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pointrudiment · 4 months

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Each Yellowjackets character’s greatest strength (and why it is also their greatest weakness)

Natalie: Empathy/Selflessness

Despite her abusive home life and edgy, intimidating exterior, Nat is one of the kindest and softest characters on the show. She has a deeper understanding of other’s trauma and pain than most due to her own experiences. Nat was the only one to show empathy towards Travis when his father died, even when he was an absolute asshole to her (and pointed a loaded gun at her!). She helped Travis cut the ring off of his dad’s finger because she knew Javi needed it. She faces her trauma and becomes a hunter to provide food for the group. When Jackie tells Travis about Bobby Farleigh and Travis breaks up with Nat as a result, Nat still helps Jackie on the night of Doomcoming. She also doesn’t hold a grudge against Travis for sleeping with Jackie and even wakes up at the crack of dawn everyday for months and trudges through snow for miles to help him look for Javi. She helps Lisa steal back her goldfish, defends her against her mother, and even dies for her (literally!).

This is also why her selflessness is her greatest weakness, she gives too much of herself and does not believe she herself is worth the care she gives to others, resulting in self-destructive tendencies. Her one act of selfishness (letting Javi die in her place) completely destroys her. Her empathy results in intense guilt and shame when she has to hurt others in the Wilderness, resulting in her spiraling into a life of drugs in order to cope and keeping people at arm’s length to avoid harming them.

Taissa: Ambition/Drive

Taissa is driven and successful in pretty much anything she sets her mind to. Before the crash, she’s a straight A student and an exceptional athlete. In the Wilderness, she takes the lead on leaving the plane wreck, finding the lake, and forges her own expedition to find civilization. Post-rescue, Taissa is arguably the most successful survivor. She’s a lawyer and burgeoning politician with a prestigious academic background and a picturesque family. Tai’s determination and drive for success ensures not only her survival after the plane crash but also the survival of her teammates.

However, Tai’s ambition is also one of her greatest faults. Her tunnel vision towards success can result in herself and those around her getting hurt. She accidentally breaks Allie’s leg trying to get her to improve her soccer abilities. She sets out on her expedition despite Lottie’s warnings, resulting in Van nearly getting killed. And, as an adult, she (literally) drives herself mad trying to win her political campaign, pushing her entire family away in the process. Tai is fierce and accomplished, but always at a cost.

Misty: Devotion/Loyalty

When Misty finds someone she views as her ‘person,’ she latches on and does not let go. We see this in the Wilderness with Coach Ben and Crystal; and in the adult timeline with Natalie. Misty desperately wants to be loved, and therefore she will do anything for the people she cares about, hoping that this will gain their affection. She nurses Coach Ben back to health, she shares all of her secrets with Crystal and does everything in her power to ensure that the others don’t eat her body when she dies. For Nat, she not only gets arrested trying to help her, but also snorts her cocaine to prevent her from relapsing (my favorite scene in the whole show ngl), sets up a whole interrogation with Randy, and travels to a compound in the middle of nowhere to find her after she was kidnapped.

This unconditional devotion, however, definitely comes with its flaws. Misty is obsessive about the people she loves, and this obsession often leads to people getting hurt and/or killed. She kills Jessica Roberts in order to save her fellow survivors from blackmail. She drugs Coach Ben with shrooms (and accidentally the whole team) in order to win his affection, which results in Travis nearly getting killed and Javi going missing. She intimidates Crystal off of a cliff to her death when she rejects Misty and kills Nat when she had been trying to protect her. Misty is loyal, but her loyalty results in sociopathic tendencies and the loss of the very same people she is devoting herself to.

Lottie: Spirituality/Open-Mindedness

Lottie’s spirituality and open-mindedness has been key to the group’s survival in the Wilderness. Her ability to see, hear, and sense what other’s cannot (whether you think it’s real or not) gives her teammates in the teen timeline and her cult (intentional community) members in the adult timeline hope and purpose. Without Lottie, the girls likely would have given up on survival long ago. She has an other-worldly, healing presence that those around her are naturally drawn to, and she helps a lot of people as a result.

Lottie’s spirituality can also be dangerous and even deadly, though. Her time as the Wilderness’s prophet causes the group to spiral into ritualistic sacrifices and cannibalism. In the adult timeline, her spirituality gets her locked up in a psych ward for years. Even after she has healed and moved on, Lottie’s belief in supernatural forces catches up with her again and results in her reinstating The Hunt, ultimately causing Nat’s death.

