Nightmare Fuel / Yellowjackets

At the mercy of teenage girls.

Plane crash, cannibalism, teenage girls, cannibalistic teenage girls… safe to say there's a lot of Nightmare Fuel to go around in the world of Yellowjackets.

Spoilers all over this page. You Have Been Warned.

In General

• Just the premise of the series. The thought that, even without going overseas, you can be lost in the wilderness and not be found for well over a year is terrifying. They didn't crash on an uncharted island in the middle of the Pacific or an inaccessible area in the Andes. They were in Canada, a well-established nation — and it still took 19 months for them to be found.
• Also, the more we learn of just what they did go through and what they had to do, the knowledge that the adult characters we meet have had to carry this with them for 25 years, that it fucked them up on a fundamental level and they've had to go on like that.

Season 1

Pilot

• 1996
  • Flashback to a practice game before the championship. The team had planned to freeze out Allie, the weakest player, but most of the girls change their minds. Taissa takes matters into her own hands and collides with her, knocking her down. But she ends up breaking the girl’s leg.
  • The episode opening. Someone or something is chasing a frightened girl through a woods. We hear her panting and crying, stumbling around barefoot in the snow and trying to get away. All of a sudden, her screaming stops when she falls into a trap and dies, impaled on some spikes at the bottom.
  • A group of people clad in pelts and face-concealing masks made out of animal heads sit around a fire. On the menu for the feast? The girl from before.
• 2021
  • Shauna, who earlier had been complaining about rabbits chewing on her garden, takes care of one of the offenders VIA SHOVEL, complete with a Sickening "Crunch!" and plenty of blood spattered on her expressionless face.
  • Misty has grown up to become a worker at a nursing home. One of her patients is acting difficult, refusing to eat and knocking her food to the floor. Smiling cheerfully Misty takes away the old woman’s pain medication. The patient can only let out a little whimper as Misty walks away.

F Sharp

• 1996
  • The crash. A chaotic scene, with the cabin full of smoke, girls shrieking, and flames. A girl is impaled through the neck while on her seat, another one is burning and screaming.
  • Coach Scott's leg is revealed to have been crushed by the wing. Misty takes the ax and cuts off his leg.
  • Laura finds her bag. She smiles when she finds her teddy bear, but then feels something drip on her forehead. When she looks up, she sees Coach Martinez, stuck on a tree and dripping blood.

• 2021
  • Taissa opens the shades in her son’s bedroom window. Sammy has covered up the glass in terrifying drawings of scary eyes, an angry figure in a tree, etc.

The Dollhouse

• 1996
  • The girls come across the carcass of a bear and ponder what exactly could have done that to a bear. Coach Scott points out that wolves attacking as a pack certainly can take down an animal that size. Now they can worry about being mauled by wild animals if they don't die of starvation or exposure first.
  • The coach hits the Despair Event Horizon and breaks down in front of the girls. If it wasn’t obvious to them before, the one surviving adult's mental state is weakening.
  • At the lake, the girls see a reflection and it leads them to a cabin. There's no one there or any edible food but at least they have shelter. In the night, Taissa wakes up and goes up to the attic. Lottie is there, nearly catatonic. And in a corner, a seated corpse so old it's practically mummified.
  • Throughout the episode, Taissa has flashbacks to when her grandmother was close to death: while the old woman initially tries to make Taissa feel better about the situation, she at once point has hallucinations of a man with no eyes who appears in the mirror in her room and begins screaming not to let him take her eyes, scaring Taissa badly. Worse is that the audience sees the hallucination appear in the mirror rather suddenly, and it is terrifying. But the very worst part? When her grandmother finally does die, Taissa checks her eyes. They're missing.
• 2021
  • Taissa confiscates her son’s doll and puts it aside. She wakes up in the middle of the night and goes downstairs. She finds her son's doll has been ripped to pieces and its eyes are torn out. Plus the doll's resemblance to Sammy makes it creepier.

Bear Down

• 1996: During the crash itself, Natalie hallucinates her dead father... exactly as he looked after accidentally shooting himself. In contrast to the flashback to the incident itself, Natalie's hallucination of her father is missing one full quarter of his head! That was definitely not a neat little shot to the head.
• 2021: Taissa is at a party trying to wow potential donors for her campaign. She is pretty nervous as it is and even hears two guests asking about how did she and the others survive. When a server walks by with the entrée, in her head the roasted pig's head becomes a deer's.

