REVIEW: ‘Yellowjackets,’ Season 2 Episode 6 — “Qui”

Directed by Liz Garbus, Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 6 confirms what many of us watching had already assumed: the birth of Shauna’s child was never going to be easy. “Qui” is wrought with devastation, anchored by a chilling, heartbreaking performance from Sophie Nélisse. Nélisse has long proven herself on the show to be one of the top performers, a soulful presence who manages to bridge the vulnerability of being a teenage girl in unfathomable circumstances with steely resolve. Her gaze is either blank and endless or overwhelmed with emotion. In this episode alone, she delivers one of the strongest, most gutting performances of the 2023 year in television so far.

While the episode could have decided to rest all of the emotional weight on her shoulders, Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 6 instead highlights just how out of their depth the entire team is in the flashbacks. They’re children playing make-believe for the sake of survival, which makes Natalie (Juliette Lewis) in the present day all the more tragic. She repeats what so many of the survivors have said since returning home, that the team performed heinous acts for the sake of survival. That they had to do it. But, Natalie says, she’s not sure that means they deserved to live. As a character with a history of alcohol and substance abuse who has been shown to be suicidal in the past, she is just one version of the embodiment of trauma. She witnessed the very worst of what she and her friends were capable of, so she tries to escape it by any means necessary.

In the flashbacks though, as we watch the team huddle around Shauna as she endures a brutal delivery with near-fatal blood loss, we’re stricken with just how young they all are. Yes, we’ve seen them already dissolve into hedonistic tendencies, but even then they were dressed up in some form of performative ritual. Nature wanted them to eat Jackie’s (Ella Purnell) body, it’s the woods that guide and protect them as they hunt for food and map the territory. While some might’ve succumbed to this faith they’ve fabricated, many are chewing into the facade for the sake of a level of clearance, a way to expunge their sins as to be guilt free for what they’ve done.

But as they’re helping in Shauna’s delivery, there’s no higher power to escape to. They huddle in prayer, but it’s desperate, and sincere, all but begging for their friend to make it through but also asking for some sort of strength to shoulder what’s been asked of them. The only adult in the room, Ben (Steven Krueger) is so lost in his own hallucinations that the site of Shauna’s state only manages to make him retreat further, convinced he can’t help. Misty (Samantha Hanratty) thought she was prepared but even she is reduced to panicked tears when faced with the reality of it.

It makes sense that with the blood loss and trauma of the experience that Shauna would drift for a while. It’s only natural that it’s Jackie’s voice that welcomes her to this reprieve, even if these fever dreams only causes more pain. Because Jackie was the only one to know her completely, loved her, and hated her because of it.

There are two songs from the recent boygenius album the record that I keep thinking about while watching this season of Yellowjackets while reflecting on the previous one. One, from the song “True Blue,” goes:

“And it feels good to be known so well/ I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself.”

Another, in “Leonard Cohen,” they sing:

“You said, ‘I might like you less now that you know me so well.”

Even on the brink of death, as the world she was expecting to change itself yet again through the birth of a child she didn’t think she wanted, she dreams of the friend she’s consumed, physically, figuratively, and more. Yellowjackets is many things as it deals in body and psychological horror, mystery and the divide between logic and faith, but at its heart, with all its violence and intrigue, it’s the story about the lasting effect of friendships bound in hardship and the everlasting love we hold for those who’ve seen us at our best and more triumphant as well as our absolute worst and lowest of lows.

In the flashbacks the girls weep with Shauna as she awakens, realizing the dream she’d been having was false, that she’d been lulled by hardships she wouldn’t get to face. In the present, we watch the surviving team members once again assemble. “Qui” is an extraordinary episode of the series not just due to the singular great performance from Nélisse but for the way in which the characters all find their way back to one another.

Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 6 is a staggering, emotionally brutal installment in the series. Greater still than the one storyline, though, is how the series manages to remedy some of the season’s drawbacks, as the group finally comes back together to make for a richer, more engrossing storyline. They’re stronger together, even in moments of loss.

Yellowjackets Season 2 is available to stream now on Showtime.

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