Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for the Yellowjackets Season 3 finale, S3E10, “Full Circle” (written by Ameni Rozsa and directed by Bart Nickerson)
By threading in moments of ritualistic cannibalism, the Yellowjackets pilot posed the central question of the series immediately: How would we get from a group of teenage girls crashing in the wilderness to them killing and eating each other?
For the most part, I’d contend that the series has done a good job of slowly answering this question. Jackie’s (Ella Purnell) death was basically an accident, and even the first instance of group cannibalism was less than fully intentional in that it wasn’t really planned. The wilderness pseudo-religion has taken hold in ways that are largely plausible, even if I wish there had been a bit more along these lines. And the escalation of the cannibalism has made sense.
So, if something felt dissatisfying about how “Full Circle” brought Yellowjackets around to Pit Girl being hunted and eaten, I think it’s in the very final step to the goal line. In S3E9, Hannah (Ashley Sutton) killed Kodiak (Joel McHale), thwarting the plan Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) and others had to sneak away in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Natalie learned that Misty (Samantha Hanratty) had the transponder from the plane and that Van (Liv Hewson) had been working to try and fix the broken sat phone.
That’s all well and good, but what feels a bit undermotivated is the idea that the group needs to have a hunt. Akilah (Nia Sondaya) finds her goats dead, but it ultimately becomes clear, when she talks with Lottie (Courtney Eaton) in the caves, that she poisoned them herself to help spur a hunt. I guess that was just based on a crazy idea Lottie had that Akilah went along with. But then, why, in the flashback, is she talking to Melissa (Jenna Burgess) and Gen (Vanessa Prasad)? Those girls want to go home! And what turned Akilah against Lottie so quickly? Something Travis (Kevin Alves) said before she poisoned the goats and before she betrayed him when he was trying to escape with Kodiak? Things aren’t lining up very well.
Regardless, the group decides to have a hunt to appease “It” and they draw cards as they’ve done in the past. Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) convinces Van to mess with the deck such that Hannah will be chosen to die, because Hannah isn’t really their friend and they don’t trust her. However, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) sniffs out their plan and changes places in the circle, which leads to Mari (Alexa Barajas) being chosen.
At first, I thought that Shauna has totally sussed out Van’s plan, and that this was bringing her antipathy towards Mari from early Season 3 full circle, but she later asks Tai who was supposed to be chosen in what seems like a genuine way, so that undermines that idea at least to some degree.
Mari strips down as she runs, cuts her foot, and it becomes clear that she is Pit Girl long before she falls into the pit and dies. If you guessed that Mari was Pit Girl back in Season 1, you win a prize! Congratulations!
After Mari’s death, some mild retconning begins, which you could argue is just a recontextualization of events. Van approaches the pit as she did in the pilot, but then cries about Mari’s death. Shauna dresses up as the Antler Queen, but this is the first time she has ever done that and the only hair on her dress is Mari’s hair. And when Misty smiles it’s after another turn in the story, which I’m not sure quite fits with how it was presented in S1E1, where it seems like she’s doing this right after the feast.
This time around, it’s a bit later on, after Shauna confronts Natalie about her behavior during the hunt. But, it turns out that it isn’t Natalie. It’s Hannah, wearing Natalie’s mask, while Nat has run off with the sat phone to a cliff where she tries to make it work. Misty is smiling because she’s been colluding with Natalie.
And Natalie succeeds! S3E10 ends with Nat making contact with some random guy as Aerosmith’s “Livin’ on the Edge” plays, which should mean that rescue is on the horizon in Season 4, but it also seems like the group still has a lot of people left to kill and eat, so I’m not sure how everything is going to play out.
In the 2021 timeline, Tai (Tawny Cypress) and Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) go to an off-road spot to bury Van’s (Lauren Ambrose) body, and Tai insists on doing the job alone. First, though, she cuts out Van’s heart and eats it… for reasons. Love!
Misty (Christina Ricci) confronts Callie (Sarah Desjardins), who confesses to killing Lottie (Simone Kessell). It was Callie’s picture that Misty saw on Lottie’s phone last week, and she’s put together that the DNA under Lottie’s fingernails wasn’t Shauna’s, but her daughter’s.
Apparently Lottie stole the DAT tape from Callie’s room, which motivated Callie to go to Manhattan to get it back. We get a flashback of their altercation, where Lottie claims that Callie is the child of the wilderness or whatever, and then Callie pushes her down the stairs in a moment of anger. OK.
Callie tells Jeff (Warren Kole) and asks him if he thinks she’s evil like her mom. He says no, and that he should have protected Callie from Shauna’s influence. Then, they decide to abandon Shauna. That’s rational, but I preferred seeing the Sadeckis working together in Season 2, if I’m honest.
After returning home to an empty house (and talking to Misty to learn what’s happened), Shauna makes herself a Hot Pocket and finds the note from Melissa (Hilary Swank) under her fridge. I don’t know how much that affects anything, since Melissa has now killed Van (and doesn’t appear in this episode in the 2021 timeline), but it seems to inspire Shauna to write a note of her own, which I would guess is to Callie. Here, she admits that she got a thrill out of what she did in the wilderness. She liked it, and now she’s deciding to own it.
That’s probably good in terms of her self-preservation, because Tai has decided that Shauna is to blame for Van’s death, along with Natalie’s. She meets with Misty at a diner and the two agree that they do not want Shauna to be the last one standing. So I guess Yellowjackets Season 4 will be all about the surviving members of the team trying to kill each other in the 2021 timeline.
If you ask me, this series has gone off the rails, and I don’t see a way for it to get back on track. I’m curious what will happen in Season 4, and I’ll do my best to allow myself to be entertained whenever it is released, but there are no longer any questions that really intrigue me, and all of my favorite characters are dead (give or take a Misty).
Let’s pour one out for our sarcastic queen, Mari Ibarra. I’m glad you finally got a last name.
