One of the most impressive aspects of Better Call Saul was how often the show’s brain trust could make significant adjustments on the fly and write themselves out of corners. It’s wild to think, for instance, that there could’ve been a version of Better Call Saul that saw Jimmy McGill transform into Saul Goodman during the first season. As a prequel, Better Call Saul also had to figure out how to juggle characters whose fates are already set in stone alongside consequential newcomers: After barely appearing in the pilot, Kim Wexler emerged as the series’ co-lead, which presented its own challenges because she’s nowhere to be seen in Breaking Bad. (Ditto for the scene-stealing Lalo Salamanca, a villain so formidable it didn’t seem possible for anyone to beat him in a game of wits.) Better Call Saul’s standing as arguably the greatest prequel ever made—one that more than lives up to the heights of its predecessor—is a testament to the show’s writers being at the top of their game in spite of consistently making things harder on themselves.
Yellowjackets might not be a straight-up prequel, but by jumping back and forth between two timelines—a high school girls’ soccer team stranded in the Canadian wilderness in the ’90s and the survivors reckoning with the trauma of that experience in the present—it’s a tricky narrative tightrope all the same. If that wasn’t enough, Yellowjackets also has some elements of a puzzle-box series, dangling mysteries for the audience ranging from which teens survive the inevitable descent into cannibalism to whether there are supernatural forces at play in the woods. At its best—so basically, the entire first season—Yellowjackets felt like an intriguing mix of Lost and Twin Peaks, becoming one of Showtime’s buzziest debuts in the process. Yellowjackets earned plenty of goodwill for getting off to such a promising start, but the big-picture concern was whether it could sustain this momentum, and how patient viewers would be following a series in which obscuring the full truth is part of its DNA.
Unfortunately, while Yellowjackets hasn’t had a drop-off as steep as the other Prestige Soccer Show, it has certainly endured a sophomore slump of sorts. In many respects, the series’ narrative framework became its own worst enemy: with an apparent five-season roadmap, cocreators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson don’t want to tip their hand on all the biggest questions surrounding the characters in both timelines. As a result, the present-day survivors are left apart for much of the second season—it isn’t until the end of the sixth episode that everyone finally converges at Lottie’s culty compound—while the stranded teens spend far more time in the throes of intense starvation than going full Lord of the Flies. Yellowjackets is still capable of producing the stomach-turning thrills and morbid humor of its first season—the feeding frenzy on Jackie’s corpse and Jeff becoming an endearing source of comic relief are two genuine highlights—but on the whole, it seemed like the show was caught in a self-inflicted holding pattern.
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The best thing that can be said about Yellowjackets’ Season 2 finale, “Storytelling,” is that it actually moves the plot forward, but whether these decisions are in the best interest of the series is another question entirely. Having allowed poor Javi to die in her place during what should be the first of many ceremonial wilderness hunts in the penultimate episode of the season, Natalie is appointed the group’s new Antler Queen. “The wilderness chose who fed us,” Lottie says. “It’s already chosen who should lead us.” It’s an unexpected turn of events, and one that could add some intriguing new dimensions to Natalie, who has repeatedly proved to be the most fundamentally decent person in the group—her willingness to let Javi die in her place was shocking in part because it felt so out of character.
Knowing that Natalie will (at least temporarily) take on the Antler Queen mantle could’ve had serious implications for the direction of the character in the present-day timeline—if only Yellowjackets was interested in exploring them. The other big twist in “Storytelling” comes when the adult survivors indulge Lottie’s desire to placate the supposed spirit of the wilderness—commonly referred to as “It,” no relation to the Stephen King sewer clown—with yet another hunt. The original plan is to get medical professionals on the scene and reinstitutionalize Lottie before anything can happen, but Taissa and Van call an audible to resolve the situation in-house, and reliving the old ritual appears to bring back the characters’ violent impulses. (There’s a creepy little moment when Taissa clearly switches to her malevolent alter ego.) After Shauna draws the ill-fated Queen of Hearts, the rest of the women begin chasing her, knives in hand, before Callie intervenes and shoots Lottie in the arm. The group is then interrupted once more by Lisa, the wayward young woman whom Natalie befriends at the compound, as another outsider learns just how damaged the survivors are. When Misty attempts to inject Lisa with a fatal dose of fentanyl, Natalie intervenes—allowing herself to die for the sake of an innocent.
While Natalie’s sacrifice weaves in nicely with the guilt she’s harbored for decades over letting Javi die, the sequence is almost comically lazy in execution. It’s never explained why Misty is carrying around a deadly syringe in her back pocket, and the fact that Callie and Lisa both stumble upon the hunt in the middle of the woods within moments of each other is the kind of narrative convenience that reeks of desperation to tie up loose ends. The same goes for the neat and tidy solution to Shauna being on the hook for murdering her former lover in Season 1 after Misty’s new (and equally deranged) love interest, Walter, kills one detective and blackmails the other into silence. (Since the show previously established that Walter is a hacker, the finale expects the audience to accept that he can change bank and phone records to connect a member of law enforcement with a complicated web of murder and corruption.)
The absurdity of Walter Ex Machina notwithstanding, “Storytelling” is a worrying indication that Yellowjackets may not be equipped to write itself out of sticky corners, let alone keep track of all its meandering subplots. (Remember when Taissa was elected as a New Jersey state senator? Season 2 sure as hell didn’t!) And while Yellowjackets is entitled to kill off major characters, the timing of Natalie’s death feels self-defeating: her actions as the Antler Queen in the past will no longer inform what happens in the present. That Natalie’s death is ruled as a drug overdose is an especially cruel twist of fate, knowing the character’s experiences with addiction and suicidal ideation since the start of the series. (Side note: Does that mean Lisa never told the cops arriving on the scene what she witnessed in the woods?) Through interviews and panels, Juliette Lewis has alluded to her displeasure with Natalie’s arc in Yellowjackets—given what transpires in “Storytelling,” it’s hard to blame her.
If Yellowjackets has somewhat hamstrung its future by taking Natalie off the board, the good news is the show can still change for the better. After all, the Yellowjackets brain trust originally planned to kill off teenage Van, which would’ve deprived viewers of seeing Lauren Ambrose in the role as an adult, while Javi was once considered as the hidden identity of Shauna’s lover, as some fans previously theorized. But any improvements depend on the series truly knowing where and how all the puzzle pieces fit—otherwise, every misstep will continue to undermine the characters in both timelines. There remains plenty of promise with Yellowjackets, but if the show wants to avoid getting lost in the woods, it needs a better internal compass going forward.
