Yellowjackets (Season 2) Episode 8: Recap & Ending, Explained

Yellowjackets (Season 2) Episode 8: Closer and closer to the daunting culmination of the season, Yellowjackets has effectively found a way to kill two birds with one stone. There’s neither the time nor the fervent objective to calcify each question into individual foundations of mystery. What we’re going to be treated to from this point on are the disclosures of myriad threads and the effects they inject into the lives of the survivors.

Yellowjackets (Season 2) Episode 8 Recap:

The Cats Are Out Of The Bag

The ominous news of the cops locating Adam’s mangled corpse couldn’t have come at a worse time for Shauna. At the end of the day, none of the survivors of the wilderness is as treacherous as they would prefer to believe. So when their conjoined demise is imminent, not one of them can mask it very well from the rest of the group. Although, how bad they’re at covering come takes nothing away from the horrifying extent they’re capable of going when they’re threatened.

How quick Van is to come to terms with the fact that the group helped Shauna dispose of the body of her lover only establishes further just how fatalistic each of them still is. And the absolute insanity that they expect from Misty is covered by how the conversation around her kidnapping and murdering a mole planted by Tai naturally fizzes out.

If anything, the group coming together is the beginning of the sanctuary that grants each of them a non-threatening ear to pour all of their vile secrets into, including the ones that essentially prove that Shauna and Misty ruthlessly murdered two basically innocent people. If there’s anything Lottie is on point about, it’s the fact that talking isn’t going to solve any of their problems.

The Wilderness In All Its Wretched Glory

Leading and bleeding coming together to be synonymous in Lottie’s painstaking dictionary may not seem too hopeful now, but as we’ve evidently been a witness, too, we can safely say that this too shall pass for her. Although, how insensitive that might sound in regards to her blood-laced urine and her swollen banged-up state is something to take into consideration. Life searches for life.

And when existence itself is a nightmarish enigma, Akilah’s hallucinations surrounding a dead rat or Mari’s blood-soaked vision are really not that shocking. Surviving on belt soup and half-baked chants sent out to reach an entity that may or may not exist and, more importantly, may or may not be benevolent–it’s a miracle that the group is still holding onto any semblance of sanity. And amongst them is their sentinel of hope–half awake, in immeasurable pain, offering herself up to sustain her faithful brethren. What could go right?

Yellowjackets (Season 2) Episode 8 Ending, Explained:

Is There A Parallel Between The Sacrificial Deaths?

This week’s episode must be Christmas for you if you were getting tired of wondering how Javi survived the winter all alone, out in the wilderness. However much Nat may deny it, the signs of her jealousy toward Lottie are too damning to overlook. Perhaps it is the way everyone worships the self-proclaimed sentinel of hope, or it may even be the effervescent sexual tension between Lottie and Travis; Nat will go as far as to wish for Lottie’s death if it means that she gets to stop putting up with what she believes are delusions.

However, her concerns for Javi’s well-being are coming from a place of sincerity. From having his back to making him a pair of gloves to withstand the freezing cold–Nat’s mind is set on looking after Javi. So it really doesn’t come as a surprise that she’s found Javi worshipping a tree quite odd. And when she shares her concerns with Ben, she essentially gives him a way to preoccupy his mind with something that isn’t driven by his suicidal instincts. Ben’s not above going through Javi’s belongings to speculate the tree’s location.

If it’s a purpose that he needs in order to stay grounded and functional, it simply doesn’t get more crucial than finding the peculiar truth of Javi’s survival out there. There’s no doubt that the group psychosis had hit each one of the survivors out in the wilderness. The only one who carried notes of emotional instability even before the plane had crashed was Misty. And yet, she was never without the instinct to do good, however psychotic her ways might have been.

In the present, the group may find it hard to believe her when she explains that she killed the woman to protect everyone else, but Misty has always had a knack for going out of her way to be there for the people she cared about. Even after getting Ben to step away from the edge of the cliff, she’s kept a Hawkeye on him. So she’s understandably concerned when she sees him sharpening his makeshift crutches and only lets up when she is reassured about his harmless intentions.

While I can’t make my mind up about whether it’s cliched or inevitable that Lottie is taking her cult leader role too far, I can at least acknowledge the fact that the wilderness still has a relentless clutch on her psyche. However, I am admittedly getting closer to musing over the theory that there never was anything supernatural going on. Sure, none of their lives turned out anything less than absolutely chaotic, but is that really because a supposed preternatural entity from the woods is still after them?

Or is it just the prosaic reality that they’ve brought back severe psychological scars from their excruciating days in the cruel woods? Lottie certainly doesn’t believe that it is as simple as that. In fact, she’s repurposed her role as the mouthpiece of the entity and tables the idea that one of them sacrifices their life just to make the curse relent. A poison-laced glass of liquor here for the unfortunate sacrificial lamb and a game of cards back them to pick out a human offering for the spirit of the woods.

Times really haven’t changed, have they? Fate’s cruel irony makes Ben stumble onto the very eerie hiding spot that had safeguarded Javi when everyone thought he was dead. It is this very spot that Javi means to escort Nat to if it means that he can save her from the feral, bloodthirsty worshippers of the woods. But the freezing cold that didn’t claim him before sucks him into its frozen oblivion. “Better him than me,” Nat probably shudders to think. But who will death claim next?

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Yellowjackets (Season 2) Episode 8 Links: IMDb
Yellowjackets (Season 2) Episode 8 Cast: Melanie Lynsey, Tawny Cypress, Sophie Nelisse

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