‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 Episode 4 Recap: The Hunger Game

There’s a scene in this episode of Yellowjackets (Season 2, Episode 4) where teenage Taissa and Van are wandering around a narrow patch of woods, the same patch they’ve spent the whole day exploring. They’re searching for another tree with that now-familiar symbol carved into it, because Taissa has discovered a double-digit number of them while sleepwalking. Van has mapped their locations out and discovered that, when the dots are connected, they’re arranged in the shape of that same symbol. So there’s gotta be one last tree in this specific area in order to complete the pattern, there’s just gotta be! But try as they might, they can’t finish the picture. 

Okay, fine — they discover Travis’s long-lost kid brother Javi, mute but otherwise miraculously unharmed after months in the freezing wilderness, giving Van the proof she needs that Taissa, like Lottie, is psychically attuned to…whatever it is that’s going on out there. But shhhh, I’m trying to make a point here, which is this: Like the map that drove Taissa and Van’s seemingly pointless search for the missing symbol, I feel like Yellowjackets is an incomplete picture. I keep seeing what it’s supposed to be, recognizing exactly where it needs to go to fully flesh things out and become what it’s meant to become, but dammit, it never quite connects that last dot.

Don’t get me wrong, this is largely an engaging and intriguing episode. It’s also an extremely busy one, in which seemingly every character in both time periods has a storyline. In the time it’ll take to sum up the plot, you could probably watch the whole thing over again. But let’s give it the old college try:

In the past, tensions run high as food runs low. Coach Ben and the kids are at odds over his decision not to participate in the cannibalization of Jackie’s corpse. 

Mari (Alexa Barajas) is becoming an ever more devout acolyte of Lottie, who seems increasingly uncomfortable with her powers and role. Mari bosses Akilah (Nia Sondaya), the youngest member of the team, into helping her search for a mysterious dripping sound; Akilah finds a mouse instead, but conceals it. (Probably a good idea: Once you’ve eaten your soccer team captain, having a mouse as a midnight snack doesn’t seem so bad.)

The schism over Lottie’s apparent supernatural abilities grows until a challenge emerges. Per rules dictated by Misty, both Natalie and Lottie will go off into the wilderness alone to hunt, each in her own way; whoever discovers the most food is the winner. If it’s Lottie, this will of course verify her power.

Both girls fail, however. Nat discovers a white moose frozen in a sheet of lake ice, but the beast sinks when the girls try to retrieve it. Lottie fully loses it, slicing open her palm at the tree-stump altar thing; she has a bizarre vision dominated by Laura Lee (Jane Widdop), the Christian girl who baptized Lottie before dying in a plane explosion last season, before Mari and Akilah find and retrieve her, half-frozen to death. Lottie and Nat have a rapprochement, though, which is honestly nice to see.

And Van and Taissa find Javi instead of that missing tree, much to everyone’s relief and amazement. Other than an anomalous patch of melted snow near where they found him, there’s no explanation for how he survived alone in the cold for so long.

In the present, Nat winds up bonding with Lisa (Nicole Maines), the purple-clad cultist she stabbed in the face with a fork. All really does seem forgiven on that front, which again is nice to see. (I’m a sucker for when people with good reason to dislike each other instead choose cooperate in dramas!) They take a detour to Lisa’s mom’s house en route to a farmer’s market; after her mom berates Lisa over her attempts to downplay her depression and inability to care for herself without a cult, they leave, but not before Nat retrieves Lisa’s beloved goldfish.

Misty and Walter are now on the hunt for the cult, and get a pair of hotel rooms for the night after failing to find them at the farmer’s market. Along the way, Walter reveals that he too is a fan of show tunes, and that he has no interest in Misty’s past as a Yellowjacket. He seems sincere enough, given that we see what he’s up to when he’s alone thanks to a fun split-screen sequence as the two get ready for bed.

Beset by visions for the first time in decades, Lottie desperately tries to get her meds upped by her new psychiatrist, who instead advises her to examine the visions for what they might tell her about herself. It’s official: This is the worst advice I’ve ever seen a TV shrink give. 

Taissa wakes from a sleepwalking trance to find herself in her car with no gas in the middle of nowhere. She gets a ride from a friendly trucker and winds up at a video store (!) run by the grown-up Van (Lauren Ambrose). 

Unfortunately, I’ve saved the worst for last. If I had to cite a single datapoint in order to make my case that the present-day material on Yellowjackets undermines the moral gravity and life-or-death stakes of the teen storyline, it would be Callie’s reaction to the news that her mother Shauna is a murderer. 

On shows like The Sopranos, The Americans, and Breaking Bad [mild spoilers to follow, so go ahead and skip this paragraph if you need to], the efforts made by murdering parents to shield their children from the truth about what they’ve done drive the whole show, and in some cases dominate it. As well they should, I think. Granted I’m not speaking from experience here, but discovering that your mother or father has killed another human being is a horrendous blow, one that would undermine, if not undo completely, the relationship between parent and child. That’s why Tony Soprano and Philip and Elizabeth Jennings conceal the lethal nature of their work even when they have no real choice but to admit their respective illegal careers. That’s why Walt Jr. cuts Walter White out of his life completely when his dad fails where the other succeeded.

Shauna’s revelation, and Callie’s reaction, should be a huge, huge moment. But Callie seems more interested in the blackmail aspect of the situation than the fact that her mom is, you know, a murderer. By the time dinner rolls around, she’s offering to help slice the cucumbers, for crying out loud! Callie struggled more with her mother’s infidelity than the fact she committed a homicide.

For those other, better shows listed above, wrestling with what would happen if the kids discovered the horrible truth was a major matter addressed for season after season; to paraphrase M.h Bison, for Yellowjackets, it was Tuesday. 

Which is a real shame. I don’t think I’ve had a single problem with the teen storyline since the show started; it feels fresh, intriguing, genuinely mysterious, honest and carefully observed about teenagers in general and teenagers in this plight specifically. The adult half is populated by a bajillion talented and beloved actors — I may not care for Misty’s antics but even I’m not immune to the pleasure of watching Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood on screen together — and Taissa’s storyline, at least, is as serious and creepy as the teenage stuff. 

But there’s an un-seriousness about murder in the adult section — remember, both Shauna and Misty have blood on their hands, while the others were involved in the cover-up — that, if extended to the teenage material, would make you wonder what the big deal is. If it’s all a joke, like it is with Misty, or if it’s just another setback in your satirically suburban life, like it is with Shauna, then what’s the harm in occasionally killing and eating your teammates. The characters and the viewers alike deserve better, and I keep feeling like we’re all just shy of getting it.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.