jasmin Savoy Brown added "It just made me feel a little ill. It was not fun to shoot that."
Whether or not the crew was suffering from a delusion before, now that they've eaten human flesh things are only likely to get worse. Scientifically, cannibalism is known to cause an illness called Kuru, a brain infection which can drive people who suffer from it mad. So there is a high chance that eating Jackie will have far longer ramifications which could exacerbate the already surreal and dangerous situation. The last thing that any of them needs are more visions, or blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, but a bout of Kuru would do all of that and worse. So there is a chance that while this all seems supernatural, it's just a tragic set of events sparked by the survivors' desperate need to stay alive during a cold winter.
Or Is It Both?
This feels like the most likely option right now. After months in the wilderness, it makes sense that the girls would suffer from delusions, lack of sleep, hunger, dehydration, and severe cold weather exposure. All of these things are obviously factors that can severely impact their mental health. As the girls were already deeply connected as a team, it wouldn't be hard for that connection to foster a shared delusion.
However, that doesn’t actively contradict the fact that there were pretty clear supernatural events nudging them into their choice to eat Jackie. The snow falling to cool Jackie to the perfect eating temperature was a scene for the audience, meaning that none of the Yellowjackets actually witnessed it. Because of that, there’s no way for that aspect to be a part of moments like their shared Greco-Roman fantasy, or similar events like Season 1’s Doomcoming.
We see Lottie show kindness to Shauna earlier in the episode as she helps the grieving friend hide the missing chunk from Jackie’s arm. So, could Lottie have known the girls needed to survive and harnessed the wilderness to help her cook Jackie? Maybe, perhaps the woods have their own reasons. Whatever is behind the supernatural events in the forest, the girls being delusional only encourages their ongoing descent into madness.
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/was-the-yellowjackets-final-descent-into-madness-caused-by-the-supernatural-or-a-shared-delusion