'Yellowjackets' ending defined: Season 2 bids farewell to a fan favourite

Take a deep breath. Now, what do you hear? In all probability the sound of Yellowjackets followers sobbing after absolutely the emotional devastation that was the Season 2 finale, “Storytelling.”

Yellowjackets closed out its sophomore season with an action-packed episode that includes a ritualistic hunt, the Yellowjackets’ second foray into cannibalism, and a very tragic dying. Episode 9, “Storytelling,” covers numerous floor to get to those factors, even wrapping up a number of the present’s largest storylines.

The result’s Yellowjackets at its finest — gripping, haunting, darkly humorous —and its saddest.

Let’s break it down.

The Yellowjackets take care of the fallout from Javi’s dying.

We lastly know the id of the physique the Yellowjackets had been carrying within the Season 2 trailer: It is Javi (Luciano Leroux), who froze to dying in episode 8 following the Yellowjackets’ hunt for Natalie (Sophie Thatcher). Again at camp, the ladies put together to feast, though in a captivating transfer, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) covers her eyes earlier than starting to butcher him, maybe making an attempt to dissociate from the act as a lot as attainable.

Essentially the most heartbreaking a part of this opening — fittingly set to the Cranberries’ “Zombie”(opens in a brand new tab) — is Travis’s (Kevin Alves) ache upon studying his youthful brother is lifeless. In any case, he simply obtained him again, solely to lose him not lengthy after.

Nat is feeling an identical agony, together with the survivor’s guilt that comes with Javi having died in her place. In an try to clarify what occurred to Travis, she tells him, “The wilderness selected.”

The assertion marks a significant change for Nat, who has been constantly anti-wilderness cult all through the season. Nonetheless, a lot has modified for the reason that begin of winter, which noticed Nat refusing Lottie’s searching blessings. Nat ate Jackie with the opposite Yellowjackets. She starved and felt the load of the workforce’s starvation after each failed hunt. She watched Shauna nearly die in childbirth, and even nearly died herself earlier than seemingly being saved by the wilderness. She shouldered Travis’s torment over the lacking Javi, and now this. Given all that additional trauma, it is sensible that she’s absolutely turning to the wilderness for consolation.

Within the current, the Yellowjackets plan one other hunt.

In accordance with present-day Lottie (Simone Kessell), the one approach to appease the darkish forces of the wilderness is to supply it certainly one of them as a sacrifice. Shockingly, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) agrees to this plan, suggesting they stage a hunt similar to they did within the good outdated days — masks, playing cards, and all! Don’t be concerned, although: She reveals to the others that this was only a ruse to stall for time to allow them to name in a psych workforce to assist Lottie out.

Seems that Shauna underestimated everybody else’s dedication to the bit, although. Van (Lauren Ambrose) convinces Taissa (Tawny Cypress) to name the workforce off so the Yellowjackets can take care of Lottie’s worries in their very own method. Actually, although, it looks as if Van is re-embracing the searching ritual in a method that mirrors her youthful self’s (Liv Hewson) shift to full cult mode.

With the psych workforce known as off and Lottie insisting on performing the ritual for the nice of all of them, the ladies draw playing cards, and Shauna pulls the queen. The hunters don their masks and seize their knives, and no quantity of aggravated convincing from Shauna can dissuade them. The Yellowjackets’ predatory instincts re-emerge, that means one factor: The hunt is on.

Lottie crowns a brand new Yellowjacket chief.

Between each timelines this season, Lottie has emerged as an totally tragic determine. The surviving Yellowjackets deify her youthful self (Courtney Eaton), with Misty (Samantha Hanratty) even going as far as to say she began the searching ritual. She’s much less of an individual than a messianic determine to them, and in “Storytelling,” she realizes that she’s misplaced any sense of management she might have had. She’s additionally misplaced her connection to the wilderness.

Lottie tells her teammates that it now not wants her now that she’s taught them to listen to it and really feel it. Due to this, Lottie cedes management — a place that was compelled on her anyway — to another person solely: Nat. It is a neat reversal from the beginning of the season, which noticed Lottie in energy and Nat denying the wilderness.

Season 2 centered on the push and pull between Nat and Lottie’s approaches to survival all through, particularly Nat’s denial of the wilderness. Following Javi’s dying, Nat seems to simply accept its energy, and with it, the title of chief.

She and Lottie have switched locations: Lottie is now an outsider, whereas Nat receives tribute from the others. All she needed to do to get there was play by their guidelines. How a lot will she embrace the sacrificial rituals going ahead?

Walter and Jeff show a team-up for the ages.

