Yellowjackets S3E9 Recap: This Is Not “How the Story Ends”

The following recap contains spoilers for Yellowjackets S3E9, “How the Story Ends” (written by Sarah L. Thompson and directed by Ben Semanoff)

While there are a few big events in Yellowjackets S3E9, the episode largely feels like its spinning its wheels in preparation for whatever is going to happen in next week’s season finale.

The events in the wilderness timeline revolve around the tension within the group about whether to take the opportunity for rescue that Kodiak (Joel McHale) represents, but it’s hard to feel too invested in that question when we know that the team will be out there until winter, and further know that various characters will not die because they’ve been in the 2021 timeline. It’s at best a question of how things play out.

Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) wants to go home and leads a faction that conspires to sneak away in the middle of the night. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) insists that no one is leaving, and besides using the gun to aid her in exerting her power, she’s got Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Lottie (Courtney Eaton) on her side, both of whom have considerable influence within the group.

It’s an interesting dynamic if we focus on those who are torn between their interpersonal relationships and their desire to go home—namely Van (Liv Hewson) and Melissa (Jenna Burgess).

Van isn’t willing to go against Tai, but she does go and find the broken sat phone in secret, in hopes that she can make it work. Misty (Samantha Hanratty) sees her doing this, and recognizes that the broken part is something she may be able to replace with a piece of the black box from the plane, which she smashed in Season 1. Of course, no one (alive) knows that she did this, which is something we should bear in mind when it comes to Nat finding Misty messing with the transponder towards the end of the episode.

This is one of the big moments in S3E9, and I’m curious to see where it leads. At the same time, however, I’m a little troubled at the implication that Misty now wants to go home, thinking about it in relation to what we saw in the series premiere. There, Misty smiles after the group ritualistically kills and eats Pit Girl. So I guess this is just a note to the writers of Yellowjackets that no retconning is acceptable.

Teen Melissa starts to bond a little with Hannah (Ashley Sutton), which makes Shauna angry. She calls Melissa stupid, calls her nothing, and almost shoots her, causing Melissa to piss her pants. I can see how this is meant to resonate with what’s happening in the 2021 timeline (more on that shortly), but Shauna is behaving in a way that is so extremely evil it’s hard for me to see how any harmony could be restored throughout the group, even for the next few months.

Maybe Melissa has hated Shauna from this moment, but what about Natalie? She and Shauna weren’t pals in the 2021 timeline, but it does seem like they decided this was all water under the bridge at some point.

Regardless, the escape plan fails when Shauna catches Hannah and Kodiak before they can leave the animal pen. Hannah, recognizing that Shauna might be prepared to kill them both, blames Kodiak for their attempt to get away and proceeds to stab him in the eye. She was suspicious of the guy, anyway, but she also has no idea how to get back to civilization. So that’s that. We’re left to wonder how much she means it when she says she wants to be a part of the Yellowjackets group, and how it is that she’ll end up dying anyway.

In 2021, Van (Lauren Ambrose) sees and hears the younger version of herself throughout S3E9. She leaves the hospital, along with Tai (Tawny Cypress) and Misty (Christina Ricci), and the three head to Hannah’s daughter’s house. On the way, they see Melissa (Hilary Swank) on the side of the road, because she ran out of gas after she fled her own home to get away from Shauna (Melanie Lynskey).

Shauna appears to have stayed right there, and is engaged in cleaning up the blood from her fight with Melissa when the others return. Nothing very interesting happens, until Melissa (whose hands are bound) is sat down by the fireplace and she decides to close the flue. Van, who had stepped outside, finds the others virtually passed out on the floor, and drags them out one by one.

With Taissa, we get a brief dreamy moment where she fights her alter ego, and when she comes to she seems to be herself again. Hurray, I guess? I don’t really care about this, which is unfortunate because it undermines the emotional stakes I think I’m supposed to have in what comes next.

After dragging Shauna to safety, Van pins Melissa to the floor and thinks about killing her, in line with this offensive idea that it might help to cure her cancer. But, Van can’t do it. She doesn’t really buy into the wilderness stuff and she just doesn’t want to be a murderer.

But, surprise (?), Melissa does! She grabs the knife and kills Van with it before running out the side door to parts unknown. We flash to Van sitting alone in an airplane in a way that parallels Natalie (Juliette Lewis) when she died in Season 2. Teen Van shows up to say some cryptic things about how saving Tai was the point, and “Exit Music (for a Film)” plays over the entire scene.

I can’t help but question the music choice in the same way I did with “Street Spirit” as the soundtrack to Natalie’s death. I love Radiohead, but maybe that’s the problem. The use of these tracks just strikes me as a little too on the nose, in contrast to the use of “Climbing Up the Walls” in S2E2. But, more importantly, why didn’t Lottie (Simone Kessell) get a Radiohead song when she died? Justice for Lottie! Maybe we could retroactively insert “Fake Plastic Trees”?

Speaking of Lottie’s death, Misty nopes out of Melissa’s house quickly, in a way that almost seems out of character in its wisdom. She meets up with Walter (Elijah Wood), and questions whether they may have jumped to a conclusion too quickly when it comes to Shauna killing Lottie, because Shauna’s story about going to Manhattan to get a cat checks out.

She recalls that Walter cloned Lottie’s phone and asks to see it before sending Walter back to the kitchen to shave some chocolate onto her martini, and it’s clear that Misty is starting to become suspicious of Walter. We don’t see whatever it is that she sees on Lottie’s phone, but it causes her to leave abruptly. We definitely can’t rule out the possibility that Walter killed Lottie in order to create an investigation that could help him mend fences with Misty, but I think it’s more likely that Misty saw something pertaining to Melissa.

There’s one episode to go in Yellowjackets Season 3, which has felt a bit uneven overall. I hope that the season finale manages to tie things together.

See you next week.