#the man with no eyes

[yjposting]

Someone's gotta acknowledge the men

[susiemyersonislifegoals]

I wanna know what happens to ALL my Yellowjackets, and I will be a jackieshauna truther 4 lyfe, and I am dying to see where teen Nat and adult Misty go next, but from the jump in S3, we better get some gdamn Taissa backstory, exposition, check in on absolutely anyone in her life...Like, isn't she an elected official now? Surely someone noticed her wife is in a coma & she went missing & God knows where Sammy is, until Tai just happened to be on site when another YJ showed up dead at another YJ's cult compound--and surely some investigative reporter could figure out who paid for Nat's rehab--like wut, the press should be all over adult Tai! Not to mention the taivan breakup, what she & Van believe about other Tai, did she win the election because of the dog altar?? The man with no eyes!...there are so many BIG QTNA specifically around Tai.

[morganalefae]

now that we see van forming a relationship with tais sleepwalking self, im hoping this means they maybe dont break up until they get rescued, we know that eventually tai is going to give herself over to the more culty aspects of the wilderness, from the pit girl chase and feast in season 1. maybe once theyve returned to civilization thats when she starts repressing everything that happened and they go their separate ways? tai wants to pretend it never happened, van doesnt.

i hope so anyway because i truly dont want to see young tai and van split up so early on in the wilderness. tai looks afraid when van tells her she followed the man with no eyes straight to the symbol in the forest. she may reject what van is saying in the promo for the next ep about something inside her being connected to the forest but i think van forming a connection with dark tai might reveal some things that force tai to admit that maybe there is something more going on that even she doesnt understand? that there is no explanation for?

[l1ghth0p3]

Is the man with no eyes working against the wilderness? The man with no eyes is who I’m assuming is the “friend” Javi was talking about, seeing as he knew where to find Javi. I’m wondering if the man with no eyes told Javi to stay away from the girls because he knew that they would kill him due to the wilderness’s influence. He does lead Tai to him which causes him to do, however that could’ve just been him trying to save Taissa from the group. If the man is in opposition to the wilderness that would also explain why Tai stops sleepwalking after attending Lottie’s sermons.

However I’m not sure if Tai’s sleepwalking self is a part of the man with no eyes, a follower of him, or someone against him- I mean he literally almost drove her off a cliff. Also when sleepwalking she seems more connected to the wilderness.

[onpyre]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the One-with-No-Eyes as a Psychopomp

We know that Yellowjackets loves its Greek myths (x/x), so I want to consider the Man-with-No-Eyes as a Psychopomp. I’ve touched on these things a bit from this meta post of mine regarding Tai being a tree, but in light of the most recent episodes, I wanna deep-dive into this enigmatic specter haunting Taissa.

The first time we see the One-with-No-Eyes (outside of the title sequence) is 1.03, The Dollhouse, when Tai is a little girl. It’s her dying grandmother who first sees him, and is horrified by him. This really fits with a Psychopomp guiding the souls of the recently dead, since her grandmother is preparing to transition.

Tai’s grandmother was calm about dying up until she saw him, even telling young Tai earlier that an angel would come for her. Psychopomps can be angels, demons, or any type of spirit in between, and I think it’s significant that the first time Tai sees the Man-with-No-Eyes is in the mirror, since mirrors have mythological associations with portals and spirits.

Mirrors are a sort of liminal object. They show you something everyone else sees but you can’t: yourself.. but in reverse. Looking at yourself is a psychologically loaded phenomenon, and considering Tai’s bifurcated self communicating with her through mirrors, it’s safe to say they reflect a truer version of the world than she’s willing to accept.

In Jungian Psychology, Psychopomps can also represent a guide between the unconscious and conscious realms. And the One-with-No-Eyes certainly bridges the gap between Tai’s conscious self and her unconscious doppelgänger self.

And conscious Tai *does* see him, despite denying the supernatural. We have textual evidence from 1.03, 1.05, and 2.03:

In 1.03, before the audience is introduced to him, Tai sees the the No-Eyed Man. She’s disturbed by something she sees in the forest. We’re shown a shot of what she’s looking at: an empty frame of trees. This is actually a shot from the show’s title sequence, except in the title sequence the Man-with-No-Eyes stands in the middle of the frame. We can safely assume Tai sees him here.