Jeff (Warren Kole) and Callie (Sarah Desjardins) comply with Shauna to Lottie’s wellness retreat, with law enforcement officials Kevyn (Alex Wyndham) and Matt (John Reynolds) in sizzling pursuit. However guess who else is at Lottie’s? Walter (Elijah Wooden)!

The citizen detective is right here to save lots of Misty (Christina Ricci) and drink sizzling cocoa — and he is all out of cocoa. Extra precisely, he is all out of cocoa as a result of he gave a phenobarbital-laced mug to Kevyn, killing him simply as Jeff delivered a false confession for the homicide of Adam Martin. As soon as once more, Jeff finds himself in a sick scenario that he desires no a part of — somebody let this man go to e-book membership or one thing! — however he very kindly helps Walter transfer Kevyn’s physique.

However Walter’s not accomplished! Decided to safe Misty’s coronary heart (and the title of this episode’s MVP), he reveals to Matt that he is arrange a path of incriminating proof that ties Kevyn to a police corruption scandal and Adam’s dying. He provides Matt a alternative: Associate with Walter’s lie and turn out to be a group hero, or get implicated in Kevyn’s place. Matt, being the scumbag he’s, chooses the previous.

Excellent news for the Sadeckis: They’re out of the woods for Adam’s homicide! Unhealthy information for the Sadeckis: The entire remainder of the episode.

Natalie dies in a little bit little bit of historical past repeating.

The hunt for Shauna goes awry when Callie and Lisa (Nicole Maines) intervene. Within the ensuing scuffle, Misty makes an attempt to inject Lisa with phenobarbital to cease her from capturing Natalie (Juliette Lewis). However Nat shoves Lisa out of the best way and takes the blow as an alternative. It is not lengthy earlier than she dies, and there is nothing the opposite Yellowjackets can do to save lots of her.

It is a devastating second, one which Yellowjackets has been constructing to for all of Season 2. Nat has been taking energetic steps to heal all through, and Lottie even validated her worries concerning the Yellowjackets bringing the wilderness again with them. It supplies her with some closure, in addition to a path ahead, making her loss much more upsetting.

This season, we have additionally gotten a deeper understanding of Nat’s survivor’s guilt with the revelation that Javi died in her place. It is clear that dying has been haunting her for the final 25 years. Now, she dies in Lisa’s place, in what appears like an inevitable sacrifice to the wilderness. Including to this concept of inevitability is Nat’s pre-death imaginative and prescient, the place she finds herself in a aircraft alongside Javi, younger Lottie, and her youthful self. In accordance with teen Nat, she’s at all times been right here — “right here” presumably that means the precipice of dying. However simply because we knew Nat’s dying was coming would not make it damage any much less.

On prime of paralleling younger Nat’s storyline, her dying additionally speaks to younger Misty’s arc this season. In episode 5, Misty by chance contributed to the dying of her finest buddy Crystal (Nuha Jes Izman), who fatefully fell from a cliff. Historical past repeats itself with Nat, and within the aftermath of Nat’s dying, Misty sobs into Walter’s arms that she killed her finest buddy. How will this guilt have an effect on her going ahead?

Coach Ben burns all of it down.

Simply as we’re processing our emotions over Nat’s dying, Yellowjackets hits us with one other main plot twist: The workforce’s cabin is burning down, leaving the Yellowjackets with no shelter for the remainder of the winter. And who’s responsible, it’s possible you’ll ask? None apart from Coach Ben (Steven Krueger).

After discovering Javi’s underground hideaway (and that Javi is now on the menu), Ben is all too able to get away from the teenage cannibal crew. He even implores Nat to come back with him, however by this level, she’s too dedicated to the wilderness. “You actually do not belong on this place,” she tells him, hours earlier than turning into the Yellowjackets’ chief.

Ben watches Nat’s ascension with horror as he tries to steal some matches to make a hearth in his new house. And whereas we by no means really see him set the fireplace, that match second makes it fairly clear who’s responsible.

At this level, he is fearful of the workforce, and of how a lot they’ve given themselves to the wilderness. To make sure his personal survival, and to make sure that they do not proceed farther down this path, Ben sees killing them as his solely possibility. It is an particularly brutal transfer coming from the workforce’s former authority determine, however it completely modifications the sport going into Season 3. Now that Camp Yellowjackets has been forcibly modified to an open-air expertise, how will the workforce survive the remainder of its time within the wild? And the way would possibly they pay Ben again for his radical house rework?

Yellowjackets Season 2 is now streaming on Showtime.(opens in a brand new tab)