Summary
- Yellowjackets survivors are hallucinating due to starvation. Ben, Shauna, and others experience vivid visions caused by extreme hunger.
- Taissa hired Jessica Roberts to spy on the group and Misty killed her. Tensions rise among the survivors as secrets unravel.
WARNING: The following contains SPOILERS for Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8.
adult Yellowjackets survivor characters all together again at Lottie's compound after decades apart.
Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8 chronicles the aftermath of Shauna's violence in both the past and the present. After Shauna's beating Lottie in Yellowjackets, Lottie is being tended to by Misty and a reluctant Mari, and it's clear that she's in a critical state. In the present, the police have searched Shauna's house thanks to her connection with Adam allowing them a search warrant. When Jeff was confronted with the grisly nature of Shauna's crimes, he nearly folded — nearly — and revealed to Callie that Shauna had lost their firstborn in the wilderness. However, the biggest Yellowjackets revelations came from the survivors being together in the present and the past.

Yellowjackets Season 3: Everything You Need To Know
After two brilliant seasons, Yellowjackets season 3 arrived to offer yet another blood-soaked installment in the Showtime shocker.
8 Starvation Is Causing The Yellowjackets To Hallucinate
While Lottie was the only one having hallucinations in season 1, Yellowjackets season 2 saw Shauna and Ben pick up the affliction as well, much to viewers' confusion. Soon, the entire team seemed to be affected by hallucinations, but the answer as to why wasn't revealed until season 2, episode 8. All the Yellowjackets survivors are hallucinating because of their starvation. While Ben has dissociative visions of his boyfriend, and Shauna has long conversations with dead Jackie and a brief life with her baby, Akilah's mouse is revealed to be dead the whole time in the episode, and Mari follows the dripping sounds to see the walls covered with blood.
When Mari backed away from the cabin walls screaming in Yellowjackets, Van assured her that she saw things because of "the hunger." Taissa also hallucinated two reflections of herself before shaking them off and telling Van she was lightheaded. While the wilderness probably has a hand in the group's sudden onset of visions, the weight of the girls' predicament is only made clearer when Van finds a leather belt in Jackie's luggage and adds it to their stew for protein. Naturally speaking, people in the late stages of starvation can experience hallucinations, and that's clearly what's happening to the survivors.
7 Misty Confirmed That Taissa Hired Jessica Roberts
Once the adult survivors made their way to the sharing shack at Lottie's compound, long-held secrets against one another soon came pouring out. One of these secrets was that Taissa had hired reporter Jessica Roberts in Yellowjackets to spy on the group, and Misty killed Jessica. When the women started arguing about Adam in public, Lottie quickly shuffled them away to another location so as not to cause a commotion in front of her followers. Many of the survivors questioned each other accusingly out of fear of being found out about Adam's disposal.
When Misty told Taissa that she didn't need to "outsource" her efforts to find Van, she was forced to spill the beans about Taissa hiring Jessica to finagle information out of the survivors. While the group was understandably upset by this betrayal, Taissa stood firm in believing that she did the right thing to ensure that no one talked about their time in the wilderness, thus endangering her chances of winning the senate race. The others were quick to jump on Misty for killing Jessica and keeping her locked in her basement, even though she could've exposed them. This Yellowjackets' revelation only caused further fractures among the adult survivors.
6 Javi Isn't Alive In Yellowjackets' Present Timeline
Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8 revealed that showrunners aren't above keeping the true number of survivors a secret, leading to a ton of rumors surrounding the actual identity of Shauna's deceased lover Adam. Many believed that Adam was actually an adult Javi, and writers even discussed making this a possibility in the series' earliest beginnings (via EW), but Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8, showed audiences that Javi isn't alive in the present timeline. While the team was running through the wilds hunting Natalie, Javi managed to get to her first and desperately tried to hide her from the others.
While trying to cross the frozen lake with the others in hot pursuit, Javi fell through a patch of thin ice and drowned. The group decided to take his body back for food, with Van proclaiming, "The wilderness chose!" This proves once and for all that Adam wasn't an adult Javi and that Javi doesn't survive the events preceding the crash. Instead, he is sadly the team's next cannibalized victim. While it's not probable, Yellowjackets season 3 could always reveal that there is at least one more survivor from the wilderness, but audiences at least now know it can't be Javi.
Yellowjackets has been renewed for season 3 and will be released sometime in 2024.
