Yellowjackets and The Last of Us just did the same thing in wildly different ways
Yellowjackets episode 2 spoilers follow
If Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) eating Jackie's ear last week was too much for you to bear, turn away now. It's about to get so much worse.
Yellowjackets just took cannibalism to a whole new level and we're still having a hard time not retching up the contents of our stomachs.
It was wild, it was scary and if you didn't grimace are you even human? Yet despite having just witnessed teenagers pulling apart and shoving down their gullets the tender flesh and innards of their friend, the recent The Last of Us' cannibalistic storyline was much harder and more horrifying to digest.
It's not such a crazy conclusion to draw that The Last of Us' off-screen cannibalism was more troubling than Yellowjackets' feast of the flesh. It has nothing to do with our imaginations creating far more intrusive, repulsive thoughts – Yellowjackets have us beat, we're not that creative.
The issue is that the cannibalism storylines served different purposes, and it just so happens that The Last of Us' was much darker in its portrayal of human nature.
While The Last of Us attempts to portray the act in a more dignified (yet chilling) way Yellowjackets seems to tap into something much more mammalian. So how then does it feel less disturbing?
In part, it has to do with the fact that the Yellowjackets' desperation is more acute and so while it may be stomach-churning we get a sense of that urgency, unlike with The Last of Us' townsfolk.
The idea that this is not a calculated act but one of pure animal instinct is baked into the scene from early on. As it were. The wafting scent of a roasted Jackie (Ella Purnell) in the air shouldn't have been a delicious temptation and under any other circumstances probably wouldn't have been but they are beyond famished.
Eyes linger as Radiohead strum their dark, ominous tune.
It's disturbing and yet while we can’t okay this most egregious act we are at the very least forced to sympathise with the urgency of their hunger.
Shauna is the first to talk. "She wants us to," she says and the others stare up at her as if they're waiting for the cue.
With a kind of ease, the scene transforms into a feast; a banquet of juicy, delectable fruit replacing the crisped-up Yellowjacket player.
A plump chicken sits amongst an array of fruit, yet it is the 'strawberry' that Jackie picks up first, taking the lead in what's about to happen.
Like The Last of Us, Yellowjacket chooses the strawberry to convey a similar, powerful message.
When Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) bite into the strawberries that Frank has carefully cultivated and grown it's more than just food. Strawberries are the symbols of purity and abundance but above all the love that they share for one another.
Contrastingly the strawberries send the same message here but in a sombre way. As Shauna brings it to her lips, the camera panning past Jackie's gold heart necklace that she now wears, her words 'she wants us to' echo in our ears.
The perceived notion is horrifying but can't be ignored. Jackie's 'wanting them to,' is an offering of love, or at least that's how Shauna seems to see it.
Yellowjackets digs deeper into the symbolic nature of their act.
As the scenes slide between the very real reality of them tearing savagely into Jackie's most supple parts and them gorging on fruit, one thing becomes very evident. The scenes of them eating at the banquet table only concentrate on them devouring the fruit.
Figs, dates, pomegranates, grapes, strawberries, one big sloppy bite into a watermelon, yet the chicken remains untouched.
It does more than strip some (not all) of the gruesomeness out of the scene. It also alludes to the fact that they've made the act of cannibalism more palatable to their own minds' eye by fooling themselves into believing it is the fruit running down their faces, not blood.
The fruit – this pure representation of well-being and life – is also representative of their base instincts to be nourished to survive.
There's no denying that the survivors in The Last of Us are facing a quite similar set of circumstances.
The characters are not stranded in the wilderness but they are fending for their lives and facing extreme starvation and a shortage of food. However their people-eating is much more insidious and because of this frightfully unsettling.
Unlike with Yellowjackets the act of cannibalism doesn’t take place in this one scene, rather it is unpeeled moment by moment. From the covert looks and the suspicious glances towards the meat in the stew right up until viewers are forced to witness the alarming human carcasses hanging lifeless in a shed.
Excuse us while we vom.
That said, having the deplorable pastor David (Scott Shepherd) at the helm of the cannibalism is also part of what makes the act much more horrifying.
The not-so-good reverend's sinister side quickly came to light when he attempted to groom the 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) after she discovered they were eating people.
He attempts to take a moral stance, appealing to Ellie's humanity when he talks about the need to feed his community of starving followers but his disingenuous character makes everything he does feel questionable.
However, perhaps the most disturbing part of pastor David's cannibalistic choices was just that. Choice. The one he was able to make while the majority of his commune ate hunks of human meat in blissful ignorance. The most chilling aspect of this is the unknown eating of loved ones.
In the episode a young girl cries tears of grief following the death of her father. She turns to David and asks when her father can be buried, to which he replies in the spring.
Makes sense, what with the ground too frozen over to dig but it is clear that daddy has made it into the stew.
While she feels the ache of losing a parent she has no idea just how close he is to her now, festering in the digestive tract, and so when Ellie spots the carelessly discarded bloodied ear in the corner (what is with the ears?) it brings that horror and reality screaming to life.
"You're eating people you sick f**k," she yells in judgement and it's pretty easy to side with her on this one.
The Last of Us' cannibalism takes something nauseating and makes it blood curdling. With its two-pronged approach of delaying the cannibalism confirmation and the removal of choice they create a reality much more disturbing than Yellowjackets’ one moment of terrifying madness.
Yellowjackets season 2 airs on Showtime in the US and Paramount+ in the UK.
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