S03.E10: Full Circle

[Affogato]

12 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

It didn’t play that way to me. She was almost gleeful. She made a snide comment to Van that seemed pointed. I guess more could come from it but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just never brought up again tbh.

Also, I’m really gonna need Walter to be more than a rich guy obsessed with Misty. They’ve already done ‘guy obsessed with Yellowjacket’ with Adam. I get it writers, I like Elijah Wood too, and there’s been a lot of fun Walter scenes, but to waste precious seconds of the final ep of the season just showing him stare at Tai/Misty in the diner like come on lol.

I don’t know. I want them to fly off together and become jewel robbers. Or something.

[millennium]

7 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I guess we're supposed to now assume the original scene of the hunt in the pilot was Shauna's memory of it. Because it was quite different then to how it was shown here. Which means we can't actually believe any of the wilderness scenes we've gotten because they could all just turn out to be someone's false memories. I hate that so damn much.

I had to read William Faulkner in college (Modern Lit).  I forget which of his works it was, but one book consisted of three or four characters independently recollecting the same story.   There were variations, contradictions, etc. between each version (the gospels are kind of like that -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all telling the story of Jesus, but from different angles).  The professor explained it was on us to figure out what really happened to these characters by the process of "ratiocination" -- in other words, to examine each version, find common elements, and use reasoning to determine what really/probably happened. 

I still think Faulkner sucks.

[Black Knight]

8 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I guess we're supposed to now assume the original scene of the hunt in the pilot was Shauna's memory of it. Because it was quite different then to how it was shown here. Which means we can't actually believe any of the wilderness scenes we've gotten because they could all just turn out to be someone's false memories. I hate that so damn much.

I don't think this is an instance of false memories. The show even used much of the footage from the pilot and also took pains to match up new footage. It's simply that in this episode we got more context. In the pilot during the opening sequence of the hunt, we only saw Pit Girl and the girl who came up to the opening of the pit, who we now know to be Mari and Van respectively. Yes, we learned that for a good chunk of the YJs the hunt wasn't what we thought it was, but that didn't invalidate anything we were shown in the pilot - which was not all that much.

[Anela]

4 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

It didn’t play that way to me. She was almost gleeful. She made a snide comment to Van that seemed pointed. I guess more could come from it but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just never brought up again tbh.

Also, I’m really gonna need Walter to be more than a rich guy obsessed with Misty. They’ve already done ‘guy obsessed with Yellowjacket’ with Adam. I get it writers, I like Elijah Wood too, and there’s been a lot of fun Walter scenes, but to waste precious seconds of the final ep of the season just showing him stare at Tai/Misty in the diner like come on lol.

Right.  She said that van didn’t want to be that person “but I do!” Swank said the writers have plans for her, if they get another season. It feels like they backtracked with Van, though.  She creeped me out in season two. I suppose it could have been that she was starved, and she wasn’t this season. 

[peachmangosteen]

9 minutes ago, Anela said:

It feels like they backtracked with Van, though.  She creeped me out in season two.

Yea, a few of the girls seemed one way and then it just turned out they were actually something completely different. Cool lol.

From an interview with the Mari actress about the hunt: "The showrunners said that back and forth was meant to show viewers the difference between how the adult survivors remember what happened, compared to how the horrific event actually played out." Add in the fact that now they're going with a 'We didn't remember what happened" angle with the adults and I'm more annoyed.

That being said though, I definitely hope they get a season 4 and that it is the last season because my goodness they do not have the material to make this last 2 more seasons.

[Affogato]

1 hour ago, millennium said:

I had to read William Faulkner in college (Modern Lit).  I forget which of his works it was, but one book consisted of three or four characters independently recollecting the same story.   There were variations, contradictions, etc. between each version (the gospels are kind of like that -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all telling the story of Jesus, but from different angles).  The professor explained it was on us to figure out what really happened to these characters by the process of "ratiocination" -- in other words, to examine each version, find common elements, and use reasoning to determine what really/probably happened. 

I still think Faulkner sucks.

