If you’re a fan of Showtime’s Yellowjackets, then you probably have more questions as to what the show has in store for you in the upcoming season. As known, season one ended on a cliffhanger, leaving numerous fans yearning for more answers to the revelations. Ever since, the series created enough buzz to have attracted a substantial proportion of viewers.
The show, which premiered on Nov. 14, 2021, on Showtime deviates from any quintessential teen drama as it portrays its teenage protagonists navigating the life-threatening challenges of the wilderness. Not to mention, it is regarded as one of the best teen psychological dramas of all time, owing to its exploration of the intricacies of survivalist themes and female friendships.
The overall plot, which oscillates between the past and the present, contains two narrative strands. First, the events following a group of high school soccer players who, after a plane crash, were stranded in the Canadian wilderness. The second part portrays their contemporary adult life around 25 years after the tragic episode where the supposed normal lives of the survivors were threatened by their deeds of the past (when they were trapped in the wilderness), serving as the show’s major mystery.
At the show’s start, viewers were introduced to four primary protagonists: Shauna, Taissa, Natalie, and Misty in their adult lives still trying to come to terms with their past traumatic experiences. Thereafter, they encounter a blackmailer who threatens to expose their past actions, which are implied to be scandalous and vile enough to ruin their reputation as the brave and inspiring ‘Yellowjackets’ in the public eye.
While the viewers at this point are glued to the screen for a jaw-dropping revelation, they are dragged to the season’s end and offered a bunch of significant clues with no definite explanation. In other words, the season finale opened spaces for the audience to come up with their theories and speculations as to what’s going to happen next.
Let’s shed some light on the culmination of various events at the end, their significance to the plot, and how they serve as a solid foundation for what’s to come.
The ending has too many twists and turns — including the return of some past characters
In the end, the Yellowjackets reunite to glean more information about their blackmailers. Most importantly, to find their identity and the person behind everything that’s been going on. In the process, quite a lot of people had to die, and one of them is Shauna’s love interest, Adam. Shauna’s seemingly monotonous domestic life coupled with her lingering trauma caused her to have an affair with Adam Martin. It’s not until the end that viewers start to realize something’s strange about Adam. He is either hiding something — or he might not be Adam at all.
After all, Shauna discovers him lying about going to Pratt Institute, as well as his lack of online presence. Her suspicions become strengthened after she finds glitter on the floor of the closet where she hid Adam from her husband. Her journal, which she kept in the closet, was also missing. This caused her to believe that Adam is the blackmailer. Thereafter, they engage in a brutal confrontation which escalated into Shauna stabbing and killing him. To clear up the crime scene evidence, Shauna and her group of Yellowjackets gather together and disembowel Adam’s body, throwing it away for good.
Turns out that Adam was innocent all along and the real culprit was Shauna’s husband Jeff. The latter revealed that the cause of the blackmail was to extract money from them to pay off his debt. In addition to the blackmailer’s identity, many mysteries were unraveled. The audience finally uncovered the truth about Taissa, that she was possibly the one haunting her son all along at night, dressed as the lady staring at him from across the window. If that’s not creepy enough, she has a secret shrine in the basement with her son’s doll and the severed head of their pet dog. Taissa’s secret has invited a lot of questions — is she part of a cult? Is her electoral success a result of her involvement in the cult? Or most importantly, is she the dirt-eating female figure who’s been scaring her son?
The audience also came to know about Jackie’s fate during their time in the wilderness. She was kicked out by Shauna and other girls into the brutally cold weather outside and eventually froze to death. Jackie was the captain of the soccer team, as well as Shauna’s best friend. Throughout the show’s run until the revelation of her death, it was believed it was Jackie who was killed and eaten by what seems like a group of cult members.
This is the pilot’s very first scene, which shows a group of humans in animal skin hunting down a fleeing girl and later barbequing her for food. The hunters in the frozen environment were none other than the stranded high schoolers for whom killing appears to be a survivalist strategy. They have a leader who goes by the name, “the Antler Queen,” whose identity remains unknown. The question now is, if it wasn’t Jackie, then who was the victim of this cannibalistic practice? Also, who is the Antler Queen?
The season’s ending also provided a few clues regarding the Antler Queen’s identity. One of the theories suggests that it is their former group member Lottie who has been presumed dead until now, but the incident with Natalie proves she is alive. Unlike other team members, Lottie is portrayed as someone possessing the ability to see the future, which initially did not sit well with her survivalist cohorts. So, when Natalie’s attempts to die by suicide were interrupted by her kidnapping and her getting pushed into an unmarked van, it was revealed that Lottie was behind everything.
She was the one who cleared their fellow male teammate Travis’s bank account, implying Travis was probably murdered by her. The revelation of Lottie being alive also raised the fundamental questions of where she is and how she managed to survive. Most significantly, whether she’s a member or leader of any cult. If the theory about her being the Antler Queen is true, her association with a cult would add a new strand of twist to the story. As interesting as season one was, we will have to wait for quite a while to find out what happens next.
Yellowjackets season one is currently streaming on Showtime.
