Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Yellowjackets S3E5, “Did Tai Do That?” (written by Elise Brown & Sarah L. Thompson and directed by Jeffrey W. Byrd)
Let’s start with the 2021 timeline in Yellowjackets S3E5. Misty (Christina Ricci) goes to the morgue and employs some light blackmail to procure Lottie’s (Simone Kessell) personal effects. Nothing much comes of this, but Misty notes that Lottie’s phone is not among the items she’s received.
Misty gathers Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Tai (Tawny Cypress), and Van (Lauren Ambrose) to inform them of Lottie’s death, but this just leads to Shauna accusing Misty of killing Lottie and Misty briefly storming out of her own house before coming back and telling the others to leave.
I’m not sure that I get the turn in Shauna’s view of Misty in the 2021 timeline over the course of Season 3. Yes, Misty failed in the task of keeping Callie (Sarah Desjardins) from talking to Lottie, and yes, Misty has always been a bit of a psycho, but it doesn’t make sense that Misty would cut the brakes of a car she was about to ride in, nor would it make sense for her to kill Lottie. Shauna could be mad at Misty for accidentally killing Natalie (Juliette Lewis), but if that’s supposed to be her motivation we really have to read it into the text of the show. Shauna being suspicious of Misty is fine; I’m just not sure I buy Shauna being so close-minded. She’s smarter than this.
Regardless, Shauna decides to tail Misty, only to discover she’s being tailed herself. In fact, she’s being tailgated, so she slams on the brakes to cause a mild collision. It’s Walter (Elijah Wood), who is apparently very bad at following people (which I’m not sure I fully buy, either, by the way). Shauna is upset that she’s lost Misty, but Walter thinks he knows where she’s going and suggests they team up.
Misty arrives to the site of Lottie’s death, and it turns out that this is also the building where Lottie’s father, Malcolm Matthews (Thomas Nicholson) lives. I’m not sure if Misty knew that before she talked to the doorman, but it seems like Walter did, since he and Shauna beat Misty to Mr. Matthews’s penthouse apartment.
They also have a better cover story, posing as workers from the internet company. Misty’s ruse—claiming to be a downstairs neighbor looking for a package Lottie told her had been misdelivered—manages to work, but it strains plausibility.
At the same time, Mr. Matthews does not seem to have his wits about him. At one point, he talks to Shauna like he thinks she is Lottie. He does seem committed to the story that Lottie’s death was an accident, and suggests he made some kind of monetary threat to keep the police from investigating. But we don’t learn much else from these scenes.
The doorman told Misty that Lottie had been living with her father for two weeks. If that’s true we have to infer that she went to Shauna’s house with the goal of getting to know Callie, and not because she had nowhere else to go.
The last time we saw Lottie alive in Yellowjackets, she’d taken money out of the bank and was practicing an apology in the mirror. If she’d already been staying with her dad for two weeks, she wasn’t practicing an apology to him, so we’re left with that big question in terms of thinking about a prime suspect.
Walter does manage to find and clone Lottie’s cellphone, which was in Mr. Matthews apartment, indicating that Lottie had, in fact, been there. And, the phone records should provide further clues. Walter offers to share that information with Misty, but she doesn’t want anything to do with him at the moment.
Meanwhile, Van notes that she and Tai were in Manhattan when Lottie died and wonders what Tai was up to for the hour before their carriage ride. Tai insists she was just doing things like hiring the carriage, but we have to wonder whether she might have killed Lottie for some reason.
A possible reason would be if Tai has been overtaken by her alter ego for some time. She gets a calls from Simone (Rukiya Bernard) in Yellowjackets S3E5, because Sammy (Aiden Stoxx) wants to see her, but their meeting in the park is brief. He asks Tai if she is still his mommy, then gets freaked out and walks away from her. Season 1 gave us every indication that this kid can tell when Tai is “the bad one,” so it’s tempting to read this scene as confirmation that she currently is.
Back in 1997, Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) is trying to get her alter ego to take over after she draws the King of Hearts, making her the one tasked with killing Ben (Steven Krueger). It’s Van’s (Liv Hewson) suggestion, but the efforts she and Tai undertake don’t seem to work. Though, there is an indication that “the other one” finally does take the reins just before Tai pulls the trigger.
She doesn’t actually kill Ben, of course. Lottie (Courtney Eaton), Travis (Kevin Alves), and Akilah (Nia Sondaya) return from their trip to the cave just in time to save Ben from Tai’s bullet. Akilah has had a vision of Ben serving as their bridge back to civilization, so Lottie insists that the group cannot kill him.
Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) remains stubbornly vicious, however, in a way that arguably parallels what we’re seeing from her in the 2021 timeline. She leads Melissa (Jenna Burgess) to slash Ben’s remaining Achilles tendon, and tells the group that he’s not going anywhere. I guess everyone was on board for this move, but it already would have been pretty easy to keep a man with one leg from escaping, and he is going to need some medical treatment to keep from bleeding out. Plus, do you really want a prisoner who can’t walk at all?
I question the logic, and think the real reason is malice.
See you next week.
