REVIEW: ‘Yellowjackets,’ Season 2 Episode 3 – “Digestif”

Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 3 doesn’t spare a moment rushing to the grim details following last week’s ending where the team awoke to devour Jackie’s (Ella Purnell) body. The lingering shot of the skeletal hand of Jackie, stripped by her friends in a fit of ravenous desperation, is brief, but one of the most unsettling frames the series has delivered. The show has never hidden from the darkest moments of the series, starting right in the throes of hell so that now the inevitability of the crash is the team resorting to cannibalism. But this is the first time where we, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse). Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and company are forced to deal with the after-effects.

The sequence is stark and startling, almost more so than the feast itself, because it is depicted in the harsh light of day, rather than darkness or interwoven with a bacchanalian fever dream. The snow especially shines a light on the carnage. Ben (Steven Krueger) seemingly remains the one with the greatest grip on his humanity, even if he’s begun to journey into hallucinogenic daydreams about what would’ve happened had he decided to not board the plane on the fateful day their flight plummeted. A closeted gay man in the 90s, he walked away from a life with his boyfriend out of fear. Now, the girls he once called “vicious monsters” to his partner have begun to sharpen their claws.

In Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 3, “Digestif,” the series makes clear that Ben isn’t in great health and his death seems like the greatest incoming loss. Greater still, and vocalized by Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) as she puts Jackie’s remains to rest at the plane wreckage, is the sensation that as terrible as it’s all been for them, they’re likely headed towards things getting worse before they get better.

Natalie sums it up, saying to Jackie: “You’re dead though—you get to make everyone jealous of you one last time.” She’s predicting a time will come when these once vivacious young women will be envying the dead. Or, at least, the manner of death that claimed Jackie.

“Digestif” also doubles down on the Lost parallels. While it was once an easy comparison, it’s difficult not to see references or at least inspirations. This is especially true in the division of faith versus reality that’s beginning to cause a fissure in the camp. The survivors are either gravitating towards Lottie (Courtney Eaton)—who believes the cascade of fallen birds at the end of the episode is a gift—or aligning themselves with Natalie and Taissa’s more pragmatic approach. The latter group is dwindling in numbers, however, made all the more poignant by Taissa’s tethering herself to the supernatural and mystical elements of the series.

As we learn this week, the version of Taissa who has been wandering off in the night and the one who took part in consuming Jackie is a separate entity, which explains Taissa’s horror when she awakens to see her late-friends mauled body. 

It’s a mystery that plagues modern day Taissa (Tawny Cypress) as well, as she draws images onto her wife’s hand as she lay comatose in a hospital bed, her reflection in the mirror mouthing vague messages. But it’s not just Taissa. Even at her camp, Lottie (Simone Kessell) seems to be plagued by apocalyptic visions of the past encroaching on her pristine present. 

However, it’s adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) who goes through the greatest metamorphosis this week, as we get a further peek beyond the mask of suburban drudgery to which she’s condemned herself. She follows the man who threatened her and Jeff (Warren Kole) at gunpoint to run away with their car and she delivers a deliciously grotesque and vivid monologue that fully embodies who she has become after the trauma she’s faced. Shauna remains the greatest character in the series because we’re just as invested in her as a teen as we are with her as an adult. While we’ve seen the past traumas the team shares leaking into their lives, Shauna has managed to keep it all relatively buttoned up but for random acts of violence. 

Lynskey is a gift, in every role really, but this one in particular. Watch the way her jaw works in her monologue as if she’s actively fighting off a wolfish grin. This is Shauna in her element. She’s not Rambo, as Jeff jeers, but she’s a survivor, and one who has seen some of the very worst humanity can do unto one another. 

The remaining issue continues to be that there’s simply so much story that it’s hard to force it all into one episode. Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci share some hilarious scenes together and there’s a whole other subplot going on at Lottie’s camp, but these moments pale in comparison to the ones that reveal greater information about what motivates these characters. There are one or two subplots that need more episodes to breathe. 

Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 3 is yet another strong episode, setting up whatever ensuing trials of terror these characters will have to face. While the series could do with splitting up narrative threads between episodes, season two continues to be a confident improvement over the already strong first, anchored by endless mystery and terrific performances—especially Lynskey’s transformative one as adult Shauna.

Yellowjackets Season 2 is streaming now on Showtime.

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