Stay away from the Alexandria quartet—Durrell wrote four books.

Rashomon is one of my favorite movies.

12 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

Yea, a few of the girls seemed one way and then it just turned out they were actually something completely different. Cool lol.

From an interview with the Mari actress about the hunt: "The showrunners said that back and forth was meant to show viewers the difference between how the adult survivors remember what happened, compared to how the horrific event actually played out." Add in the fact that now they're going with a 'We didn't remember what happened" angle with the adults and I'm more annoyed.

That being said though, I definitely hope they get a season 4 and that it is the last season because my goodness they do not have the material to make this last 2 more seasons.

It makes sense that they wouldn’t remember all of it, or even most of it, because of the trauma, and that there would be anger when they did remember some of it.  Now Shauna remembers how good it felt to be the Antler Queen, but she is at a low point right now.

I still can’t tell where they are going with her, although I am beginning to think there may be a final hunt. 

They may not pull it off,  but I think the plan would be the first part of next season is waiting for rescue, the last part is being rescued. On the adult side I think alliances are formed. Maybe the second part of the fifth season would be that final hunt, and the second part the aftermath, I’m sure they will do something with the younger actors. But it does seem like they could fit it into one season if they tried.

[millennium]

If I can just revisit Taissa eating Van's heart for a moment: I'm no health expert, but I don't think it's a very good idea to eat the heart of someone riddled with cancer (not that you should go around eating people's hearts in the first place).

[millennium]

8 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Also, I’m really gonna need Walter to be more than a rich guy obsessed with Misty.

Walter's the one of the two elements of the show I don't like.   The other is Callie.  Although Callie's confession did give us another couple minutes with adult Lottie, which I was grateful for.   I can't help thinking adult Lottie looks like Megyn Kelly with dark hair.

[Affogato]

The Shauna is the big bad is bothering me, because I still feel a lot of sympathy for her. I don’t think she is a narcissist or a sociopath, because we have seen too much love and protectiveness and sensitivity. I’m guessing Borderline Personality Disorder, including a hypersensitivity to the negative emotions of others, emotional disregulation, reactions different from societal norms, emotional isolation and so on. I think she will end up being the scapegoat, but I don’t think it is because she doesn’t feel things. She may do awful things, but it will be impulsive and she will make things harder for herself. Things like the fight with Melissa. Well, we shall see. Yes, Jeff and Callie are right, she probably sucked as a wife and a mother, and needed therapy. However, Jeff and the diaries is a huge betrayal. Hard to like the poor thing. 

In any case, if I look at it from that point of view, it makes sense.

Personally I’m happy Lottie is dead, because she bugged me. 

I still like Misty, but I think she is emotionally immature, with her liminance for the coach Ben and her taking on being Natalie with her jacket. I think that counts for her petty sadisms and so on. Poor Caligula, dead or alive. 

[tennisgurl]

I'm definitely going to need another season, there is a lot more to unpack, and I would love flashbacks to the survivors immediately post rescue. So, we might have covered this already, but...I'm still not totally sure why, when Shauna, Lottie, and Tai said they wanted to stay, everyone didn't just leave anyway. If almost everyone wanted to escape except for those three and a few other nameless girls, was all this subterfuge necessary? Did they really need to kill and eat Mari instead of just telling Shauna to fuck off? And where the hell is Akilah?! 

[Affogato]

18 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I'm definitely going to need another season, there is a lot more to unpack, and I would love flashbacks to the survivors immediately post rescue. So, we might have covered this already, but...I'm still not totally sure why, when Shauna, Lottie, and Tai said they wanted to stay, everyone didn't just leave anyway. If almost everyone wanted to escape except for those three and a few other nameless girls, was all this subterfuge necessary? Did they really need to kill and eat Mari instead of just telling Shauna to fuck off? And where the hell is Akilah?! 

It might be possible they wanted to be all in it together. No ody trekking in later with horror stories. 

[peachmangosteen]

2 hours ago, Affogato said:

It might be possible they wanted to be all in it together.

