Yellowjackets Season-Premiere Recap: Screaming Trees

“It Girl” is available to stream now via Paramount+; it will make its Showtime network premiere on Sunday, 

The third season of Yellowjackets starts with a fake-out. As the episode opens, the camera follows a girl running through the woods. She swivels this way and that, terrified to hear the calls of the wild teammates closing in on her. As she whips her head around, we see that it’s Mari. And oh, how thrilling to think that we’ve finally gotten our confirmation that Mari is, indeed, Pit Girl.

Well. By the end of the episode, she is a girl in a pit, but not yet “thee” Pit Girl. Sure, you can tell me that the styling of this sequence — Mari is wearing shoes and leggings, and there’s no snow on the ground — is meant to clearly signal that this isn’t actually Pit Girl, and it’s just some other day, but the direction and framing clearly mirror that iconic scene, and at the very least, we were promised a hunt that doesn’t end up happening. At least not yet.

Welcome back to the world of Yellowjackets, where viewers (like yours truly) consistently anticipate mega violence and are, weirdly, a little bummed when teenage girls don’t end up stalking and eating one another. To be fair to Yellowjackets, the show is actually not often overtly violent. However, as we embark on the third season, the image from the premiere of the team sitting in their macabre masks, feasting on another’s flesh, still haunts us. Are we ever going to get answers to the questions that linger like that killer Cranberries song? Or is the show continuing to string us along until it runs out of gas? If the opening scene of this season is any indication, the answer might be the latter. But it’s a good thing we don’t just have the opening scene to go on.

As we ease back into the wilderness, we find that the group has not only survived but thrived in the wake of the cabin burning down. They have built a handful of aesthetically pleasing and architecturally sound A-frame-like structures, plentiful game has returned to the area, there’s a verdant garden, and Akilah is raising bunnies and ducks for cuddles (and eventual snacks). It’s basically Henry David Thoreau’s wet dream; they’re living off the land and loving it. (Shoutout to the Yellowjackets production design team here because this new habitat really does look like an actual fairyland dream.) It’s unclear how long it’s been since we last left our survivors, but I think it’s safe to estimate that it’s been approximately three months. I’m basing this on when the dead of winter generally ends in Canada (mid-March) and when the summer solstice takes place (June 20th). I guess a group of enterprising young women (and one young man) can get a lot done in the spring.

The time jump is interesting because we only have a set amount of time in the wilderness before rescue comes, and the Yellowjackets team just fast-forwarded through a chunk of it. If season one and season two each covered approximately five months, we’re now about six months away from rescue. The girls don’t know that, though, and they are having a great time. Mostly.

In order to keep their spirits high, Van has organized a summer solstice party, which, for some reason, involves half of the team waiting on the other half of the team. This is what we saw in the cold open: the teams were playing a game to determine who lost. It feels like everyone could have just participated in the festival and had a great time, but the show wants to remind you that these girls are ultra-competitive. Van gives a speech to kick off the festivities, providing us with a much-needed recap because, due to many different factors, we’ve actually been away from this show for longer than the nineteen months that the Yellowjackets were stuck in the wilderness. Wild, right?

Van is quite the performer, and she tells the brave tale of “the Yellowjackets” overcoming all obstacles. But, in the background, a caustic Shauna scribbles her own tale in her journal. She writes: “Once upon a time, a bunch of teenage girls got stranded in the wilderness, and they went completely fucking nuts. They worshipped evil spirits, and they hunted their friends, and they feasted on their flesh, and they fucking liked it.” And you know what? She’s not wrong. Later, she spits in Mari’s soup as retribution for losing the game, and the two fight, resulting in Mari stomping off. Tai actually warned Nat that this would happen, but Nat chalked it up to “dumb girl shit,” which actually sums up a lot of teen girl drama quite nicely.

The woodland group hasn’t transcended teen girl politics yet, as Shauna and Mari are at odds, and Shauna is also still butthurt about not being chosen queen (dumb). She’s also still in a deep, dark depression over the stillbirth of her child (understandable). No one gives her too much grief when she picks fights with Mari because, well, Mari is annoying, but also because they want to give her some grace. Also, she’s the only one who can butcher the animals they bring back. It seems like someone else could have learned to do this truly awful job by now to help lighten her load, but no one has stepped up.

Elsewhere in the wilderness, Lottie and Travis continue on the spiritual journey that they began last season. Travis is looking for meaning in all the noise, especially after Javi’s death, and Lottie wants to give it to him even though she isn’t really sure of anything herself. So, she sherpas him to a clearing and gets him hopped up on mushroom tea. He freaks out at one point during his trip, saying he can hear the trees screaming. (Shoutout to anyone who remembers the great ‘90s band Screaming Trees.) Lottie can’t hear them, but later, during a solstice ceremony for the dead, she does, as do all the other Yellowjackets. The closed captioning for the sound states that it includes “babies crying,” “chittering,” “shrieking,” and “roaring.” That’s a very random and horrifying grab bag of sounds. The question of whether or not there’s a sinister force at play in the forest continues to linger, but I’m not sure if this question can go unanswered for too much longer. The adult Yellowjackets seem pretty convinced that it was just them ascribing a greater meaning to the happenings in the woods, but trauma has a way of repressing things.

