REVIEW: ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Episode 8 — “A Normal, Boring Life”

Questions are being answered, but that doesn’t make Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8 any less frustrating. As “A Normal, Boring Life” tries to force us to care about a character who, until Season 3, was mere background and inject them into the past and present storyline, it makes what’s happened to other, more intriguing characters more notable. It’s not bad, but it’s getting boring, something a show about cannibalistic, stranded teenagers and their traumatized adult counterparts shouldn’t be.

Spoilers ahead for the major reveal of Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8.

Welcome, Hilary Swank. We knew she was going to appear following the announcement of her casting. The series tried throwing us off by mentioning that Melissa died in Episode 7. However, we soon learn it was all a ruse to separate her from the other six remaining Yellowjackets. She wrote a suicide note, and the rest worked itself. She was able to come up with a new identity and, eventually, marry the daughter of Hannah (Ashley Sutton), the researcher still alive in their Yellowjacket camp in the past.

This introduction provides two significant problems. The first is Swank herself. Swank is a formidable actress but doesn’t work as well as Melissa. Part of this is due to the character not getting ample moments to shine as an individual rather than one of Shauna’s accessories. Past Melissa has little to no agency. We’re told she grows close to Hannah. Still, we don’t see it, and her relationship with Shauna plays second fiddle to Jackie (Ella Parnell), who looms over the plot both physically and metaphorically.

Meanwhile, Swank does her best to make Melissa a worthwhile character, but we don’t care. Nothing about Shauna and Melissa’s teenage tryst makes anything to do with her in the present worthwhile. Instead, it’s another pulled-on thread that seems unnecessary, mainly as it eats up so much of the plot.

Hilary Swank can’t save dull writing in Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8. 

Here’s the second problem. There’s a specific thing that television series (film, too) do that drives me up the wall. It’s when, to make sure that we, as audience members, know that an adult actor is a particular character, someone makes the executive decision to have the character have the same haircut from childhood. Otherwise, how on earth will we know that they’re the same character? Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8 does one better. To ensure we all know that Hillary Swank is an adult Melissa, they have her wear a backward baseball cap before mentioning her name. You know, like teen her does.

It’s a granular, insignificant problem in the grand scheme of things. And sure, there are items of clothing I still wear that I coveted as a teenager. But this feels like writers not trusting their audience to put two and two together. It’s a shame because so much of their talk is engaging, especially as Melissa explains her absence from their lives.  When they came back as the sole seven survivors of the plane crash, she no longer felt like she was “one of them.” And, more importantly, Shauna terrified her.

The scene between Melissa and Shauna is tense due to the formidable prowess of Swank and Lynskey, but neither character earns the moment. It’s never suggested that their fling is anything substantial. Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8 actually takes pains to showcase just how little Melissa and her well-being matter to Shauna, who is too preoccupied with her own mess.

It’s why their showdown has so little weight behind it. In an alternate version of the show, this back-and-forth would make sense between Jackie and Shauna, not Melissa and Shauna. It’s telling that it’s Jackie’s ghost who mocks her from beyond the grave, while Melissa is hardly a blip to Shauna.

Potential rescue divides the Yellowjackets. 

They taunt and try to draw a rise from the other, and Melissa gets pretty close when bringing up Callie and asking whether or not Shauna’s daughter is aware of the darkness within her. But it’s Shauna who ultimately breaks as she rips a chunk from Meliissa’s arm and threatens her with it, saying she has to eat it to be spared. It’s a frenzied sequence that can’t keep up with the narrative as Shauna goes rogue. It firmly plants her in the villain category as she reverts to old methods to exert her dominance.

Unlikable female characters are worthy of celebrating, but the writing for the Yellowjackets team in season three is inconsistent. In Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8, many team members are written with personality traits that fail to fit them. It’s all in service of the overarching storyline. We understand why Lottie (Courtney Eaton) might want to stay in the forest, and Eaton is tremendous when she explains Lottie’s dilemma. In the woods, she got to be her true self.

Teenage Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) and Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) agree with it, regardless of Van (Liv Hewson) and Natalie’s (Sophie Thatcher) disagreement. And here is where a significant divide happens. How can we root for these characters after all they did? It makes them interesting and layered in part, but mainly, it’s frustrating because Shauna and Tai are justifying their decision as it not feeling right to leave with Hannah and Kodi (Joel McHale). It’s weak writing and leaves the group divided. But things grow even tenser when, as Natalie’s group plans to leave camp and leave Shauna, Tai, and Lottie behind, Shauna suddenly tells them no.

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8 leaves us on a cliffhanger that they won’t be able to back out of as it firmly divides the camp into an us versus them mentality. While Melanie Lynskey is, as always, wonderful, Shauna’s storyline puts Tai (Tawny Cypress) in the background, which is much more interesting. But ultimately, “A Normal, Boring Life” suffers because it feels like another start and stop. We gain a foot before the show drags us back.

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 8 is out now on Paramout+. 

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