Blood Hive

• 1996: How quickly the séance turns from a fun parlor game to a frightening experience, with Lottie acting possessed and muttering in French (a language she is NOT fluent in) that they need to spill blood "or something bad will happen". She proceeds to bang her head against a window hard enough to break it.

Saints

• Shauna's nightmare: she is in labor, with Jackie and Misty assisting her. She finally delivers her baby, which looks like a bunch of cooked meat that's flailing its arms... and takes a huge bite, chewing with a big smile.
• Taissa wakes up to find Shauna gone and searches for her frantically. She finds Shauna attempting to terminate her pregnancy with the wire from her bra. Taissa takes over, but it's too painful for Shauna to continue.
• Jessica goes out to meet Misty, who is apparently blasting the "Overture" from The Phantom of the Opera from her car speakers (assuming it's not simply playing on the soundtrack.) Misty drugs and abducts her. Jessica wakes up to find herself chained to a bed, her mouth covered with duct tape... and in Misty Quigley’s basement. Jessica might as well be in in Annie Wilkes’s cabin.
  Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don't let the fact that you're a terrible person keep you up tonight.

No Compass

• On the second night, Van offers to take the first watch, but Taissa does it. She has a blackout and wakes up in a tree, to the screams of the others who are trying to fend off some Savage Wolves. Taissa had told them earlier that wolves are afraid of humans. Wolf attacks on humans are rare indeed, but if deprived of food sources, they are willing to attack. Poor Van is mauled.
• In the present, Jessica tries to be nonchalant with Misty. Misty, in full Affably Evil mode, states that fentanyl is legal and deaths due to it are just dismissed as overdoses. Then, as she injects some box chocolates, she recites the name and address of Jessica's father who lives in Florida… and who loves chocolates. Brrr.

Flight of the Bumblebee

• Flashback to a young Laura Lee at Bible Camp. She dives into in the shallow end of the pool at summer camp, cracking her head and knocking herself out. We see her floating motionlessly and blood come out of her forehead, with everybody else too distracted to notice. Fortunately, she is found in time by the lifeguard.
• After Taissa and the girls build a Viking Funeral for Van, her eyes slowly flutter open and she becomes aware of her surroundings. The others don't notice that she is still alive until she catches fire.
• Van's impromptu surgery in the woods at night without anesthetic of any kind. The others around her can be seen plugging their ears so they won't hear her cries of pain.
• Laura Lee finally takes off in the long-abandoned plane, flying south for rescue. Then the entire plane erupts in a fireball, as horrified stranded teens watch their best hope of rescue go up in flames.

Doomcoming

• The mushrooms Misty picks, presumably to poison the Coach, end up in the stew everybody eats, except Jackie. The subsequent Mushroom Samba leaves everybody lying down on the ground, tripping— and VERY open to suggestion. Lottie, under the shrooms's influence and perhaps something else realizes that Jackie is in the cabin with Travis and gets angry because "he doesn't belong to her". The girls head out to the cabin, and in response to howling, they start making animal noises on their own.
• When the girls burst into the cabin, they find Jackie and Travis. First Lottie and then Shauna start kissing and writhing against Travis (who is also tripping). Jackie tries and fails to stop things. Then a truly frightening Lottie shoves Jackie into the pantry and locks her in, but not before growling something that bodes very badly for Jackie.
  Don't you understand!? You don't matter anymore.
• The girls hunt down Travis. When they catch him, they tie him up and prepare to cut his throat, out of their minds on shrooms and believing him to be a stag. Travis narrowly avoids getting slaughtered.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