One mystery that the show solves right away is letting us know that Coach Ben is still alive. Now, did he burn down that cabin? Probably? But I’m also really glad to see him. Just like his athletes, he’s quite industrious. He’s been setting traps and living off of the land, but he really scores when he finds a giant box of what we can assume are life-saving rations sitting underneath a boarded-up trapping pit in the middle of nowhere. (Shout out to Dead Cabin Guy, wherever your special episode is!) He scarfs down a protein bar and gets to work setting up the area to catch a deer. Instead, he catches Mari.

It continues to be fun to think about who might still be alive and who’s dead from the wilderness timeline, and I would personally really love to see an older version of Ben, still played by Steven Kreuger. I realize that the odds of this happening are slim, but I really like that dude, and I can hope. An adult Mari would be interesting as well. But, as we’re reminded in the present timeline, middle-aged Yellowjackets are starting to become an endangered species, and no one really cares that they’re in short supply.

First, we reckon with the aftermath of the impromptu hunt at Lottie’s compound that ended in Natalie’s death. Again, Yellowjackets is kind enough to provide an expository recap, courtesy of everyone’s favorite wife guy, Jeff Sadecki. Shauna, Tai, Van, and Jeff attend Natalie’s funeral, which is an incredibly bleak affair. Her mother gives a 30-second eulogy and then sends the scattered mourners away with a dismissive wave. It doesn’t feel like an event befitting of a one-time wilderness queen, but given the horrible things that they all did to survive, maybe it’s what Natalie deserves.

At least that’s something that Shauna considers when she gets drinks with Tai and Van after the funeral. She muses that she’s not a good person; none of them are good people. Van leans into this, cheekily admitting out loud in public that they ate one another. God, I love Lauren Ambrose. We don’t see Lottie during this episode because she’s in a facility for the “differently sane,” but we do see Misty. Misty is not at the funeral. No one told her about it, of course, but she knew about it anyway and chose not to go. She’s grieving in her own way, which includes a solo trip to Natalie’s storage locker to clean out anything incriminating, er, sentimental.

Walter is still hanging around and, when Misty gets wasted in a bar wearing Natalie’s old leather jacket, nostalgic for her dead friend’s piss-off attitude, he’s the only one who picks up when the bartender calls. Misty’s continued belief that the Yellowjackets are her real friends is as heartbreaking as it is pathetic. Misty is a dangerous live wire — see: her drunken attack on the two dudes in the dive bar she chooses — and she’s also delusional. Walter’s interest in her continues to pique my interest, and his use of the word “tasty” reminded me of my favorite Walter theory from season two. Also, I just adore Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci together. I hope they do some truly deranged things together this season.

Everyone seems to be coupled up in the present timeline, and that’s sweet because this episode dropped on Valentine’s Day. We even get a very sexy moment, courtesy of a very un-sexy plan, when Van and Tai dine at an upscale restaurant and then dash out on the tab. The waiter runs after them, and even though a good Samaritan saves him from getting hit by a bus, he has some sort of cardiac episode in the street as Tai and Van giggle obliviously around the corner. Rushing with adrenaline, they make their way slowly toward one another, heads making the distinctive shape of a heart. They then proceed to have a killer alleyway hookup sesh, set to the strains of “Glycerine” by Bush. Only it’s not all heart eyes here; the Man with No Eyes appears to Taissa just as she starts to kiss her lost love. Here’s yet another question that I’d love some more clarity on this season: Is Taissa truly mentally unstable, or is there an actual apparition following her? I’m in the former camp at the moment, but we’ll see.

One person who isn’t mentally unstable is Callie. That girl knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s definitely been influenced by her time with her mother’s old friends. When she overhears a gaggle of Mean Girls talking about Natalie’s death and speculating that “Callie’s mom” was there, involved in some sort of sacrificial ritual (oh, children, if you only knew), she gets angry. She orders some bloody entrails via something called SwiftEATS and Randy delivers. I have no clue what restaurant will sell you a paper bag full of bloody entrails at one in the afternoon on a weekday, but more power to Callie for figuring that out. She pulls a Carrie on the other girls, and then later, Shauna pretends to be mad for a hot second before revealing that she really thinks what her daughter has done is hilarious. Petty revenge definitely falls under the category of “dumb girl shit,” and Callie is certainly taking after her mom in the conflict-solving department.

The big new mystery of the episode also involves Callie. As she’s making a midnight sundae, she hears a rustle at the door. It’s an envelope with Shauna’s name on it. The symbol is also scrawled on the corner. Inside, there’s a cassette tape. It feels like we’ve done the cryptic mail thing on this show before, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested to see where this goes.

Buzz, Buzz, Buzz

• Jeff, in horror over the fact that Callie might actually have sourced human entrails for her little stunt, gave me a true LOL. Never change, Jeff.

• ‘90s Song Watch: We got some Bush, Cat Stevens, and The Runaways in this episode, but what I most appreciated was the non-radio-edit version of Cake’s “I Will Survive.” The use of “fucking” has never been so fun in a cover song.

• The wilderness girls say that they fed the cabin fire for twelve straight days. How did no one see a fire that large? Where are they?