With Natalie despondent, Lottie turns the tables on her, encouraging Natalie to divulge what she’s been hiding — specifically, what she told Travis that led to his death. Using a technique from her “time away” — a euphemistic term for when she was institutionalized — Lottie flashes a light in Natalie’s eyes and coaxes out of her the story of the last time she saw Travis.
It’s a seedy tale in which Natalie and Travis went on a bender and Natalie overdosed. In her unconscious state, Natalie saw a vision of the Yellowjackets’ crash site, but none of them had survived. The mysterious figure known as the “antler queen” moves through the vessel among the corpses. When Natalie was revived she told Travis: “I saw it. I felt it. We brought it back. Trav, we brought it back with us.”
As she shares this, Lottie, terrified, looks over her shoulder and sees the shadow of that same person or creature. “Yellowjackets” viewers have theorized that Lottie was the “antler queen” because she dons a crown made of antlers at the “Doomcoming.” But now Lottie is the one haunted by that image. Is it her own shadow self that’s scaring her? Or is the “antler queen” even a single being? Is it instead the manifestation of the “darkness” all of the Yellowjackets carry?
That darkness has arrived at Adult Van’s apartment-slash-video store in the form of Taissa. Tai is aware she is placing a huge burden on Van by asking for her help. Meanwhile, Van has some hidden habits of her own, squirreling away oxycodone when she thinks Tai is asleep. And Tai is asleep when Van takes the drug. It’s the “other one” — Tai’s alter ego — who emerges in the darkness and kisses Van. “This isn’t where we are supposed to be,” she says.
It’s easy to think of the spirits plaguing these women and girls as evil, yet in the final moments of the hour we’re given an example of wilderness mysticism as a force for good. Pregnant Shauna has grown understandably suspicious of Lottie, who whispers to her baby in utero. But when Shauna and Tai are stranded in heavy snowfall they are seemingly guided by Lottie’s mantras about hearing the wind and the trees. They are able to make it back as Shauna goes into labor, her primal scream of pain ending the episode.
In an earlier scene, Lottie had told the fetus, “You are going to change everything.” Now the child is here, a new life entering the world replacing Crystal, who has left it. Bye, bestie. Hello, baby.
More to chew on
-
Adult Shauna’s Built to Spill T-shirt is a great costuming choice.
-
An interesting fact for those keeping track of where everyone was post-rescue: Tai and Van were still together when Shauna got married. They swapped out the guest book pen for a dirty novelty pen.
-
I think the creepiest character on the show might be Matt Saracusa, the adult detective who pretends to date a teen to solve a case. In addition to its general ickiness, I grew tired of that whole plotline this episode including Shauna’s fake tryst with Randy, the most useless character on the show.
-
The motif of videotape static has been with the show since the beginning thanks to the opening credits, but it’s being deployed more and more in the narrative. What does it mean?
-
Is Misty actually a murderer? Technically, she isn’t as far as we know, and maybe that’s why she’s so angry at Walter’s assumption. She’s definitely an accessory and you could probably charge her with manslaughter. But straight up murder? Not yet.
-
Does Crystal become the next meal?
