SPOILER ALERT: This post includes some major reveals for the Season 1 finale of Showtime’s Yellowjackets,“Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.”
Just when it seems Yellowjackets couldn’t get any more sinister than “Doomcoming,”The Season 1 finale shows otherwise.
Hungover and exhausted from their trippy, makeshift dance, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), Lottie (Courtney Eaton) and the rest of the survivors awake to grapple with the violence of the night before. Shrugging off his near-death experience is Travis (Kevin Alves), who gives a concerned Nat (Sophie Thatcher) the cold shoulder and declares that he’s going to search for younger brother Javi, who seems to have gone missing amid the chaos of the previous evening.
In the present Misty (Christina Ricci) meets up with Nat (Juliette Lewis) to help Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) and Taissa (Tawny Cypress) get rid of Adam’s body. Misty, eerily calm at the site of Adam’s murder, walks her fellow survivors through the process of discarding the body, with Shauna taking up the responsibility of cutting Adam into pieces. Helping her is Nat who questions Adam’s involvement in the attempted blackmail and Travis’ murder. To save her own skin, and Jeff’s (Warren Kole), Shauna tells her friend that a search for a grand conspiracy behind Travis’ death might be futile. Travis might have been driven to his death by the terrible experiences he had in survival in the Canadian woods. Once again touting her concerning knowledge of how to get away with murder, Misty explains that she’ll get rid of Adam’s identifiable limbs. She later hides the body parts in a former patient’s casket, which burns to ashes in a crematorium. Later that evening, Shauna, Taissa, Misty and Nat attend their high school’s 25-year reunion, where they’re obviously the center of attention.
The past sees Misty (Samantha Hanratty), who is accused of drugging the girls. However, their bickering is interrupted when a bear comes close to the cabin. Nat, Travis, and the gun are not to be found. Lottie instead carefully approaches the bear, which appears to be ready to be slaughtered. Lottie returns to the prophecy that she spoke in the episode before, with a fully roasted bear.
As Shauna prepares the bear for her, boiling tensions surface. Van (Liv Hewson), who has just had a near-death experience, shares a vision with Jackie (Ella Purnell). Jackie confronts Shauna regarding the Doomcoming and the baby she shared with Jeff. Shauna finally stands against Jackie.
“The rest of us, we’re just extra’s in the movie of your f**king life,”She tells her best friend. Jackie flees the cabin shortly afterward, and she is forced to stay outside.
Present: Misty recalls Jessica Roberts’ (Rekha Sharma) reunion. She tells Jessica her kidnapper that “she’s a fixer that cleans up messes for the rich and powerful.” After Jessica floats some ideas of how Misty can gain national attention if she comes forward with her story of survival, she’s free to leave. At this point, viewers should expect that not all of Misty’s good deeds are of pure heart. As Jessica drives away from Misty’s, it becomes clear that she tampered with her cigarettes. She veers out of control and passes out behind the driver’s wheel. Elsewhere, Nat begins to accept Travis’ death and Shauna’s daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) grows suspicious when news about a missing Adam Martin interrupts election coverage. While Taissa’s learning that she’s won her race for New Jersey state senate, Simone (Rukiya Bernard) and Sammy (Aiden Stoxx) come home to grab some more stuff. Simone descends into the basement where she finds a disturbing alter comprised of Biscuit’s severed head and a mysterious body part built around the ominous symbol that appeared both in the cabin and at the site of Travis’ murder.
Nat, with a shotgun in her hand, is the only one left to keep the adrenaline pumping. Just when she’s about to pull the trigger, strangers wearing amulets inscribed with the same symbol barge into her room. Suzie calls revealing what exactly she found when digging into Travis’ bank account.
“What the hell have you gotten me into? I did what you asked…I think someone’s following me. Who the f**k is Lottie Matthews?,” she demands.
Nat and Travis meet up in 1996. They confess their love to one another. Shauna has yet another bad dream where Jackie’s back in the cabin but sees a resurrected Laura Lee and her dad. Shauna, disturbed by her dream, rushes to the cabin to find Jackie covered in snow and dead. The ends with a scene viewers can chew on until the Showtime series returns for its sophomore season: Lottie, joined by Misty and Van, approaches a hollow tree trunk and offers up what looks to be the bear’s heart. She whispers a few indistinguishable words in French before the season’s final bone-chilling line.
“Now let the darkness set us free,”She prays.
YellowjacketsDeadline has spoken to Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, showrunners and co-creators of the show. “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi”. They tease at you. “darker” “weirder”Season 2 will debunk some speculations and more. Below, you can read the entire conversation.
DEADLINE: “Doomcoming”This was a fitting title for the episode before it, as there was a lot of doom in this finale. Let me show you how this episode was created.
ASHLEY LILE: Much of it was predetermined early in the production process. The finale was the closest to our original plan, so it was very satisfying for us. It always really helps when you’re telling a story to know where you’re going then to have the flexibility to let things change, and grow, and evolve, and deepen as you’re going about actually executing that story.
There were certain things that, for instance, Jackie’s death and the nature of Jackie’s death, that were actually in our original pitch for the show. Because it felt right for the characters and the show’s premise, we knew from the beginning that there would be a high-school reunion. For a few certain things, we just knew that we had to answer a certain number of questions or else we would try the audience’s patience more than we wanted to.
