Tear Jerker / Yellowjackets

Spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Season 1

Pilot

• 2021: Natalie on her last day of rehab, talking about how we need a purpose in life and she lost hers after the crash.

F-Sharp

• As the plane is about to crash Coach Martinez is running around the cabin and putting oxygen masks on girls. Had he stayed buckled up on his seat, he might have survived.

The Dollhouse

• 1996: The girls have improvised tombstones for the deceased. They are trying to say a few nice words about Rachel, the only girl that died in the crash but they don't know her very well because she just came up from JV. All they can conjure up was that she was going to go to an Oasis concert, that she was OK in trigonometry, and that she was seen once carrying a flute case.
• 2021: Nat and Misty are looking for a reclusive Travis, with whom Nat has had a troubled on-and-off relationship. They finally get to the ranch where he works, only to find his body. Tough-as-nails Natalie just falls to her knees and breaks down.

Bear Down

• 1996: Travis tries to exhume his father to get his grandfather's ring so that he can give it to his little brother, Javi. He breaks down, unable to do it, so Natalie does it instead. Afterwards, he tells Natalie that his father didn't even like him anyway, but Natalie comments that no matter how awful parents are, it still messes you up when they're gone. She recalls her own past, in which her father was abusive to both her and her mother, before he ended up killing himself with his own gun.

Blood Hive

• Natalie is reminiscing about a happier moment with Travis. And then she looks at the photos taken during his autopsy. From a shot of him lounging shirtless in bed next to her, content and relaxed, to closeups of his lifeless body and the marks left by his death by hanging.
• On what would have been Jackie's 40th birthday, her parents give Shauna her Yellowjackets uniform. Like Shauna herself tells Callie, she has never stopped thinking about Jackie.

Saints

• Jackie’s parents keep their daughter’s bedroom in the same condition it was when she flew off with the rest of the team. While Mrs. Taylor may have come across as passive-aggressive and mean-spirited she and Mr. Taylor still outlived their child.

No Compass

• Van didn't really want to go on the expedition to find help, but sticks with Taissa because she wants to one day enjoy a soft pretzel and a ride on a horse with her in New York City and not go see Cats. For her trouble, she ends up getting savagely mauled by a wolf. Mercifully she actually turns out to be alive, and Season 2 reveals she survived to adulthood, but she still got scarred.

Flight of the Bumblebee

• Everybody cheers and waves as Laura Lee turns on the ignition on the cabin's plane and taxies on the makeshift runway. She even gets the plane airborne. But as she flies over the lake, the teddy bear she has set in the passenger seat catches fire. When the fire spreads, she realizes what will happen and prepares to accept her fate. The others, horrified, witness the plane explode over the lake. Not only has yet another escape plan failed, they have lost their sweet teammate to a fiery death.
• Taissa finally telling Simone about her sleepwalking and then asking her to take Sammy and spend a few days with Simone’s mom. At first Simone refuses, because she is not going to leave the woman she loves to suffer by herself. Taissa has to spell it out. She cannot trust herself around her own family.
  I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you...(sniffling)... or Sammy.
• There's something very sad about the fact that Natalie's reason for thinking Coach Scott is gay is because he (an adult man) never sexualized her or her teammates. It says a lot about how she and all of the girls are used to being treated even by grown men.

Doomcoming

• Misty finds the Coach all by himself and attempts to force herself on him. Instead of continuing the pretense of being her boyfriend, he rejects her with a blunt “I don’t love you. I love Paul.” Since Misty doesn’t seem to get it, he finally bursts out with a speech hinting at all the stress and pressure of being a Closet Gay.
  Misty (confused): What? Who’s Paul?
  Coach: He's my boyfriend, Misty. I'm gay. (Beat) Yeah, that's right, you heard me. Gay. I'm gay, gay, gay (laughing, then yelling at heavens) Did you hear that, Mom? Dad? God? All my furry forest friends? I'm gay!