• Jackie's dying dream (or rather, nightmare): Shauna apologizes and brings her back into the cabin, where the rest of the group smiles eerily at her and tell her, in unison, that they all love her. Then she realizes Laura Lee is there... and an unidentified, shadowy figure in the corner — who looks downright demonic — tells her ominously that "we've all been waiting for you." This part of the forest is not normal.
  • Cut to the real world, where Shauna wakes up to realize there's unexpectedly snow on the ground and races out to find Jackie frozen to death at the campfire, just a few feet away from safety. Their childish argument the night before, and the rest of the group's stubborn treatment, literally cost Jackie her life.
• Taissa is with her staff at headquarters awaiting the election results while Simone and Sammy go back to their home to pick up some belongings. She goes to the basement for the suitcase but finds a trail of blood. She enters the crawl space and screams at the sight of an altar with their dog's head and heart and the iconic symbol on the wall. At this point, a reporter announces that Taissa defeated her opponent. Instead of looking relieved or shocked, Taissa smirks triumphantly.
  • As Simone enters the crawl space, the silhouette of the Antler Queen can be seen through a window.
• Natalie is just about to attempt suicide. As if the moment was not dark enough, she is interrupted by people kicking down the door, rushing her, and kidnapping her even as she fights back… one of whom is wearing a necklace with the icon on it. Because of this, she misses a call that reveals who emptied Travis’s bank account: Lottie.
  • Her contact also notes, clearly shaken, that she believes people are following her just for investigating the withdrawal. Lottie's reach and influence are very powerful.
  • Just the sheer implications of the cult having spread to civilization. After all, it's been made clear that for them, cannibalism was not just about survival. And that’s without getting into the possibility that there truly is a malevolent supernatural force behind it, one that used to be confined to the wilderness...
• Lottie places the bear's still-bloody heart in a makeshift altar of a tree trunk, before falling to her knees in homage. Van and Misty, flanking her, do the same. She says a prayer, half in French, half in English. The madness we saw lead to cannibalism in the first episode is taking shape before our eyes…
  Versez le sang, mes beaux amis^translation Shed the blood, my beautiful friends
  Let the darkness set us free.

Season 2

Friends, Romans, Countrymen

• 2 months after Jackie's death, we first catch up with Shauna as she's engaging in what at first seems like your run of the mill imagine spot with Jackie as they play a lighthearted game of MASH. The camera switches to Shauna as she laughs off Jackie's teasing and as she goes to get the diary off her, we're gifted the lovely shot of Jackie's preserved corpse.
  I don't want to talk about the future anyways, I'm all about living in the moment.
  • Bear in mind, Shauna is doing this in the meat locker, as she's supposed to be preparing food for the other girls...

Edible Complex

• Once again, Shauna is late with the rations as she gets caught up conversing with the dead Jackie, who suggests that Shauna should braid her hair so as to hide her missing ear, as well as to do her makeup. Taunting her all the while, Jackie makes another suggestion..
  Jackie: It's time to be honest Shauna, you're hungry.
  Shauna: Yeah, Mari's making dinner.
  Jackie: That's not what you're hungry for. (She holds the knife to her wrist)
  Shauna: What are you doing?
  Jackie: It's okay. I don't need it anymore.
  (Proceeds to slice off a part of her skin and starts to laugh)
  Shauna: Stop! Stop! Stop laughing! This is sick! Stop laughing!
  Jackie: You're the one holding the knife. (Shauna looks down in horror at the knife in her hand)
• Taissa, having had enough with Shauna's secrecy with the meat shed and "giving her time", goes to investigate when Shauna finally leaves, and is horrified to find Jackie's posed body, face covered with makeup.
  Taissa: (Grabbing Shauna) What the ever living fuck, Shauna?!
• The flashback to adult Travis's death, as described by Lottie. In hopes of getting in touch with "it", he decides a Near-Death Experience is the way to go and hangs himself. After he loses consciousness, Lottie tries to lower the crane he used but the controls don't work. To make things even scarier, we see a ghostly apparition of Laura Lee of all people. She changes from her regular appearance to the ghost girl of The Ring.
• The last moments of the episode. The team decide to finally give Jackie a funeral, and as the ground is too frozen for burial, decide to cremate her. After a few words from Shauna, she sets the pyre alight and the survivors turn in for the night, leaving Jackie's body to burn. This goes awry when a thick blanket of snow falls from above and covers Jackie's corpse, and with the fire still going, her remains are cooked. The smell awakens everyone within the cabin and draws them outside. The only words to be spoken are Shauna's, "she wants us to." Malnourished, ravenous, delirious, and exhausted from fighting for survival every day, the survivors begin to feast.
  • What follows is a Fantasy Sequence conjured up by the survivors so as to cope with the horror of what they're doing, imagining themselves at a bacchanalian feast, dressed in luxurious ancient Greek attire. This fantasy filled with ecstasy and binging is inter-cut with shots of reality as the survivors savagely eat Jackie's corpse. The only one not to partake in the frenzy is Coach Ben, who can only retreat back to the cabin in a state of absolute fear.
  • This intense sequence is amplified by the choice of background music.
    And either way you turn, I'll be there
    Open up your skull, I'll be there
    Climbing up the walls

