Yellowjackets S2 Finale: The Loose End That Could Be The Gang's Undoing In S3
Contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" Season 2 Episode 9 — "Storytelling"
Throughout the first two seasons of "Yellowjackets," it's an understatement to say that the girls' soccer team gets into plenty of scrapes — both in the wilderness timeline and the present day timeline. In the wilderness, the problem is obvious; after a plane crash, the team is stranded in the wilderness with no escape. In the present day, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) has been dealing with a minor issue since Season 1 — namely, that she killed her lover Adam (Peter Gadiot) and implicated her friends Natalie (Juliette Lewis), Taissa (Tawny Cypress), and Misty (Christina Ricci), as well as her husband Jeff (Warren Kole) and daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins).
Now, in the aftermath of the Season 2 finale, it seems like the Adam problem is out of the way thanks to some general plot silliness (but more on that later), but a new issue may have presented itself. Spurred by Lottie (Simone Kessell), the adult Yellowjackets stage their ritual from the woods where they choose cards to see who will be sacrificed to appease the wilderness, and Shauna draws the fateful queen. Before her friends can flat-out murder her, though, Callie and Lisa (Nicole Maines), a follower of Lottie who's bonded with Natalie, both show up and interrupt.
Trying to kill Lisa, who's wielding a shotgun, Misty lunges forward with a syringe full of fentanyl... but ends up killing Natalie instead. Lisa, smartly, gets out of there, which feels like it'll come back around. Lisa witnessed the Yellowjackets returning to their roots; will this be an issue in Season 3?
Lisa could cause problems for the adult Yellowjackets going forward
It certainly feels troubling that Lisa, having witnessed a bunch of masked adult women chasing their terrified friend and being present for the accidental murder of Natalie, has just absconded into the darkness with this knowledge. From the very beginning, the adult Yellowjackets' primary concern has been keeping one big secret: what they did out there in the woods.
Clearly, admitting to the world at large that the plucky teenagers who survived the impossible actually ate one another and hunted them in the process wouldn't go over particularly well for Shauna, Lottie, Taissa, Misty, and adult Van (Lauren Ambrose). Depending on how much Lisa actually heard, she's got some seriously sensitive information — and at the very least, she saw these women do some pretty weird stuff out there in the woods before Misty actively tried to kill her. Natalie was her only real ally at Lottie's compound, and if Lisa has lost her trust in Lottie now, it stands to reason that she'd present a real threat to the adult Yellowjackets.
This could also, frankly, end poorly for Lisa; the adult Yellowjackets certainly don't take kindly to outside threats. For now, she's in the wind, which feels like something that will come back into play next season.
How did the Adam situation get resolved?
At the very least, the plotline concerning Shauna's murdered lover Adam is resolved, albeit in a completely ridiculous way. In Season 2, Elijah Wood joined "Yellowjackets" as Walter Tattersall, a self-professed "citizen detective" who forms an immediate attachment with Misty. Desperate to help her as the police close in on Shauna and her friends over Adam's murder, Walter shows up at the compound alongside the real detectives, and... well, he immediately commits murder too. After poisoning lead detective Kevyn Tan (Alex Wyndham) with some hot cocoa, Walter enlists Jeff to help him hide the body, explaining that he's connected all evidence surroundng the murder to Kevyn.
From there, Walter shows Kevyn's partner Matt Saracusa (John Reynolds) the dead man's body, letting him know that the evidence could certainly implicate Matt unless he wants to declare himself as a hero who took down a corrupt cop. (It's not confirmed, but it seems like Matt, who's been a rat this whole time, goes ahead with this plan). According to Jeff and Walter, Shauna and her friends are freed of the Adam problem now, thanks to the latter's machinations and murders.
Please, Yellowjackets — don't repeat the Adam plotline
Lisa may or may not come back to present trouble for the adult Yellowjackets, but one thing is extremely important here — the writers cannot and should not have it be a direct repeat of the absolute slog that was the "Adam Martin murder" plotline. For the entirety of Season 2, Shauna has been a person of interest in the case, and it's led to a lot of narrative foot-dragging throughout the present day timeline in the season. From Matt trying to use Callie to get information on her mother to the two detectives just constantly following the main characters around, this plotline just ended up being a total drag when it came to the overall story. Let's not do that again with Lisa.
For that reason, it's a little tempting to imagine that maybe Lisa runs away, changes her name, and avoids this group of completely unhinged women entirely for the rest of her natural born life. "The adult Yellowjackets did a bad thing, and someone knows about it" thing has been done to death already — literally — and in the aftermath of Natalie's death, the gang will have plenty to grapple with. With the Adam plotline in the show's rearview mirror, let's hope the potential Lisa problem won't be more of the same.