DEADLINE – One of the biggest reveals is that Lottie may still be alive. Six survivors are shown at the feast in the pilot. Is it safe to say that she’s the sixth there?
NICKERSON: It’s safe to say that Lottie is still alive. I don’t think it’s really a spoiler to say that she will kind of figure prominently into season two.
LYLE: I don’t know we should assume that these survivors that we see at the feast are the only survivors.
DEADLINE: What exactly is finally happening in Lottie’s final ritual?
NICKERSON: We’ll break it down as much as kind of we can. One of the things that we’re trying to explore in the show is this idea of the supernatural or the spiritual or the things that are beyond our understanding. These things or the meaning of them are pointing to something.
A specific phenomenon is like a person who has been possessed. Multiple people have experienced this phenomenon, so there is overlap. In a sense, the subjective experience is objectively real. It is not clear what is going on and why. People can interpret it as a kind of religious or psychotic experience.
These are things which, regardless their origin, have a unique life. A lot of the supernatural – the thing that can be interpreted. To be quite frank, we in the writer’s room often have this debate about what these things are or could be and I think that there are different interpretations and I think the audience will have their different interpretations.
DEADLINE: You previously brought up Jackie’s fate. What is the greater symbolism behind her death exiled in snow?
LYLE: There’s certainly the symbolism aspect where if Jackie ultimately represents the societal structures that they become accustomed to, that they were socialized with back in the “civilized”These characters will be deeply affected by the fact that the world is finally and completely falling apart. On an emotional and person level, there is arguably a certain amount of complicity that not just Shauna but the entire team has in her death – this ultimately unavoidable tragedy.
What that means for our characters, how they feel about it and how they process the hand that they had in her death is something that felt important to us in terms of, their slow evolution or devolution, depending on how you’re looking at it, over the course of their time in the wilderness.
DEADLINE: Will we see Ella as Jackie again in season 2? In flashbacks? Is Jackie for sure dead?
LYLE: It’s so funny to me watching how viewers and fans are reacting to the show and the strenuousness to which they will adhere to what they want to happen and the skepticism. Jackie is still alive in that scene, I’m sure. You’re not closed off to the possibility of seeing Ella in the future.
DEADLINE: It also seems that Shauna’s heart necklace has some kind of meaning, given that anyone else who’s worn it has met an unkind fate. What’s behind that?
NICKERSON: We want the necklace to be a kind of bouncing ball that people are paying attention to. It is important to keep your eyes on it. Many details and many things that are woven in are often very intentional. Sometimes they will have a character-based, or thematic payoff.
LYLE: I think that one thing that we’re very interested in exploring and interrogating with this show is belief and what we believe in and how that shapes our world for you and how it shapes our actions, our behavior. There are a couple talismans in the show and I think that Jackie’s necklace is one of them and Van’s bone necklace. The bone necklace is a talisman, too. Objects can hold meaning in a number of different ways, whether it is the meaning that we ascribe to them, the context in which you came into possession of an object, we care deeply for objects in our lives in many different ways and they mean different things to us, and so, that is something that we’re kind of playing with in terms of these things on the show.
DEADLINE: Taissa wins the election in the finale, which coincides perfectly with the return of her alter-ego. What impact will this have on her life as both a politician and mother? Rest in peace Biscuit.
NICKERSON: Yeah. Poor Biscuit. Poor Biscuit. For her to sort of like grapple with and reckon with what that means for her career as a politician, as a person, will very much be something that we’ll be trying to sort of like explore in season two.
LYLE: I think that in terms of Sammy and Simone, Taissa cares for her family very deeply but has found that there’s this sort of growing disconnect and divide between the life that she wants to have and the person she actually is. She will have to deal with discomfort and tension in the future.
DEADLINE: Season One was already intense and very graphic. How might season two compare, considering the team’s survival in winter, the supernatural aspects and now the appearance of this mysterious cult that kidnaps Nat at the end?
NICKERSON:I believe that the show’s ultimate goal is to grow and be more themselves, while maintaining a great connection with past events. We are watching the emergence of a religiosity in ’96 and seeing the ramifications of that and the rebirth of that in the present day. I think that that kind of trajectory will continue to hopefully keep the show – you don’t have to completely start from scratch each season. This will hopefully continue to be the tone and feel of the show.
DEADLINE: Given that the reception of Yellowjackets, especially online, there’s probably incentive for you to kick things up a couple of notches for Season 2.
LYLE: We said that when we pitched the show, it was about the best and worst things people can do. Ultimately, whenever you’re telling stories, you’re really trying to examine, and to some extent, interrogate yourself. This premise should allow us to explore the concept in depth and make it fun, rather than being too academic or intellectual.
I think that we’re just so excited to keep playing in this world. There are a lot of opportunities where we’re going and where we’ve been planning to go get darker and get weirder. We’ll likely get a lot more of both of those things but hopefully we can keep it fun.
NICKERSON: I think it would be a good idea to predict that the show will grow in all directions Ashley was pointing out. However, I know that this is not the goal or driver of the show’s expansion. It is more about being open to going where the show takes me. Although we don’t necessarily intend to be provocative and unexpected, we try not to be constrained as we explore the many fun things that are in this stew. Yellowjackets.