Van: Perseverance/Resilience

This poor butch goalie has almost died a ridiculous amount of times. She gets in a plane crash and is ditched by Jackie and Shauna in the wreckage, narrowly avoiding burning to death. Then, she’s nearly chopped into bits by a plane propeller. Then, she gets brutally and almost fatally mauled by a wolf. Then, she’s nearly burnt to death again on a funeral pyre (while still actively bleeding to death from the wolf attack). Then, her face is stitched up with a sewing needle by a 16 year-old (with no drugs to numb the pain). Then, her girlfriend starts losing control of herself and trying to run off of cliffs in the middle of the night so she has to regularly tie her down and keep watch of her all night. Then, she gets terminal cancer and only has a few months left to live. And that’s not even considering her life before the crash, living with an alcoholic mother that she has to take care of. Needless to say, Van has been through it. And through it all, she maintains her strength and witty sense of humor. She’s a light out in the Wilderness, keeping her team uplifted and laughing even in their worst moments (this girl is literally cracking jokes with her face torn to shreds). Her perseverance through hardship is next level.

However, this perseverance seems to have created a numbness in Van. Over time in the Wilderness, Van becomes more numb and reaction-less to the tragedy and trauma occurring around her. When the group eats Jackie, she bluntly tells Tai “we ate her” with little emotion. When they kill and eat Javi, Van tells Travis she has no regrets because she’s grateful to be alive. In the adult timeline, Van calls off the psych team for Lottie and goes through with the card ritual, knowing that this will likely result in the someone getting killed. Van is resilient and driven to survive through hardships, but her way of surviving means losing a little bit of her heart and humanity in the process.

Jackie: Influence

Before the crash, Jackie is undoubtedly a leader. She’s the Yellowjackets’ team captain and has an almost magnetic force around her that seems to captivate the whole school. She’s pretty, popular, and excels in everything she does. Shauna especially is completely caught in her orbit. When her teammates are fighting at the party, she single-handedly manages to calm them all down and help them mend their conflicts with each other.

The downside to this influence, however, is that it does not transfer to the Wilderness. High school rules don’t apply to trying to survive in the Canadian Rockies, and Jackie’s influence lies in civilization and traditional society. Jackie struggles to have the same power that she did before, and those who are more unconventional (such as Lottie and Nat) have more influence in their new living situation.

Shauna: Intensity/Passion

Shauna is completely driven by her emotions. She feels things strongly and loves people intensely. We see this first with Jackie, who Shauna has an all-consuming (pun-intended) love for. Her world revolves around Jackie, she doesn’t know where she ends and Jackie begins. In the Wilderness, this intensity of emotions translates to a ferocity that keeps her and her teammates alive. Shauna is unafraid to become the butcher of the group or to take the first bite. On the surface, Shauna appears timid, reserved, and gentle. As a teen, she’s invisible at school, hiding in Jackie’s shadow. As an adult, she’s an unassuming, soft-spoken housewife. But underneath is a darkness and fierceness that catches people by surprise and serves as her secret weapon.

The downside to Shauna’s intensity and passion, however, is that she does not have control over it. Her emotions spiral until she or someone close to her gets hurt. She loves Jackie and feels jealous of her, so she sleeps with her boyfriend, gets pregnant with his child, and implodes their friendship. She is deeply mourning Jackie’s death, so she eats a part of her to feel close to her again. She’s grieving the loss of her baby and doesn’t know what to do with that feeling so she nearly beats Lottie to death. She has a feeling Jeff might be cheating so she starts an affair with Adam. Someone stole her minivan? She’s gonna track them down, hold them at gunpoint, and nearly kill them. When she begins to feel unsafe and suspicious of Adam, this feeling, too, spirals out of control and she ends up murdering him. Shauna’s emotions are powerful, and while they do serve an important purpose of keeping her alive in the Wilderness, she doesn’t know how to express them in healthy ways and ends up lashing out as a result. I have a feeling they’re going to play an important role in Season 3, as well, as we can see that Shauna’s jealousy of Nat’s leadership is already beginning to make itself known.

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pointrudiment · 4 months

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Theories On Other Tai and Van Dynamic…

We know that Tai and Other Tai compartmentalize memories and information and also that Other Tai acts as a dissociative outlet for Tai when necessary.

I think Tai seems so capable of moving forward and succeeding because she often feels so separate from her memories (often memories are being relayed to her) above them even (this contributes to and inspires disbanding relationships with those who survived the wilderness including Van).