Digestif

• Shauna's speech to the carjacker. Not just her detailed description of how to skin a human body, and her telling him point blank she's not shaking because she's scared but because she really, really would love to kill him, but also the phrase "People are always so sweaty when you kill them. There's a look people get when they know they're about to die." Just how many people has she killed, anyway? And under what circumstances?

Two Truths and a Lie

• Crystal and Misty start exchanging silly secrets to amuse themselves while they are out emptying the toilet bucket. Misty reveals that she destroyed the emergency transmitter simply because she wanted to feel important. The light-hearted mood disappears as Crystal realizes in shock and disgust that her "bestie" is the one responsible for stranding them in the wilderness for months.
  • Misty sees the disgust in Crystal's face and immediately starts pleading for Crystal not to tell the others, even offering to do all her chores. The pleading does not work ("Or what, you'll poison me?"). Misty threatens to kill Crystal, practically snarling the words and making a terrifying face that shows she is NOT bluffing.
• With Lottie's help, Nat remembers the last time she was with Travis, and the vision she had while she was overdosing on cocaine. In this vision/nightmare, no one survived the plane crash and nothing but charred corpses occupy the seats of the burning plane, as a figure adorned with antlers and a veil approaches the camera. To the two woman's horror, they realize what Travis' note to Nat meant.
  Nat: The whole time, there was something, some darkness, out there with us, or in us. It still is. That's what I was right about.

Qui

• Childbirth is frightening under the best of circumstances. Shauna goes through labor and delivery without any pain relief and only her friends for support.
• All Just a Dream? More like a Nightmare. After delivering her son, Shauna struggles to produce milk to feed him (not surprising given her starvation) but she finally succeeds in getting Junior to latch on and nurse. She falls asleep, but when she wakes up her son is gone. She finds the others—including the Coach—eating the baby. With blood dripping down their faces, they all look at her in shame.
  • Waking up from the baby-eating nightmare is no relief; Shauna is told the baby did not make it and refuses to accept it. She keeps asking why does not anybody hear the baby cry.

Burial

• Shauna attacks Misty, blaming her for her baby's death and accusing all of eating the baby. When Van tries to forcibly restrain her, Shauna bites her. The only thing that stops Shauna is Lottie, who encourages Shauna to let it out. This means Lottie intentionally submitting to Shauna beating the crap out of her. When Shauna is finally done, Lottie appears to be dead for a second and her face is barely recognizable from the swelling and the blood.
  • The Kubrick Stare on Shauna's face afterward is haunting.

It Chooses

• In the past, the survivors decide to sacrifice one of their own to the Wilderness hoping they will stay alive. The unlucky person who picks out the queen of hearts with eyes crossed out is Natalie. She manages to escape thanks to Travis, but the other survivors chase her down with weapons raised, howling.
• When Javi tries to help Natalie by guiding her to the place where he hid for two months, he ends up falling through ice and into freezing water. He begs Natalie for help but is deliberately allowed to die. To make it more horrible, there was a Hope Spot earlier on, when he fails to pick the card of death and immediately runs to his brother's arms.
• In the present, Jeff has a Catapult Nightmare where Shauna has returned from Lottie's compound and hugs him. Except she has electric kitchen knives where her hands should be and has stabbed him in the stomach.
  Dream!Shauna: I thought you loved all of me, like I love all of you.
  Jeff: I... I'm scared.
  Dream!Shauna: Just relax, or you'll end up like Adam did... buried in the park, no head, no feet, no hands. Skin grated off like a rind of pecorino. (slashing his throat)
  (Jeff screams and wakes up)