This same thing happens in ep 1.05, Blood Hive. Adult Tai is supposed to fold out of the political race, but looks into the crowd. Her eyes land on an empty space (44:58), and whatever she sees prompts her to double down and stay in the race. When she finishes her speech, at 46:25 she looks back to the same spot in the crowd that gave her courage, and there he is, just like the title sequence: the Man-with-No-Eyes.

In 2.03, Digestif, when Van accidentally wakes Tai from sleepwalking and asks her who the One-with-No-Eyes is, she flashes to the first time she sees him, with her dying grandmother, in the mirror.

The Man-with-No-Eyes is a guide through the mirror, through the looking glass, reflecting her desires and fears, if only Tai would follow. But, tbf, we don’t know what type of entity we’re dealing with. And when Tai’s grandmother sees him she does not take him for an angel. she screams:

Don’t you come over here. Stay away…. don’t let him take me! Don’t let him take my eyes!

This fear of getting your eyes stolen in this inter-generational setting feels very dense to me. It touches on generational trauma and reminds me of myths like Oedipus Rex.

This Figure-with-No-Eyes appears to Tai’s grandmother, who in that instant passes him to bb Tai. And then we see trauma perpetuated with adult Tai and Sammy.

In Oedipus Rex, the family is trying to avoid fate, but they cannot escape. Oedipus is told the truth about killing his father and marrying his mother by the blind prophet Tiresias. and once Oedipus finally “sees” the truth that he’s killed his father and married his mother, he plucks out his own eyes. He cannot unsee the truth, and he has clearer vision once blinded.

Tai, like Oedipus and her grandmother, usually refuses to follow the Man-with-No-Eyes. This is explicitly stated in the most recent episode, 2.03 Digestif:

Van: How do you know where you’re going?

DoppelTai: He shows me.

Van: Who’s “he”?

DoppelTai: The One with No Eyes.

Van: Is that who you always follow?

DoppelTai: Only when she lets me.

Van: Okay there’s a “she” too? Am I “she”?

DoppelTai:

Van: Then who is “she”?

DoppelTai: Taissa.

Van: Then who are you?

Conscious Tai refuses to let herself acknowledge the reality of the woods. Like Oedipus, Tai has hubris surrounding her ability to understand the world. She refuses to believe in the supernatural, despite it being up close and personal, always in her peripheral vision.

But the repressed part of Taissa, the one I call DoppelTai, who only wants her to survive, knows and accepts the Man-with-No-Eyes. This version of Tai is like Oedipus post-blinding. And like Tiresias, the Man-with-No-Eyes is a guide cluing her into the reality of the woods. Offering her not only survival, but power.

I want to point out all the little nods to this No-Eyed Specter surrounding Tai:

there’s the mirrors, which imply looking and reflection, as well as being the first time the One-with-No-Eyes is shown

Tai checking her grandmother’s eye sockets at the funeral to find they’re empty

the eye patches Tai makes Van and herself for the Doomcoming

DoppelTai removing one of the eyes from Sammy’s doll and putting it on her altar

I’ve talked about the mirrors and the grandmother’s fear of her eyes getting stolen, so I want to consider the other bullet points. The eye patches were created after the wolves maul Van, which is Tai’s fault, since DoppelTai stole the bone talisman from Van, the flare gun, and fucked off to the safety of a tree.

Van didn’t get an eye taken, but the eye patches invoke that imagery, and it does feel like some sort of exchange between the One-with-No-Eyes and DoppelTai. He was most certainly leading her in that moment, after conscious Tai fell asleep and let the fire go out.

Just what did she get in the exchange? I don’t know. I assume DoppelTai had been eating dirt on her previous sleepwalking excursions for the minerals (worth noting you might eat dirt for iron deficiency, and we know the forest has a lot of iron in the ground), and maybe like those previous times, it was simply about survival: an exchange for safety from the wolves. But then I think about the most recent episodes, that the One-with-No-Eyes has been leading her to the symbols carved into trees. Could she have been looking for one of these at this time?