But I don't think they actually were all in it together.

The whole thing was very convoluted and hard to follow but I think I have it figured out:

Akilah/Melissa/Mari/Gen decide they want to kill Lottie and Shauna. Akilah decides she will kill her animals (stupid lol) to incite a hunt and then I guess Akilah was supposed to kill Lottie and Melissa was supposed to kill Shauna. Melissa couldn't go through with it and for some reason we weren't shown what exactly happened with Lottie and Akilah but Lottie wasn't killed obviously.

Then, separately, Natalie/Misty/maybe Van/maybe Travis at some point decided to use the hunt as a distraction to get Natalie out to make the call. During the hunt, Natalie decided to use Hanna as another diversion to give herself more time, I guess.

I guess you could fanwank that the girls didn't immediately band together against the trio that wanted to stay or that they didn't all go in on a plan to kill or subdue them together because they weren't sure if they could really trust everyone.

It's a lot of the audience having to fill in a lot of missing pieces tbh.

 

Edited Sunday at 10:25 PM by peachmangosteen

[peachmangosteen]

Just found this from an interview with Courtney Eaton:

Quote

"Q: But now there’s the question of does Akilah [Nia Sondaya] survive, because Melissa [Jenna Burgess and Swank] survived unexpectedly. Akilah is the new mystery."

"She’s a mystery for Nia and I, because the last scene we filmed together was in the cave and you last see her holding a rock, and then you don’t see her at the feast. So we had some questions. We were like, where is she? Did I kill her? We don’t know."

So, yea, Lottie probably killed Akilah. Dammit, Lottie!

[heatherchandler]

On 4/11/2025 at 6:28 PM, peachmangosteen said:

This season really drove home imo what a mistake it was to kill off Natalie. It seems so blatantly obvious that Natalie being killed off that early wasn’t the plan and I think their decision to pivot in this way was not the best one. But I don’t blame Juliette for leaving; it’s messed up that she was lied to by the writers. They really should have just recast. 

I’m trying to enjoy the show for what it is and I mostly do but man it’s hard not to think about the ways it could be better lol.

The writers lied to her?

[sistermagpie]

On 4/11/2025 at 12:28 PM, Chaos Theory said:

 absolutely adore that at this point Shauna has been made the one true villain of the story.    None of the other survivors are perfect and have done terrible terrible things but Shauna is the true face of unhinged violence on the show.   It would have been easy to make Misty the villain but she has been the same person through the show.   Capable of murder but also loyal to the people she calls friends.   Shauna doesn’t give a shit.  Tai has deep emotional and mental issues but she truly loved Van.   Shauna is incapable of loving anyone.   I find that kind of character fascinating.

I feel like there's got to be another turn with Shauna. She's at her lowest point now. 

As awful as Shauna is in the wilderness (and I couldn't help but just think it would have been a hell of a lot easier to just kill Shauna. Wouldn't everyone want to be rid of her at this point?), this season ending with Shauna embracing her Queen self in response to Melissa telling her to forgive herself just doesn't work as an ending arc.

Tai was talking about Shauna being the cause of everything, but it was Tai and Misty who are planning to kill their teammate. The only people adult Shauna has killed are people she believed were threatening them all. She's paranoid about threats to her family and others--and those other people, it turns out, actually triggered that paranoia. Especially Callie who did not kill Lottie by accident. Jeff's going to be in over his head with her too.

Meanwhile, the stuff she was being accused of by Tai and Misty wasn't about her intentionally going against them, but her getting in trouble because she was paranoid about somebody after them. 

Then there's Walter...

It does seem like the show has been wandering and is trying to use "we didn't remember" to explain things that just really don't fit with what we saw. Everyone's adult situation matched the past in S1. Now a lot of that seemed to just trail off.

On 4/11/2025 at 12:37 PM, Affogato said:

I’m theorizing that Shauna does love, but no one particularly cares. 

Yeah, I don't think she's so one note as to not care about anyone. She's closer to people than any of the others are.

