Our favourite feral teenagers are back and so if you haven’t watched the third season of Yellowjacket’s then don’t let the mild spoilers in this week’s post ruin it for you!
Throughout the three season’s of Paramount’s Yellowjackets, we’ve seen some wild and paranormal character progression but the latest installment takes an even closer look at how the girls’ horrifying experiences in the wilderness has allowed for their more frightening and violent selves to follow them into the normality of their adult lives.
Finally, in the third season’s final episode, the identity of the pit-girl and the antler queen is revealed and, with a little bit of hindsight, it makes perfect sense. While the likes of Lottie and Natalie got a taste of antler-queendom in previous seasons, its this new and final form that we’re able to really appreciate what it mean to be chosen by the wilderness.
The antler queen, whether she be physical in the form of a Yellowjacket or some otherworldly spirit that inhabits she who wears the crown, is a brilliant way to denote the want to be at the top of the feral food chain but also connotes the wild and savage way that the wilderness has allowed the darkest of the girls’ inhibitions to blossom.
No character better explores the contradicting sense of needing to follow expectations and the want for hedonistic freedom better than Shauna.
Teen Shauna’s (Sophie Nélisse) experience of the wilderness seem to drastically change her personality from Jackie’s overshadowed bestie to knife-wielding terror-teen but considering Shauna was already sleeping with Jackie’s boyfriend pre-plane crash, it’s interesting to question just how meek and mild original Shauna really was.
Being in the wilderness and soaking up its occult influence allows Shauna to be her most feral self and her character progression in season three shows us just how much she absolutely loves it.
The very worst of the girlhood experience is explored within Yellowjackets but instead of viscous rumours or relentless bullying its cannibalistic hunting rituals to appease whatever is haunting the wilderness they’re lost in.
Nonetheless, some nasty little truths about female rage come into play throughout the entirety of Yellowjacket’s run but its in the latest season adult-Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) finally gives in to just how badly she misses the chaos of her days in the wilderness, and what she’s willing to do to get some of it back.
When the group are inevitably rescued, Shauna must go back to normality and bury, not only the terrible things the group did in order to survive, but also the ways in which she had begun to live and breath for the menacing power she had over the majority of the group.
As adult-Shauna sleepwalks into life as a wife and mother, she becomes a shadow of her former bloodthirsty self and experiences all the pressures of modern living in that she must fit a certain mould in order to be able to accepted by society.
Yet beneath the Shauna that packs school lunches and kisses her husband off to work is a woman absolutely brimming with rage. She’s fucking furious with the life she’s ended up with and the way she can’t make herself be happy with it, with her disastrous relationship with her daughter, the way everybody underestimates her and how she’s always chasing the high of the wildernesses power.
While exaggerated and played out in wild and murderous scenarios, the representation of female rage, the feral nature of teenage girls, and the gendered oppression of particular emotions is explored with astute insight.
While we could explain away adult-Shauna’s behaviour as an unravelling, one might argue that Shauna is actually putting herself back together, becoming her authentic self again, despite how unhinged that may be - hard relate.
The shedding of ones socially constructed layers is something that I know many of the women in my life can recgonise. As we’ve grown out of our twenties it has become easier to no longer feel the need to keep up certain appearances that help to make us more palatable and a lot of that progression has stirred up feelings of frustration and anger.
So much of that anger is completely normal and justified but the inclusion of our gender has deemed it hysterical and god forbid we angry-cry. I’m crying because you’re pissing me off not because I’m upset!
The exploration of gender and forbidden emotion might not be new within film and television but, just with representation of men who portray stereotypically feminine emotions, shows like Yellowjackets are making way for conversations about how we might see new versions of ourselves represented in the media.
Also cannibalistic folk-horror is just fun, you know?