Yellowjackets: What's The Song At The End Of Season 2 Episode 2?
Contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" Season 2, Episode 2 — "Edible Complex"
It's been one long, hellish winter for our team of "Yellowjackets." During "Edible Complex," the teens find themselves tearing each other to bits as the cold and hunger foisted upon them by their post-plane crash existence takes hold. Taissa Turner (Jasmin Savoy Brown) takes charge of the group when it flounders in the wake of Jackie Taylor's (Ella Purnell) death. When she discovers that Shauna Shipman (Sophie Nélisse) has been putting makeup on her old best friend, and believes that Jackie's talking to her, Taissa demands Shauna get a grip on herself for the good of her unborn child. To speed that recovery along and so some of Jackie's dignity can be preserved, Taissa makes a further edict: it's time to get rid of Jackie's body. The only way to do that, thanks to the frozen ground, is a cremation by bonfire.
Unfortunately their attempt at obtaining closure and sending Jackie on to a better place just results in their former leader's remains roasting instead of turning to dust. And since the survivors are starving, they dig in. Shauna even says that Jackie "wants" them to eat her. Everyone ends up taking a bite — except for Ben Scott (Steven Kreuger), who looks on in horror as his students desperately devour the corpse of their teammate and eventually leaves them alone to their feast.
As the team stumbles toward their temporary salvation, fantasy flashes of the whole group at a wild bacchanalia take place. And over it all, The Radiohead song "Climbing up the Walls" plays.
Climbing Up The Walls is mysterious, popular Radiohead song
Radiohead — who gained fame with their Buzz Bin-worthy song "Creep" — is a band that needs little introduction. But if you ask any Radiohead fan how they feel about "Climbing up the Walls," you'll get a hundred different answers. Far Out Magazine named it one of the band's 10 sexiest songs, while RedEye's Song of The Day blog from the Chicago Tribune proclaimed it one of their most frightening. Its distant, airy, creepy atmosphere definitely does a perfect job of underscoring the desperation, devotion, disgust, and fear inherent in the final moments of "Edible Complex." And this doesn't mark the first time it's shown up in a television series; the song also underscores a pivotal scene in Season 4 of "Peaky Blinders."
Thom York, Radiohead's lead singer and co-songwriter, simplified all of the debate as to what "Climbing Up the Walls" means in a 1997 Vox Magazine interview where he explains the origin point behind every single song on their iconic "OK Computer" album. "Some people can't sleep with the curtains open in case they see the eyes they imagine in their heads every night burning through the glass. Lots of people have panic buttons fitted in their bedrooms so they can reach over and set the alarm off without disturbing the intruder. This song is about the cupboard monster," he said. That makes the song's usage doubly fitting; for Shauna Shipman, Jackie Taylor really did become the monster in the cabin's cupboard. It goes to show how "Yellowjackets" has mastered its use of music to highlight the themes of each episode. But even though Jackie's been done away with, she's likely to keep on haunting the show.