The Ending of 'Yellowjackets' Season 2, Explained
Okay, we genuinely did not see that coming.
The Yellowjackets season 2 finale aired this Memorial Day weekend, concluding this season's winding, brutal, at-times convoluted segment of the hit Showtime thriller. Season 2 saw the arrivals of adult Lottie and Van, the teen characters' first steps into both cannibalism and Antler-Queen sacrifice, and the confirmation of a significant fan theory. (Congrats to everyone who guessed underground tunnels!). After nine jam-packed episodes, the finale, "Storytelling," brought life-changing twists for both the adult and teen casts, as we say goodbye to one of the show's core-characters. Read on for our breakdown below?
Who's the new Antler Queen?
The finale begins in the past, with the team arriving back at camp with Javi's frozen corpse. Kevin is devastated as Natalie explains what happened, and later Lottie has her own shocked response to the turn of events, at the lengths her friends have gone to save her and themselves. However, Misty turns that disapproval right back on Lottie, pointing out that she's the one who led the team toward the ritual and their connection to the "wilderness." What's done is done, and they'll all live through the next few weeks, so no point to admonish everyone and let Javi go to waste.
As soon as Misty gives Lottie's go-ahead to the rest of the group, it's time to prepare their meal. Kevin doesn't put up a fight, allowing the girls to take the body to Shauna's butchering table, and later sharing a conversation with Van where she urges him to move on and let Javi save him. When Shauna returns inside with a selection of cuts and Javi's whole intact heart(!), she gives the organ to Kevin, possibly to let him burn it in the fire in a pseudo-memorial. Instead, Kevin shows that he accepts what the wilderness demands, taking a bite out of his younger brother's heart before throwing it in the fire.
Once all the meat is cooked, Misty takes a plate up to Lottie and convinces her to eat. It's clear that Lottie's feeling the immense guilt of being the leader that led the group to murder. When she comes downstairs to join the others, she admits she never wanted to be the leader in the first place. She was just meant to be the prophet helping the group accept the wilderness, and now she reveals that she's lost her own connection. It's time for someone else to rule. And who better that the person who the wilderness saved, who started the season as its biggest skeptic and now needs something to guide her as she's reeling from the guilt of Javi's death. As Lottie looks on, now an outsider, each of the team members bows to the new Antler Queen, Natalie.
Who dies in the finale?
In the present-day, the former team members quickly talk Lottie down from her proposed "Russian Roulette with poisoned oolong." Instead, Shauna suggests a traditional hunt, and the rest of the group follows along to buy enough time to get a psychiatric team to the compound. The women now have a whole day to stop the looming hunt, but they go through the motions to set up the ritual: Shauna loads a set of dull knives, Tai and Van debate the efficacy of a psych ward while making masks, Natalie tries to convince. Misty's distracted from her efforts by a newly arrived Walter, in a sweet surprise (for now). Meanwhile, Jeff, Callie, and the cops make their way to the compound, bringing each storyline that needs to be wrapped up all to one location.
First let's talk about Walter, the macabre delight of this whole finale. Misty's paramour unleashes his full talents, which have been hidden in plain sight all season: the dude is truly Misty's murderous double. He poisons Detective Kevyn, convinces poor Jeff to help him dump Kevyn's body in a trunk, lures Saracusa to the car, unloads a clip into the body in front of Saracusa, and blackmails the detective into framing his dead partner for the deaths of both Adam Martin and Jessica Roberts. Walter's doing all of this to help Misty, but judging by the smile on his face and song in his heart, he also finds the conniving and killing fun. The citizen detective just maybe became the series's most interesting character, and he and Misty are set to become a terrifying power couple next season.
While Walter's wrapping up the whole Adam mystery (and Jeff is watching), Callie searches the woods for her mom. Shauna and the rest of the adult Yellowjackets are standing around a fire in a clearing, and it seems like at some point while Walter was making poison cocoa, most of the women decided that they weren't just humoring Lottie with a fake hunt anymore. Though Misty and Walter did make the call to the mental health team, Tai later cancelled under what seems like Van's wishes. Once Lottie arrives, Misty, Shauna, and Tai make attempts to stall, but Van starts off pulling from the deck. We see flashes between the team's old selves and new as they go through the deck, until Shauna's left holding the queen. As Shauna tries to reason, everyone else dons the masks, and chase after their friend as she walks, then runs, away.
The hunt continues until the group comes across Callie, who shoots Lottie in the arm with her gun. The pause snaps the women to reality and they begin to restrain Lottie, who still argues that the wilderness has been leading all of them to this moment, where they can give it the death that it wants. She pushes Natalie too far, saying Nat was always "its favorite," but when Natalie reaches out to attack, Lisa shows up brandishing a rifle. The cult member heard everything, and as Natalie tries to talk her down, Misty prepares to stab the interloper with a poison syringe. Natalie sees Misty lunge, and flashes back to that first ritual, when she let another friend die in her place. This time, she jumps in to take the syringe. As she dies, Nat has a vision of Javi, young Lottie, and her own young self comforting her as she leaves this world.
How does the finale set up season 3?
Losing Natalie is a truly shocking twist that changes everything for the group. Misty's left devastated after killing the person she considers her best friend for the second time. Callie has now seen her mother's full dangerous self in the flesh, and there's a new sense that the teen will also go to some dark mental places as the show goes on. Most importantly, as Lottie's taken away to an institution, she tells Tai and Van that they gave the "wilderness" what it wanted, and that it's pleased with them. She hints that they'll see the effects of the sacrifice, leaving breadcrumbs for where the series could go next. After the adult Yellowjackets have taken this first step back into old ways, mirroring the first sacrifice they ever performed, they could be tempted into even more dark decisions made for their own gains. What if Tai's fugue states stop after this night? What if Van's cancer goes into remission? If all of their lives improve after this hunt, who says there won't be another one?
The past storyline also ends with a game-shifting change, paired with some foreshadowing via Shauna's ever-important diary. We see her writing through her confusion, questioning why the wilderness chose Natalie and not her, in a moment that hints her defiant power struggle against Lottie will now be directed towards Natalie. But before viewers can really sit with this, Shauna notices the smell of smoke. The outside of the cabin has been set ablaze, and the team has just enough time to grab basic necessities and get out before the roof caves in. The teens are left standing in the snow watching their only shelter burn down, in the cold winter night.
Who set the cabin on fire?
The only adult in the stranded group is notably missing as the cabin burns down. In season 2's penultimate episode, Coach Ben had discovered the oft-theorized underground tunnel where Javi hid for several months. When he emerges and returns to the cabin, he comes upon the remains of Javi's butchered body and a crying Natalie, who tells him that she let Javi died in her place. Ben offers an escape to his one remaining skeptic-in-arms, saying he can take Natalie down to the tunnels where they can wait out the winter. But Nat turns him down, saying that he's the only good person left and hinting that it's too late for her.
Next we see him, Coach is back down in the tunnels attempting to start a fire with rocks. He heads back to the cabin at night to sneak around and recover a book of matches hidden against the house, but he makes it just in time to see Natalie's coronation through the window. So we have one lone man who never succumbed to cannibalism, who has feared the teen girls all season and just lost the last friend he had to the "wilderness." Whether he was lucid during or fell into another trance, he's the simplest answer to who set the cabin on fire. Even if it wasn't him, Natalie will probably believe it was, which means Ben will likely be the next target of the team's brutal hunt. But of course, we won't know for sure who'll be the team's next "special meal" until season 3 arrives to continue this twisted, traumatic saga. The one thing we can be sure of: No one's ever safe.
You Might Also Like