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

• Shauna delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Jackie after the latter announces to the group that Shauna is pregnant by Jeff. In response Jackie tells her to Get Out!, but Shauna is no longer her loyal little minion and tells her she can get out instead. Outside, Jackie struggles to keep a little fire burning. The next morning, Shauna sees it has snowed during the night and finds that Jackie has frozen to death. After begging her to wake up, she can do nothing but sob in Taissa's arms.
• Not counting Javi, there are 16 people (one of them, an adult) in the group and none of them thought to check on Jackie or even try to get her to come back inside. Even though they know there's dangerous wild life in the forest. Travis and Nat walked right past her.
• In hindsight, Adam's character becomes very sad. He was just a Wide-Eyed Idealist who genuinely was interested in Shauna, and made her feel special for the first time in a while. Their affair obviously wasn't healthy, but she suspects him of being their blackmailer and kills him. His last moments are being stabbed to death by the woman he loved, and he doesn't even know why.
• During a single night Travis was drugged without his knowledge, grey raped, sexually assaulted immediately afterwards, hunted and nearly murdered, and his brother has disappeared. Initially he tries to brush it off and even frame some of it as a good thing but the weight of it and the fact that the last family member he has in the wilderness has gone missing at the cusp of winter eventually causes both him and Natalie to break down. Even more upsetting is the fact that given how dire their circumstances are, both of them have no choice but to drop everything that happened except for Javi's disappearance and go back to the cabin like nothing happened.

Season 2

Edible Complex

• Two months after Jackie's death, the survivors build a pyre and prepare to burn her remains. Shauna speaks from her heart and says goodbye:
  Shauna: Jackie. I'll never have another friend like you. I don't even know where you end and I begin. I'm sorry. And I love you.

Digestif

• Nat brings Jackie's remains to the crashed airplane, and despite the two's volatile relationship in life, tearfully gives her respects.
  You're lucky, you know? I think shit is gonna get a lot worse out here. But you're already dead, so way to make everyone jealous of you one last time. I'm sorry for what we did. Who knows? Eating you could be the reason we could survive the winter, so thanks. Rest in peace, Jackie.

Old Wounds

• Nat's howl of complete despair after losing the hopeless attempt to pull a literal ton of frozen moose out of the lake. Especially taking into account her eulogy to Jackie in the previous episode: winter isn't nearly over, they're completely out of food, and now that they lost the only animal they've seen in weeks... shit really will get a lot worse.

Two Truths and a Lie

• The moment Misty tells Crystal she destroyed the plane's black box. The first thing Misty does is beg her not to tell anyone and promises to do all her chores, it's a small detail but it really reminds the audience that these characters are just children.

Qui

• The ending. We've spent half the [past] episode watching Shauna struggle to give birth, and the other half watching her struggle to feed the screaming baby, leading up to the amazing Hope Spot where she wills her starving body to lactate... And it was All Just a Dream. The baby never made it. But just like the viewers, she remembers it living, breathing, screaming. Her friends can't help the panicking Shauna as she keeps asking them why they can't hear him scream. Even the Jerkass Mari looks saddened by the death. And the camera pans away from her, like even it can't bear to watch any more.

It Chooses

• Mari gets a humanising moment while attending to Lottie. She tries to carry the bedpan down the ladder and drops it, spilling Lottie's urine everywhere. She then just starts crying to herself. While a horrible person whose redeeming qualities can be counted on one hand, we're reminded in that moment that she is just a scared teenager who is quickly running out of hope, just like the others.
• Javi's death. He falls through a frozen lake while attempting to lead Natalie to a hiding place, and while Natalie wants to help him, she is held back from doing so. The poor boy ends up dying as he thrashes and begs for help, with all the other characters stand still and watch.
  • And think of Natalie in that situation too. She had the ultimate Sadistic Choice - let this innocent child drown to save herself or try to help him with the sure chance that the others would just kill them both.
  • Travis will also forever live with the knowledge that his finest moment - knocking Shauna to the ground to save Natalie - is what doomed his brother. And their last moment together was their hug of relief that Javi wasn't the sacrifice.
• Jeff tells Callie about Shauna's Tragic Stillbirth in the wilderness, which is understandably devastating news for her to hear. The scene turns sweet towards the end, though, since Jeff holds her as she cries and assures her that she should not have to bear her parents' burdens.

Storytelling

• Travis's smile of relief when he sees Natalie return, and the way it disappears when he sees the others bring in Javi's body.
• Travis knelt over Javi's body and untying his wrist bindings for him even though he's already dead.
• Natalie tries to convince Lisa to get herself regular clothes and leave the compound. Her closing words:
  Natalie: I appreciate you trying to teach me... (sighs, tries to smile) forgiveness. It's a nice idea.
• Kevyn's death has plenty of Black Comedy involved in it but also plenty of this. After he is killed in the line of duty, he is framed to look like a Dirty Cop who is responsible for Adam Martin's murder and connected to Jessica Robert's death. This By-the-Book Cop loses his life AND his reputation.
• Natalie's death, taking the needle for Lisa. Misty breaks down, unable to comprehend that she just killed her best friend, while Natalie's last moments are just relief that she was able to save someone. To rub salt in the wound, it's covered up as an overdose, ensuring that she'll be remembered as just another relapsing junkie rather than the Heroic Sacrifice that it was.

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