5 Javi Survived For Months Living Under The Symbol Tree
The question of how Javi survived in the wilderness away from the group has prompted several intriguing Yellowjackets Javi theories. However, Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8 finally solved the mystery when Ben discovered Javi's hideaway underneath one of the symbol trees. Javi's words and Natalie's itting she saw Javi bowing to a symbol tree by the creek caused Ben to take action. He made his crutches more snow-friendly, and with the help of Javi's drawing, he journeyed out to find the famed symbol tree. After clearing away some of the brush, he saw that there was an opening beneath its roots.
4 The Yellowjackets' Survivors Created A Ritual To Claim The Next Victim
The very first mystery set up in the Yellowjackets series premiere was how the girls descended into what appeared to be ritualized cannibalism, and season 2, episode 8 finally showed how that came to be. Previously, the girls had eaten those dead of natural causes, like Jackie, and conversed about the possibility of eating others if they were to die. Finally, however, the hunger had gotten so bad for the team that Taissa made a stand for their survival. What ensued was the official ritual of the team that became their personal method for all the following kills in the series.
Whoever chooses the Queen of Hearts randomly from their card deck is the next victim and must give up their body to be consumed. After placing Jackie's necklace on the victim, as the butcher, Shauna kills and dresses the body, and then the team will have their feast. This doesn't go according to plan the first time around, as Natalie, who drew the fatal card, runs away and Javi dies instead. However, it's safe to assume the pursuit will become a natural part of the process. Seeing how the team descended into such an act was one of Yellowjackets' most perplexing mysteries, and now there's finally an answer.
3 Jackie's Necklace Marks The Latest Victim
Another of Yellowjackets' most enigmatic moments was seeing Jackie's necklace on the infamous "pit girl" killed in episode 1. This prompted several theories and questions, with many thinking that the pit girl was Jackie or that the necklace would become something like the titular conch in Lord of the Flies, which Yellowjackets is loosely based on. However, season 2, episode 8, revealed that the necklace marks the victim for consumption when Natalie draws the Queen of Hearts card and Shauna puts the necklace on her.
Since Jackie was the first to be eaten, her necklace has become a symbol among the group. It is essentially the mark of death and eventual consumption, something to identify who the wilderness has chosen to die. It's incredibly symbolic and an indicator that many of the team choose to believe that Jackie was the first "sacrifice" given to the team by the wilderness, as proven by Shauna's line before eating Jackie, saying, "She wants us to." It's certainly one way to compartmentalize precisely what the survivors have devolved into doing, and it explains why the pit girl was wearing it in episode 1.
2 Javi's Death Affected Nat & Travis' Future Relationship
Adult Natalie and Travis' relationship in the present has been described as toxic by the rest of the survivors, and Javi's death finally explained what made their dynamic so complicated. At first, it seemed that the shared trauma of 19 months in the wilderness and building drug addictions were the condemning threads that made Natalie and Travis so horrible for one another in the present. However, it always seemed like there was something even more complex bubbling beneath the surface that Yellowjackets had yet to explore. It wasn't until Javi's death and the shocking nature of Natalie's involvement (or lack thereof) in it that evidenced the true reason.
Just before Natalie chose the fateful Queen of Hearts, Travis forgave her for faking Javi's death and apologized for how he treated her. When she was chosen, he attempted to save her by fighting the others off and telling her to run. Javi tried to save her, but she let him drown when Misty told her that the group would kill her for trying to save him. When the team returns to eat his dead brother, and Travis finds out Natalie could've saved him, it destroys their relationship.
1 The Wilderness Wants To Kill Another Adult Survivor
Lottie reveals what the wilderness wants in Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8: to take another survivor. Since Travis' fateful wilderness line in season 2, episode 2, audiences have been champing at the bit to figure out exactly what the dark entity is after. It's clearly been affecting the adult survivors' lives: Taissa's sleepwalking alter ego has returned, Shauna almost killed two innocent people, Misty killed Jessica, Van is a joyless shell of her former self, Natalie is suicidal, and Lottie has disturbing visions. After what Lottie describes as trying everything to make the entity go away, she resigns to the fact that the wilderness wants to claim another life.
Lottie poisons a cup with a phenobarbital concoction, which Misty ironically remarks was used in the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult, and offers to pick last. Nonetheless, she enforces that someone in the group must die, but the wilderness will ultimately choose, as it always does in Yellowjackets.
Yellowjackets
Cast
- Tawny Cypress
- Sophie Nélisse
- Jasmin Savoy Brown
- Release Date
- November 14, 2021
- Seasons
- 3