The question we’ve seen Van grappling with throughout this season is not whether or not the Wilderness is real; it’s whether or not the sacrifices it demands are worth the cost. Van’s relationship to the Wilderness has evolved from Yellowjackets‘ earliest episodes. When Lottie first started connecting with It, and when Tai first started sleepwalking, Van was among the most willing of the group to accept that there was something in the woods that they couldn’t explain. Her belief caused a rift between her and Tai, though they eventually got to a place where Tai was able to accept that Van’s beliefs were different from her own. And when the group ate Javi at the end of season two, Van told Travis that she wasn’t ashamed about what they’d done and was, in fact, glad to be alive. It’s a lot easier to say that, though, when the only choices are “eat one of my friends” or “starve to death and maybe no one will ever even find my remains.”
That choice is meaningfully different after the group captures Hannah and Kodi. It’s no longer simply cannibalism or death; it’s cannibalism, death, or rescue, and in Van’s mind, the latter option supersedes the former two by such a wide margin that they’re not even worth considering. That’s why Shauna, Lottie, and Tai’s arguments for staying in camp (which is what they eventually do after Shauna grabs the gun from Nat and demands they stay) instead of letting Kodi lead them to the pickup point don’t make sense to her. But Tai brushes off Van’s concerns, particularly about Akilah’s animals not providing enough game to get them through the coming winter. “We survived [last winter],” Tai says. “We ate a fucking kid,” Van replies. There’s no coming back from that, whether it’s the act or a verbal rebuttal.
That’s why it’s surprising to see that, as the group starts to split into two factions—Shauna’s outfit of confidantes and Nat’s one of rebels, who are secretly plotting to free Kodi and Hannah and have Kodi lead them out of the woods—Van sticks with Shauna. Secretly, though, she’s trying to fix the satellite phone, which she’s kept hidden from the others ever since she and Tai found it. And, even more secretly, Misty knows what she’s doing, because of course Misty follows her as she gathers wires from the plane. Misty might even have something that can help: There’s an awfully similar-looking antenna inside the plane’s transponder (which she intentionally broke so she could keep playing the hero in the woods back in season one and which she has apparently kept hidden this whole time). When Misty goes to retrieve it, Nat follows her and discovers that she’s had the transponder all along. It’s a whole mess, but not quite as big a mess as the rebels are in.
As Mari takes Hannah out into the woods to pee, Nat approaches Hannah and offers her a knife. She wants Hannah to cut herself and Kodi free that night so they can all sneak away and get to the pickup point. Shauna catches them just as they’re about to leave, though, and Hannah, who’s still holding the knife, immediately turns on Kodi, saying she got the knife from him. Hannah stabs Kodi through the eye, killing him, and then hands the knife to Shauna and says, “Please. I want to be part of this.” And, look, I understand that Stockholm Syndrome is a documented-if-contested phenomenon, but straight mercing a dude without provocation is farcical. It’s not just unbelievable; it’s ludicrous. When Natalie finds out, she’s understandably devastated and she sobs as the first snow of the season starts to fall.
Not being able to escape is a problem for Melissa, too, because she’s just realized how dangerous Shauna is. After Shauna catches her being nice to Hannah, Shauna reprimands her and tells her that Hannah is just trying to manipulate her. “Why can’t you just be a nice person?” Melissa asks and storms off. Their argument comes to a head when Shauna points the shotgun at Melissa. “I fucking dare you,” Melissa taunts her. It’s a pivotal moment for Shauna, and she has to decide what’s more important to her: maintaining her authority through fear or her girlfriend. Of course, she chooses authority and fires the gun at Melissa; the bullet doesn’t hit her, but it does clip the sleeve of her jacket. Shauna doesn’t need the Wilderness as an excuse for violence anymore. This is no longer about survival; this is about Shauna taking out her anger about the way her life has turned out on everyone around her, seeking vengeance in the form of absolute ruling power.
In the past, Melissa’s actions have been ambiguous; she praises Shauna’s ruthlessness and encourages the power Shauna acquires through intimidation and force, but she also shows more compassion toward Hannah than anyone else. And her eventual fear after Shauna turns on her seems genuine, too. In the present, she’s seemingly been forthright (save for a few major discrepancies). So when Van is pointing a knife at her and she says, “If the Wilderness is telling you to put that knife through my heart so you survive your cancer, then do it. I’ll be your sacrifice,” it feels real and honest. Which is why it’s such a betrayal when Van drops the knife and Melissa grabs it instead. “You don’t want to [be the kind of person who sacrifices another human being to save herself]…But I do. Isn’t this what It wants?” Melissa asks as she stabs Van in the chest and kills her.
Van’s death scene plays out almost like an inverse of Ben’s. There’s another slow song that builds to a haunting refrain (Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For A Film)” this time, which doesn’t hit as hard as Low’s “Be There”), and they both get stabbed through the heart after a moment of intense emotional connection. But Ben’s death was an act of mercy that the show earned by slowly building to a moment that felt inevitable by the time it arrived. Van’s death, on the other hand, is an act of betrayal, and the suddenness of it means there’s no build-up nor real emotional release. When it played out onscreen, I initially reacted to the shock of what just happened, not the sadness I felt at Van’s death. Ben’s death evoked both of those feelings at the same time. By drawing such strong parallels between the two death scenes, one was bound to be compared unfavorably to the other, and Van’s death feels like a cheap knock-off of Ben’s.
When Tai finds Van dead on the floor, she’s finally Tai again, not the Other One. This is the treasure teenage Van was referring to: Van is the sacrifice, and the gift is that Tai is able to wrest control of her body back from the Other One. “You got the real love of our life back. You show me a better treasure,” teenage Van says. It would be a compassionate sentiment, a generous act of love if it were given willingly, but it wasn’t; and Van is angry that her past self misled her and shuttled her to her own death at the hands of Melissa. Don’t ever trust ghosts—or the dead, Yellowjackets reminds us. They always want so much more than you can give.
Stray observations
- • Even though Misty travels with Van, Tai, and Melissa to Melissa’s house, she quickly leaves when she decides this situation is too crazy even for her. Walter picks her up in a helicopter, flies her back to his extremely covetable house, and Misty plays him like a fiddle to get him to hand over Lottie’s phone, on which she discovers a mysterious piece of evidence that causes her to take off without even saying goodbye. How much do you wanna bet it has something to do with Callie?
- • We finally see the construction of the spike pit from the very first scene of the series in this episode: Travis builds it, planning to lure Lottie into it and kill her, but he can’t go through with it. At this point, it’s looking less like Mari is Pit Girl and more like it’s actually Hannah.
- • When Shauna’s talking to Melissa about Hannah in their tent, Melissa tells Shauna that Hannah has a 10-year-old daughter. Shauna brushes it off as Hannah trying to make Melissa feel bad for her, so Shauna probably just forgot about it. But she did, at one point in the past, know about Alex, even if she didn’t believe Alex really existed.
- • Congrats to Jeff on winning his war against FurnitureFam.net and securing the hotel contract with the Joels.