On 4/12/2025 at 4:07 AM, millennium said:

They get no hero points.  They're weaklings and cowards.   I'm so tired of having to suffer people who know better and have agency of their own doing the bidding of narcissistic leaders, even when they know it's wrong.

Right, it didn't even seem like cowadice to me so much as scrambling to make the pilot scenes work out.

On 4/12/2025 at 1:20 PM, SeanC said:

They took her hostage (and in Shauna's case, want to kill her), clearly she decided it was them or her.

On 4/12/2025 at 1:55 PM, peachmangosteen said:

It didn’t play that way to me. She was almost gleeful. She made a snide comment to Van that seemed pointed. I guess more could come from it but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just never brought up again tbh.

 

Yes, Van had made it clear she wasn't going to hurt her. Melissa could have run out without killing Van. It's not like she couldn't out run her.

8 hours ago, Affogato said:

The Shauna is the big bad is bothering me, because I still feel a lot of sympathy for her. I don’t think she is a narcissist or a sociopath, because we have seen too much love and protectiveness and sensitivity.

Yeah, she and Misty are still the adult characters that seem the most consistent to me. And even Misty not quite as much, but I can see the logic.

I still enjoy the show, but I think I'm with peachmangosteen in seeing the writing as really creaky.

Edited Yest. at 01:35 AM by sistermagpie

[millennium]

4 hours ago, heatherchandler said:

The writers lied to her?

Not according to Juliette, who says she knew from the start adult Natalie wasn't going to make it past Season 2.

https://www.cbr.com/juliette-lewis-yellowjackets-exit/

But wow, what mistakes the writers made, first taking out Julie, then Natalie, the two most fleshed-out and interesting characters in the show.

I just saw adult Shauna in an episode of the Last Of Us.  It was kind of a vicarious thrill seeing her get taken out by a fungus zombie.

[peachmangosteen]

13 hours ago, heatherchandler said:

The writers lied to her?

Juliette said the writers told her something different about what Natalie's story was going to be and that they told her she would not relapse. As an addict, she said she really struggled with that. She also hated that, in her mind although I disagree, Natalie was all about Travis. Honestly though, the fact that Natalie and Travis have barely interacted at all for 2 seasons is a very odd choice based on what we know about them as adults.

The 'Oh yea, Natalie was always going to die in season 2' is the most obvious PR bullshit I've ever heard lol. The writers are not great but I can't believe their actual plan was to kill Natalie because it's just atrociously bad based on what they're doing now.

8 hours ago, millennium said:

But wow, what mistakes the writers made, first taking out Julie, then Natalie, the two most fleshed-out and interesting characters in the show.

Wait, who is Julie?

Edited Yest. at 01:12 PM by peachmangosteen

[Colorado David]

i don't see natalie dying by end of season 2 unreasonable, as we saw her spiraling back into drug use again. it surprised me it wasnt an OD situation rather than being taken out by Misty, THAT is the surprise.

 

[peachmangosteen]

They have been setting up Shauna vs. Natalie the whole time and really drove it home this season so yea I will never believe the plan was to just kill off adult Natalie that early. Again, the writers aren't that great but I can't imagine they're that bad lol.

[Colorado David]

11 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

They have been setting up Shauna vs. Natalie the whole time and really drove it home this season so yea I will never believe the plan was to just kill off adult Natalie that early. Again, the writers aren't that great but I can't imagine they're that bad lol.

i wonder maybe they pivoted for some reason? juliette decided to leave?

[peachmangosteen]

1 hour ago, Colorado David said:

i wonder maybe they pivoted for some reason? juliette decided to leave?

Yes, Juliette decided to leave. Now they seem to be trying to sell a story that she was always going to only be in 2 seasons/Natalie was always going to die at the end of season 2 but it's pretty clearly not true.

[BitterApple]

1 hour ago, peachmangosteen said:

Yes, Juliette decided to leave. Now they seem to be trying to sell a story that she was always going to only be in 2 seasons/Natalie was always going to die at the end of season 2 but it's pretty clearly not true.