This leads me to her adult self and Sammy. Like the wolf incident with Van, adult Tai ends up in a tree at a loved one’s expense. As an adult, it’s her son’s well-being that’s in jeopardy.

DoppelTai ramps up that danger by breaking Sammy’s doll, removing an eye, and adding it to her altar. This invokes the Man-with-No-Eyes, as well as the half vision of Tai and Van’s Doomcoming looks. If Tai’s grandmother was scared of the No-Eyed Man stealing her eyes, what does it mean that Tai takes a proxy of her son’s? He clearly hasn’t been doing great.

If the payoff of this exchange is Tai winning the senate race, is the dog, doll proxy, and (Adam’s?) heart enough? Post-election, Tai is a mess, and her wife’s accident, with Tai drawing the symbol on her palm, says to me that the doll proxy isn't enough.

But enough speculation! Time to wrap this baby up: I view Taissa as a Seer (whereas I see Lottie as more of a Prophet). She has all manner of double vision, whether it’s blinding herself to the situation and her full self, or seeing this guide who leads her. Like Lottie, the supernatural elements in Tai’s life didn’t start in the woods, but the woods have accelerated, or amplified them.

The One-with-No-Eyes is leading her to the symbols, which are powerful if you’re willing to sacrifice a little blood. Whether functioning as a Greek Psychopomp, guiding her through this liminal spiritual landscape of the woods, or as a Jungian Psychopomp, acting as a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms, or something in between, the Man-with-No-Eyes is a player, different than Lottie’s relationship with the woods. And I am *so* looking forward to watching this unfold.

[mycupofstars]

Cannot express how thrilled and horrified I am to see The Man With No Eyes back for s2 love and hate this for me very much

[my-darling-boy]

I was at a bookstore looking through the art section and I saw a spine that said The Camden Town Nudes which was interesting because this didn’t seem like the bookstore where I would ever find something like that and I wanted to have a casual look but like. This also wasn’t exactly the bookstore where you felt like you could look at naked pictures let alone just suggestive paintings of them, it’s a really small shop as well, so I was like right I’ll just take a quick peek, I’m an art student, I love history, maybe I’ll buy it. I looked both ways and saw the shopkeep had left momentarily and no one was about, so I opened it and found it was an entire book featuring nude Edwardian women all painted by Walter Sickert between 1905-1912 and it was actually quite a revolutionary set of paintings for its time given that it featured very raw depictions of working class nude women in dark London instead of the elegant, white bedsheet clad, Demure middle and upper class women usually depicted.

And of course RIGHT as I flip to this lady’s boobs practically taking up an entire double page spread, every customer in a 5 mile radius appeared from around the corners of the shelf including the shopkeep and immediately regressing to a wet, pathetic Edwardian man from 1908, startled, I dropped the large book which caused a giant SLAP on the floor in this already silent store thus causing all patrons to look down at me scrambling on my knees to close a giant book of Edwardian boobs and let me tell you it would not have been nearly as funny had I not immediately felt like some Edwardian local pervert who just tried to sneak a cheeky peek at the erotic book in the bookstore only to drop it dramatically causing a scene, red up to his ears trying to shove it back on the shelf. Like such a casual and normal thing in modern day but looking at Edwardian women suddenly turned it into this egregious act as I apparently became possessed by the spirit of a moustached man in a bowler hat and morning coat going Good Heavens I mustn’t gaze upon these images in public lest the constable haul me away!

[gongyussy]

MONKEY MAN (2024)

[hinamie]

morning glory

[yellowjackets-polls]

Cabin guy VS the man with no eyes

[p4nishers]

ok so this is diabolical

jayce's memory reality

[chloesimaginationthings]

The FNAF crying child if he wasn’t fucking around

[mischievous-thunder]

A few hours later:

Wade might be a little scared of his girl but his jealousy runs deeper

[egophiliac]

everyone out of the way, this is the only thing I'm going to be thinking about from now on.

(okay, there is one more thing)

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

Yeah, I don't know about you, Fidds, but I'd fold at this 🙏

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