Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Yellowjackets S3E8, “A Normal, Boring Life” (written by Julia Bicknell and directed by Anya Adams)
Let’s start in the 2021 timeline. At the end of last week’s episode, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) had arrived in Richmond, VA to confront Hannah’s (Ashley Sutton) daughter. I might have thought she was about to storm into that house at night with her knife ready, but instead she sleeps in her car until the next morning. She has a dream about working in a grocery store, and then approaches the house… with her knife ready.
Shauna doesn’t knock, but seems to find the door unlocked. So, she enters and starts snooping around, only to hide in a closet when the inhabitants almost catch her. Alex (Jaylee Hamidi) is getting her own daughter ready for school, and her wife (Hilary Swank), who goes by Kelly but is actually Melissa, helps out until they leave. Then, Melissa turns to confront whoever is in her closet, only to find out it’s Shauna.
It turns out that Melissa faked suicide however many years ago, because she was afraid of Shauna and the others after they returned from the wilderness. At least, that’s her story, and I don’t see much reason to doubt this part of it. Hannah gave her the DAT tape to pass along to Alex, but when it came down to it, Melissa couldn’t do it. Instead, she fell in love with Alex and they established a normal, boring life together.
When Melissa found out about what happened at Lottie’s (Simone Kessell) compound—that Natalie (Juliette Lewis) died, along with some cop—she started having nightmares, and sometimes daymares. Her completely non-licensed therapist, Barbara, suggested that she was holding onto something, and that letting it go might help with her anxiety. Thus, she delivered the DAT tape to Shauna, and claims to have explained all of this in an accompanying note.
Now, I don’t know how much of that I believe. Since Callie (Sarah Desjardins) is the one who found the package, and she proceeded to keep the existence of the DAT tape to herself for days, it seems possible that there was a note that she didn’t hand over to Shauna when it came down to it. However, if there was a note, Callie definitely would have read it. So, we’re down to the thin possibility that Callie didn’t notice the note, or the possibility that Callie read it and kept it from Shauna on purpose.
Callie’s behavior is a bit odd in S3E8 in general, if you think about it. Presumably she listened to the recording on her phone and heard that portion of what is on the DAT tape, and while it might be unclear what you’re listening to if you weren’t there, it’s hard to reconcile this with how Callie tells Jeff (Warren Kole) that she doesn’t think anyone is threatening Shauna (unless maybe she did read the note and is hiding it?).
It’s easy enough to believe that Shauna’s brakes just went out, with no foul play, since that’s what the mechanic said. And it’s easy enough to think that the door to the walk-in freezer just closed on her accidentally. It’s harder to wave our hands at the phone in the bathroom with the “Queen of Hearts” ringtone, though, and it’s really hard to interpret the DAT tape as anything other than a threat.
I can’t quite decide if there is something intriguing going on with Callie in light of all of this, though, or if it’s just bad writing, because Jeff has much of the same information, and he’s happy to agree that Shauna is just being paranoid. Maybe he just really wants to go home.
Melissa claims she didn’t do anything to Shauna’s brakes, or trap her in the freezer, or leave that phone in the bathroom, but Shauna doesn’t believe her at all and I’m not sure I do either. I do believe that Melissa did not kill Lottie, but I can’t write off the phone in the bathroom as a coincidence. If that wasn’t left by Melissa, it must have been left by someone else (on purpose).
Shauna ultimately attacks Melissa, bites off a piece of her flesh, and tells Melissa that if she doesn’t eat it, Shauna will expose her to her family. That’s the last we see of this pair in this episode, so I am curious what will happen next.
I feel like Shauna has gone off the deep end in a way that doesn’t quite track with how her character behaved in previous seasons, but I want to be clear that I’m not thinking about her actions so much as her demeanor. I mean, she killed a guy in Season 1, but she never seemed so unamenable to reason. I suppose we could chalk it up to paranoia (which is bad even when someone is really after you), and Yellowjackets is clearly trying to build a parallel with how she’s behaving in the ‘90s timeline, but I’m not sure I quite buy it in either timeline, to be honest.
While Shauna is talking to Melissa, Misty (Christina Ricci) and Tai remain at the hospital with Van (Lauren Ambrose), who has taken such a turn for the worse that they’re recommending hospice. How many days has it been since a doctor told her that her cancer was in remission? I’m not sure, but not many. Does murder help your cancer go away? No. Is this all somewhat offensive to anyone who’s had a loved one die of cancer? Yes.
Anyway, Misty mostly spends the episode trying to track down Shauna, while Tai wants to do some killing to appease “it” and help Van. It’s ever clearer that we aren’t dealing with Tai, though, but her alter ego, who says that only she can help Van. I’m not sure what she’s going to do, but I feel less invested in this story than I should be. I love Van and don’t want her to die, but, again, it’s mildly offensive to suggest that doing some murder could help save her, and I don’t even know what to say about the Tai stuff.
The fact that Tai would sometimes lose time, eat dirt, kill her own dog, and so on was scary because of the lost time aspect of it. Doing something (bad) that you don’t even remember doing is a terrifying prospect to ponder. But if it’s just the Bad One all the time, the conceit doesn’t work. A moment here and there of “good Tai” struggling to regain control doesn’t really do it, and the question of personal responsibility starts to become uninteresting.
Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) is also clearly being overtaken by her alter ego in the wilderness timeline, though I don’t find that to be terribly interesting, either.
As S3E8 begins, the girls in camp are grilling Hannah about what’s happened in the world since the plane crash—revealing that Van (Liv Hewson) is a Mulder-Scully shipper because of course she is—while Travis (Kevin Alves) and Akilah (Nya Sondaya) follow Kodiak (Joel McHale) through the woods in search of a rescue point.
Akilah doesn’t like the fact that they’re doing this without the others, which is fair, but the point Travis makes is reasonable—they can make contact with civilization and send help back for everybody else. Of course, the real reason behind Travis’s plan is that he doesn’t trust the others. He saw Lottie (Courtney Eaton) kill Edwin (Nelson Franklin) and senses the dispute within the group that will boil to the surface by the end of the episode. In his mind, going home outweighs everything else.
Akilah isn’t on the same page, though. She starts leaving a trail, which Misty (Samantha Hanratty) finds after she finally finds her glasses. Was she searching all night? Poor girl.
Anyway, Misty runs back to camp and everyone sets out to chase down Kodiak, Travis and Akilah, while Akilah dithers around a bit to slow Travis and Kodi down. When she hears the others approaching, she turns her gun on Kodi, Travis plays along, and they all go back to camp.
To Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), it’s obvious that this is a chance to go home, and that there is no question to consider in the situation, which leads her to act like she’s still the leader of the group. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) reminds her that she isn’t, and I’m sure that Shauna’s jealousy plays a role in how she behaves at the end of the episode, but I don’t think Natalie even cares about that. It’s a chance to go home. This whole thing’s over.
Tai expresses worries to Van about their ability to be together back in civilization, but I think she’s more worried about how the frog scientists caught them all doing a cannibalism, which, again, could not be excused by the need to survive in this instance. That’s surely at the top of Shauna’s mind as well. Lottie is the only one that thinks they shouldn’t leave because of what the wilderness wants.
So, when it’s time to leave, Lottie says she’s staying, and I think the back and forth with Nat throughout this scene is important. I don’t think Nat believes that Lottie will actually stay behind by herself, but if she does, well, they’ll send rescue. And then it’s the same move when Shauna says she’s staying, too, and then Tai does.
For Nat, there is nothing up for debate. If you want to stay, fine, be stupid. We’re leaving.
Until Shauna says, “No, you’re not.”
See you next week.