I wonder if they should've just bit the bullet and recast Natalie? Killing the character off really torpedoed the adult timeline. 

[peachmangosteen]

I have said multiple times that I think they should have just recast. I get why they would be afraid to but I think it would've been the better choice.

Edited 15 hours ago by peachmangosteen

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Juliette said the writers told her something different about what Natalie's story was going to be and that they told her she would not relapse. As an addict, she said she really struggled with that. She also hated that, in her mind although I disagree, Natalie was all about Travis. Honestly though, the fact that Natalie and Travis have barely interacted at all for 2 seasons is a very odd choice based on what we know about them as adults.

 

Yeah, it just feels to me that the story is really now the Sadeki's story. In S1 they set up the characters, imo, in a way that seemed to show their teen selves making sense with their adult selves, with each having a clear way that their experience in the wilderness was affecting their adult life. Except for Misty they seemed to have a clear conflict about their wilderness self vs. civilization self. So Misty was a great character, but her arc didn't have the same kind of drama.

But as the show went on it seemed like except for Shauna they just drifted into other things with only Shauna having the same conflict that she's working through in a narrative way, and her family working out what that means for them. 

[Cosmocrush]

On 4/12/2025 at 6:47 AM, peachmangosteen said:

And speaking of Melissa, what the fuck lol. So she was actually being honest with Shauna. She even told her to forgive herself in the letter. So then why did she gleefully murder Van? I was annoyed we didn't get any Melissa followup in this episode.

Can someone please tell me more about the letter adult Shauna found under the refrigerator? I know it came with the tape Callie intercepted, but I don't know if it was my TV or what but I could barely make some of the words out. 

[peachmangosteen]

3 hours ago, Cosmocrush said:

Can someone please tell me more about the letter adult Shauna found under the refrigerator? I know it came with the tape Callie intercepted, but I don't know if it was my TV or what but I could barely make some of the words out. 

Yea, it wasn't up long enough to really get a look at but there are screencaps on Reddit. It said exactly what Melissa said it said.

Thinking about it more and I can't believe Akilah just never showed up to the hunt or feast and literally no one noticed or cared lol.

[Anela]

3 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Yea, it wasn't up long enough to really get a look at but there are screencaps on Reddit. It said exactly what Melissa said it said.

Thinking about it more and I can't believe Akilah just never showed up to the hunt or feast and literally no one noticed or cared lol.

People have speculated that someone gets left behind. I hope not. I also hope that she's okay. 

[Cosmocrush]

After three seasons and reading a couple of interviews with the writers on this episode I'm more convinced than ever the writers had no clear plan/arc for this show.  This episode they needed to match up some things from the S1 first episode but other than that I'm not sure how Shauna went from reckless to full on villian, among other things.  

And although they were stuck because of Misty, it was Lottie's mental illness that drove the madness later; like eating Mari when there were half a dozen dead goats they could have been eating.  That whole thing with Tai eating Van's heart was so far from S1 Tai I can't tell if that was Bad Tai or what but I was grossed out. 

What did they do with Melissa?  Where is she now? 

[millennium]

22 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Wait, who is Julie?

She's the cruise director on the Pacific Princess, obviously.

 

[peachmangosteen]

10 hours ago, Cosmocrush said:

And although they were stuck because of Misty, it was Lottie's mental illness that drove the madness later ...

And, let's remember Misty bears some responsibility for pushing Lottie to this point. Misty is the one that lied and told everyone Lottie wanted the first hunt when Lottie did not say that to her.

It's easy to forget that Misty has done seriously messed up shit because they decided this season to make her basically entirely comic relief and decided to make Shauna a heartless psycho. If I had more faith in the writers I'd believe there's a reason for this and that all the fanwanks about everything are true but I just think the writers kind of have no idea what to do and are also kinda lazy.

1 hour ago, millennium said:

She's the cruise director on the Pacific Princess, obviously.

I have no idea what you're talking about lol but it seems irrelevant to the actual show anyway so no worries.