REVIEW: ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Episode 6 — “Thanksgiving (Canada)”

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6 makes one thing abundantly clear: These characters aren’t likable anymore, but that doesn’t mean their suffering isn’t effective. With two major events taking place, “Thanksgiving (Canada),” like most of Season 3, works in individual pieces. Due to how much time we’ve invested in these characters, there’s the inclination to find out more whenever something significant happens. And plenty of actors continue to deliver top-notch performances. But the divide between good and actively annoying grows greater.

Of the two significant events that take place in Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6, the first is the most inevitable. We’ve always known that amiable Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) wasn’t long for this world. Since Misty (Samantha Hanratty) unceremoniously chopped off his leg at the knee in Season 1, he was doomed. And yet, that assumption can’t help prepare us for the misery that awaits his character and the unfathomably bleak manner in which he meets his end. He’s already been chopped up, sliced, and humiliated. Now, he recognizes that he’s no better than livestock, stored away where the girls keep the rest of their meat.

Krueger is phenomenal as Ben, as his will to live evaporates when we see him. Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) tries her best to keep his spirits up, to promise that there’s a reason they’re keeping him alive. But the montage of her bringing him food shows how swiftly his life force is draining from him. He begs and pleads with Natalie to kill him rather than let him sit and exist in this in-between state. She made a promise — he was supposed to die — and now it’s her turn to keep up her end of the bargain.

Sophie Thatcher and Steven Krueger deliver emotional performances.

This sequence is shot with brutal efficiency and follows Ben throughout the episode. He begs to die, but his captors deny him, stripping him further of any agency when they force him to eat despite him giving up on it. By the time Natalie succumbs and kills him, it’s a relief. Thatcher delivers a fantastic performance that informs what we know of the adult Natalie we met in Seasons 1 and 2. Natalie killing Ben is the first direct kill after Jackie and Javi’s, both of whom were partially based on circumstance. Natalie has to shoulder the weight of knowing she killed Ben.

But where Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6 reaches its tipping point follows Ben’s death. Shauna’s (Sophie Nélisse) cruelty knows no bounds as she immediately seeks a leadership role following Natalie’s traumatic emergence from Ben’s tent. Natalie will be punished, and Shauna proves that the writers have sought her out as the main driving villain of the series. Because she declares that Natalie, as penance, will have to “prepare their feast.” She’ll have to prepare Ben and butcher him.

All of this calls into question how much we’re meant to sympathize with these characters. At the very least, Season 2 made sure to make the point that while what they were doing was actively abhorrent, it was an act of pure survival. Without eating one of their own, they’d all die. We might disagree, but it made for intriguing thematic material. However, in Season 3, we’ve seen that in the past, they’re thriving. They have livestock and fish for their meals (unless it’s all falsely remembered). So, why are they still resorting to cannibalism?

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6 highlights the team’s loss of humanity.

Shauna and Lottie (Courtney Eaton) suggest celebrating and thanking the wilderness. But in reality, the move just speaks to their loss of humanity. And in that case, I’m not so sure that it works. The descent, aside from Natalie, seems rushed. That doesn’t make the final reveal any less effective, however.

As the girls once again play make-believe, dancing and screaming into the night, their camp receives a visitor. A man walks into their world, sees Ben’s decapitated head, and shouts an expletive before the screen cuts to the credits. It only adds to the misery because if Natalie and Ben had held out one more day, there might have been a chance that he might’ve been saved.

The biggest shocks in Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6 come from the flashbacks, but the adult storylines in the present day hold their own mysteries. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) takes her family on the road after she learns of the tape left at her house. With Tai’s (Tawny Cypress) and Van’s (Lauren Ambrose) help, they’re able to figure out who dropped it off and the message left, but we aren’t privy to it.

It’s one of the few instances where the adults have the main intrigue. As Van puts it, “The only people who know about this are either us or dead.” It suggests ties to the current storyline with the teenagers while playing with a more ominous tone. All of the adult characters must contend with the fact that death looms large over them. From Van’s cancer to Lottie’s death to Misty running into Lisa, who knows that Misty is the one who killed Natalie. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since they lived in the woods. While the woods itself haven’t followed them like some like to believe, what happened there does.

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6 continues to be an endurance test due to how unlikable these characters have become, but it delivers a striking emotional punch regardless. With the biggest cliffhanger of the series to date, the show manages to pull the rug out from under us. Miserably dark at times, “Thanksgiving (Canada)” cuts deep despite how insufferable many of them have become.

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6 is out now on Paramount+.

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