REVIEW: ‘Yellowjackets,’ Season 2 Episode 9 — “Storytelling”

Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 9, “Storytelling,” fumbles the finale in a big way. Despite many of the persistent strengths — the flashbacks and team dynamic, most of the performances, and the incredible soundtrack — the narrative of season two has been flimsy. In an abrupt plot choice that leads to parody style direction, the final episode of the show’s second season isn’t a total failure but is a definite disappointment.

There are moments in Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 9 where the characters are nearly unrecognizable to those we’ve come to know and understand, apart from Christina Ricci’s and Samantha Hanratty’s Misty who is always consistent. From (Tawny Cypress) in the present day submitting to Van’s (Lauren Ambrose) belief in Lottie (Simone Kessell) despite the clear signs of some sort of episode related to her unspecified mental illness, to Natalie’s (Juliette Lewis) complete breakdown of character to justify her final decision, there’s plenty that doesn’t align with the writing thus far. Even in the flashbacks where the characters have so often been given better writing to run with, they failed in smaller ways in order to justify plot conveniences.

The frustration boils down mainly to the handling of two characters in the episode: Natalie and Lottie. The adult versions of both characters haven’t even synced with their younger counterparts in comparison to the others, Kessell leaning too hard into manic energy, relying on wide eyes and grimaces to do the work rather than allow for any subtler, internal conflict to manifest itself in less obvious tics. Meanwhile, Lewis’s depiction of the character was defensible at first if one were to mentally contort themselves into assuming the life she seemingly led post-rescue would render her speech and cadence more affected and stalled. But the more we progress into the show, with actors such as Hanratty and Ricci or Ambrose and Liv Hewson possessing similar sparks no matter how much they differ in the current stages of their lives, the more egregious the lack of throughline there is with Lewis’s portrayal.

This makes Natalie’s demise at the accidental hands of Misty a greater slight because while it’s killing off the lesser version of the character, it does so in such a flippant way that it becomes a disservice to the work Sophie Thatcher is doing as a teenage Natalie. The entire sequence plays like an SNL skit, with Natalie being transported back onto the plane, this time as it crashes, with Javi (Luciano Martinez) and her younger self accompanying her. Oddly enough, it recalls Quentin’s death in the fantasy series The Magicians, as another canonically suicidal character dies to save someone else, the act itself written in grays where it’s difficult to decipher the actual motivation behind their split-second decision making. It ultimately leaves a bad taste, the writing hackneyed, and the direction from Karyn Kusama (typically great) clumsy in the approach, with too much reliance on slow motion to force the weight of the moment.

That later they have to lie and say it was a drug overdose only makes it fouler. There’s no going into Yellowjackets without assuming the worst for any and all favorite characters — good survival shows need to keep a level of suspense as we hold out hope that our favorites are alive and well. Still, for a show that revels often in the depths of depravity, humans are capable of, Natalie’s end is excessive in its bleakness, even if she went out in an act of heroism.

Thatcher is heartbreaking in the role of teenage Natalie and her arc continues to create structural dissonance in the series due to how interesting she is in comparison to Lewis’s portrayal. As Lottie (Courtney Eaton) passes the leadership role to a stunned Natalie, the shortcuts to get us to this point are less annoying due to the emotional heavy lifting Thatcher has been doing this whole season as her humanity has been continually threatened, be it from the wilderness or the group she’s surviving with. While others such as Van have taken the mindset of forsaking others in order to keep living, and Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) has succumbed to her more brutal instincts, from beating Lottie to a pulp or becoming the butcher of the group, Natalie has striven to keep hold of her aching heart.

Earlier in the episode, Travis (Kevin Alves — quietly delivering one of the strongest performances) holds his brother’s heart in his hands in a scene as horrific in its devastation as it is nauseating. The scene strikes a symbiotic visual motif, a contrast of Natalie’s own beating heart that exudes such warmth and the delicacy of it once it’s outside of the body nurturing it. It’s why when she tells Ben (Steven Krueger) to leave without her when he suggests a hiding spot — the one Javi had found — for the two of them only, the facade is all the more upsetting. Because even as she believes she’s steeling herself, as cold as the winter their enduring, and as attuned to a body’s lines and breaking points as Shauna is as she prepares Javi’s body, she is humane and soft due to it, a sympathetic character who is being punished in a sense by being put in power.

The finale burns it all to the ground — literally, as Ben lights their cabin aflame while receding to his safe haven away from murderous, cannibalistic teenage girls who seek to make beliefs to justify obscenities. His motives are unclear, making him yet another morally questionable character in a sea of them. That said, by torching their makeshift home and the only shelter they have to protect themselves from the elements, Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 9, “Storytelling” sets the tone for season three, as the team must scramble to stay alive under even greater, more unforgiving circumstances, while their tethers to their humanity fray.

Yellowjackets Season 2 is available to watch on Showtime.