'Yellowjackets' Season 2's Latest Twist Was Its Most Brutal Yet (original) (raw)
Published May 10, 2023, 1:46 PM EDT
A New Jersey native, Kyle originally focused his writing in the world of sports with his work being featured across outlets like Sports Illustrated, The Philadelphia Inquirer and NBC Sports. After realizing that the world of entertainment, specifically television, was an area of interest for him, he took on a position at Pop Culture for a few years before settling in at Collider.
Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 6 of Yellowjackets.There aren’t many shows going right now that take things to the level that a show like Yellowjacketsdoes. The Showtime series that is in the midst of its second season doesn’t shy away from anything. We've seen a guy have his leg amputated, a prop plane exploding with a girl inside, and the one that really upped the ante, cannibalism. Yellowjackets also isn’t afraid to show trauma as a show with a premise centered on being stranded in a life-or-death situation would naturally lend itself to. Yet, the storyline that we see play out with Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) in Season 2’s sixth episode is the most gut-wrenching scene to date… even more so than watching Jackie (Ella Purnell) being eaten by her friends.
There was always a mystery surrounding young Shauna the second we learned that she was pregnant after the plane had crashed. Considering that the present-day Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) never mentioned what had happened to the baby that had been carrying in the woods, there was much speculation about what had occurred. Her daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) was too young to be from that timeline, which made it all the more possible that something bad had happened in those woods. It turns out that that is the case for Shauna in a harrowing Season 2 episode that reveals the fate of her first baby.
Being Inside Shauna’s Head Made This Loss Even Worse
Sophie Nelisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Liv Hewson and Samantha Hanratty in Yellowjackets Season 2, Episode 6.
Image via Paramount
At one point in the episode, Misty (Samantha Hanratty) is attempting to deliver the baby as the placenta comes out first. A distressed Shauna is looking on as the camera shifts to her POV as Misty says, “You just need to focus and you need to push, you are so close to being on the other side and then you get to meet your baby.” It doesn’t feel out of place at the time since that’s something you could envision being said in the moment, but little did we know that it was telling us exactly what was about to happen. The “other side” that Misty is referencing to isn’t the inferred joyous moment when the baby finally is out in the world and quickly embraced by the mother. No, the “other side” here is a literal reference to the near-death experience Shauna is going through. Mari (Alexis Barajas) even asks at one point during the delivery whether Shauna is going to die — which is grim but again, something an ignorant high schooler could say in a tense situation.
Later, we see Shauna with her baby boy as she awakens from the traumatic experience. Everyone in the cabin is excited for her and for a fleeting moment, Yellowjackets finally gives us something to be happy about. The episode continues, showing the newly-appointed mother attempting to breastfeed but struggling to get her son to latch on. Things start getting a little strange when Lottie (Courtney Eaton) is then seen breastfeeding her baby while Shauna is sleeping. When she awakens, Lottie hauntingly tells her, “You’ll understand soon enough.” In the tense exchange that follows, Shauna demands that Lottie give her baby back — and eventually, finally gets her baby to feed on her own. Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) asks if she can go tell everyone, and Shauna asks her to refrain so she can just enjoy the special moment, privately telling her son that “It’s you and me against the whole world.”
After an untold amount of time has passed, Shauna wakes up again to see her child is missing. She steps into the common area where everyone has huddled around with blood on their face, insinuating they have eaten the child. If that’s not bad enough, seeing this awakens Shauna from the brink of death as she comes back to her true reality with everyone around her — revealing that everything that has just happened, including the birth of her son, was all in her head.
The Worst Thing in 'Yellowjackets' Season 2 So Far Takes Place in the Closing Moments of Episode 6
Sophie Nelisse and Jasmin Savoy Brown in Yellowjackets Season 2, Episode 6.
Image via Paramount
While Shauna is still stunned by what she's convinced she saw, the camera pans to the rest of the team with tears in their eyes as they attempt to calm her down. During the delivery, Shauna lost a lot of blood and therefore lost consciousness, which leads the group to believe they have lost her. While she is able to make it out alive, the same can’t be said for her child. “He didn’t make it” is a line that echoes so bone-chillingly that it crushes all the initial goodwill in seeing Shauna with her baby. We learn at this moment that the events of the episode that supposedly played out were only in her head after she passed out.
What makes this the most traumatic and brutal scene to date in Yellowjackets, even more than anything that these survivors have faced thus far, is that it is a real outcome that could happen far beyond these circumstances and something that no one should have to come back from, let alone go through. While eating a human body is as vicious and barbaric as one can imagine, there’s at least a rationale behind needing to find a source of food. Shauna experiencing this loss and the way that it’s portrayed on screen hits so hard that we definitely need this week in between episodes to take its time so we can decompress.
Yellowjackets Season 2 is streaming on Paramount+ with new episodes every Friday.