Van is the only emotional component in Tai’s psyche that is shared with Other Tai. After the wolf attack, Other Tai accepts Van’s presence and encourages it. Ironically, Tai shows little respect for Van’s belief in her counterpart while Other Tai exhibits full respect for Van’s dedication to it. This is definitely a recipe for disaster because in her denial, Tai cannot even allow Van to love her. And it’s devastating to her adult life because she’s only willing to accept love that maintains her denial.

I think that even before the first scene in the adult timeline of season 1, Other Tai knows about Van’s cancer (yes, I know that Van was not intended to be a surviving character at that point, but I’m working with the narrative as a whole now whether or not this was the intent of the creators, so go with me).

The information was given to Tai by Jessica Roberts. Tai dissociates the information as she does with all of her triggers, but this one prompts Other Tai to remerge because Van is their only source of connection to one another shattering Tai’s tight control (along this same vein, I do think that when Other Tai remerges in the wilderness after season 2, it has something to do with Van’s safety).

Other Tai tells Sammy about Van (the red head by a heart in his drawings which he has drawn smiling, healthy, and bright in stark contrast to the frowning, exed-out, dark images). This gives us an intimate portrait of how Other Tai sees Van and that Other Tai will stop at nothing to keep Van as Sammy drew her. These drawings could also be Other Tai’s plans to get to Van.

Sammy begins to exhibit some potential, “Other Sammy”, behaviors. This wouldn’t be surprising considering Tai’s first encounter with, The Man With No Eyes, was at her grandmothers deathbed at a similar age. Sammy’s introduction to this other entity is also at the potential of a deathbed, so to speak (van). It is almost being presented here as a physical manifestation of generational trauma passed on at the coming of a time of death. This is more evidence to the depth of the connectedness between Other Tai and Van.

Tai can refuse to acknowledge this, but Other Tai is quick to share as she recognizes Sammy as kindred. Mutilating his toy and framing him for painting on the door were actions that were almost sibling-like in nature which denotes inherent fondness. This is why Other Tai manipulated a scenario in order to hurt Simone that did not actually involve Sammy. Sammy and Van are now both tied up in Tai and Other Tai’s battle for control over her consciousness because they are both loved by each personality.

Other Tai sacrifices the family dog in order to give Van more time while she finds a way to get to her. I also think that Van has known that Tai would eventually seek her out again when Other Tai remerged. It’s why the visit was tense and fraught but not completely a surprise.

Despite Van’s opposition to any of Tai’s attempts at connecting what’s happening with Other Tai to Van, she keeps Tai around; brushing it off each time Tai says that she shouldn’t have come. Van still believes in the significance of Other Tai.

Even though she has long given up on Tai herself, she is still holding on to Other Tai as the anchor to what once was or could be. As messed up and violent as Other Tai can be, Other Tai wanted, accepted, and let Van in without condition.

The ritual continued at Lottie’s compound because I think Other Tai told Van it needed to (or more likely Van concluded that was Other Tai’s intention from the beginning) and Van said what she had to, to Tai in order to make it happen or in the least to open up the possibility of it. Van knows that Other Tai and Lottie both commune with the same entity and probably didn’t think it was a coincidence they were in that situation. I don’t think it had anything to do with a desire for violence directly, but more a desire to be a part of something bigger than herself especially already being on the brink of death. And also a desire to let happen what happens; to be able to release control one last time of the internal chaos that has had the reigns over her life. Over all their lives. Van didn’t trust expressing this to Tai.

Anyways, moving forward…I don’t think Other Tai is done sabotaging the life Tai built in spite of her especially if Tai attempts to pick up some of the pieces. She will have to tread carefully and I think she will know that she can’t move through it without Van. But Van will not be an easy sell. Van will remind Tai that Tai specifically moved forward without her. There will be such an angsty dynamic with trust and grief here because it took Tai over 20 years to learn what Van knew all along and tried to tell her from the get go and she was stubborn at the expense of everyone she claimed to love. I’m not sure Van will fully trust Tai especially if/when Other Tai is dormant. She will think it is a ploy of Tai’s. And I think Tai will continue to be weary of Van’s propensity to trust Other Tai but not her. She will think it is a ploy of Van’s.

#yellowjackets theories #van palmer #taissa turner #taivan #yellowjackets #sammy #other tai #taissa yellowjackets #van yellowjackets

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