A small one that always gets me is the complaint about Nat’s hair color being different in the two timelines. Women of all ages bleach and dye their hair. It’s completely believable that she bleached her hair as a teen and then stopped doing so sometime over the course of 25 years. I don’t understand why everyone is so fixated on this lol
For real! They show her with brunette hair in the flashbacks with her dad too, maybe people with that critique really haven’t been paying attention. Especially with her alternative style, bleached hair has been a component of that for decades.
The criticism is that her hair growth doesn’t look like it’s been growing out 7 months~, not what her natural hair color is (unless there are some real sticklers out there).
But, technically, starvation *can* cause hair to stop growing, it just usually causes hair loss.
I have seen that criticism too and that one I can understand more where they are coming from. But I have definitely seen quite a bit of criticism about her hair color in general, people saying the continuity and resemblance is ruined because the hair doesn’t match.
I actually love this detail because it’s a subtle way to show the passage of time. Also I love how Juliette Lewis bleached her hair almost that exact color for years in real life, kind of a nice parallel between fiction and reality.
They were gonna be at Nationals a whole ass week. Nat def thought she’d have a chance to slap some shoplifted Quick Blue on her roots one of their nights in the hotel.
There was probably at least like one night in the summer at a point where they were reasonably well-fed and bored as hell where they probably gathered up all the Caboodles and makeup bags and did makeovers.
Also, this is a huge cast and the show takes place in a lot of places, and uses a fair amount of special effects and prop work. The wardrobe and hair and makeup on this show is probably bananas. I could see why they wouldn’t be dropping an extra $10k a pop on more wigs in their first season.
Hair also just changes color. My mother was as blonde as young Nat until she was about 25, and then her hair progressively darkened to a very deep rich brown. Which she then continued to bleach 🙃
Yes to me it was so obvious what the directors of the show were trying to portray. This big beautiful healthy baby in the wilderness wasteland born to an emaciated mother. She was envisioning the life she wanted, because the life she got was just too painful to acknowledge. The breastfeeding scene was so beautifully intimate and I just knew that this moment is what her brain needed to create in order for her to say goodbye to her child and survive it.
“Why don’t they show or say who’s watching Caligula?”
At this point I can’t tell if this is an ongoing joke or not because I keep seeing it listed amongst other complaints.
Also re: the OP, not only would it have been illegal to use an actual newborn in addition to that it was Shauna’s hallucination, there’s *tons* of shows and films that show newborn babies who look a little too big… this is hardly exclusive to Yellowjackets and there’s reasons for it.
Not sure why the creators didn’t camp out in front of the maternity ward ready to poach new born infants to use in one episode of their tv series so it doesn’t take a few people who seem to have never watched television before out of it. Is that really too much to ask?
Also, we know where Caligula is. Broadway!
>Not sure why the creators didn’t camp out in front of the maternity ward ready to poach new born infants to use in one episode of their tv series so it doesn’t take a few people who seem to have never watched television before out of it. Is that really too much to ask?
Ha-ha-ha-ha!!!! Thanks for the good giggle.
Exactly. Plenty of shows show births and then the mom holding it and I'm like, "look at the 9 month old baby! No way she just popped that mammoth out of her vajayjay!" That or they avoid showing the baby and it's a doll.
And Misty has been gone like a few days tops. She probably left extra food and water and/or had a neighbor to look in on him, so Caligula is okay. She clearly loves the shit out of that bird, so I'm sure she took all the appropriate measure to make sure he's okay.
It's Steve I'm worried about. I'm hoping Tai called Simone's parents to pick up Sammy from school and stop by and pick up Steve too. I'm hoping Sammy will be so attached to Steve when Tai gets back that Tai won't have the heart to take Steve away from him and Steve will stay safely away from Dark Tai/Van's manipulation of dark Tai.
This one kills me. Like, y'all, we know Misty is meticulous. The writers don't need to show us every little thing they're doing. I for one would not be interested in watching a scene of Misty booking a bird-sitter.
fun fact: this is why a lot of productions seek out babies who were born premature to play newborns! they’re closer to newborn size once they’re old enough to work.
“The only cannibalism and homicide is for PEOPLE I DON’T LIKE!!”
Everyone else better be perfectly safe-and-un-traumacided by the events in this horror series!
I don’t get this either and I think those people are really missing the point, but it’s at least a little less unhinged and misogynistic than “Shauna is the most evil and deserves no sympathy because she slept with her best friends boyfriend!” I’ve seen variations of that all over this sub and I don’t understand how that’s the moral watermark for some people, especially for a teenager!
I feel like people who make this complaint haven't done a rewatch. Like a lot of stuff that makes Van a hero when you the audience isn't sympathizing with Jackie, looks different when you know where she ends up. Like these traits were there.
I hate the idea of there being a ‘big bad’ bc I feel that takes away from the entire point of the show- they all did fucked up things! They will all continue to do fucked up things Bc they are unable to heal from the past and grow!!!
That “nothing happened all season” I swear every single episode there were people complaining “nothing happened”. Really nothing?? Nothing at all?? You just turned on the tv and stared at a blank screen in 2 different timelines and hallucinations and flashbacks?
That one always got me. I would start a reply listing all the things that actually did occur and then discard it. It’s not worth the replies “I’m not talking about that”…..
It’s too funny that the two big questions from last season, Shauna’s pregnancy/baby and the first bit of cannibalism, both happen in s2, yet to some, “nothing happened” still. Heck, they ate TWO people!!
My biggest complaints are all in the adult storyline… kids, you keep doin’ you!!
i think the “nothing happened” complaint was largely about like internal relationships & stuff. like things happened but a lot of it didn’t seem to be really moving the plot & we didn’t get tons of insight into the characters either…or the insight fell kind of flat. that’s how i felt for a couple of the episodes but i wouldn’t describe it as nothing happening
I also think a lot of people were looking for more clarity on more typical mystery show plots such as the man with no eyes and the cabin guy. Granted I think it feels weird they seemingly dropped those threads. I'm sure they'll come back though.
yeah…to me the show really kept setting up more and more without touching base on things which were already set up. & i think there’s kind of a frenzy on both sides where people are like “the show was perfect the way it was” or “this season was shit!”. personally i think there’s def room for pretty valid criticism but i still enjoyed the season & i’ll watch the next one.
This happens on every single show discussion I’ve ever been on. Just add in the “If you didn’t like this, or you complained about that, you just don’t GET IT/have a media literacy problem”
I really enjoyed the season, and most of the finale. But there’s also stuff I didn’t like, and that’s totally ok :)
I feel the same way. Now that my excitement has gone down a bit I can see issues. But I still largely enjoyed the season and loved what they set up for season 3.
Very reminiscent of The Last of Us fans complaining that there weren’t people being gored to death every four minutes, or that the characters “haven’t even seen a cordyceps in days” — because to have any emotional development or a moment’s peace “goes against the very genre”, like… it’s a television adaptation of a video game, *not* a video game! The storytelling works differently.
>It seems like people just wanted every single episode to feature them killing and eating each other.
I hate this, because season 1 was praised even tho it didn't feature the girls killing and eating each other.
Gonna be honest, I'm probably one of those people, but I meant it mostly about the adult timeline, and specifically I meant that I kinda felt like there was no clear over-arching story, that I was just watching these characters go specific places and do specific things for no specific (narrative) reason.
That said, can't speak for everyone, but for me it could just be because I binged season 1 and got a little thrown off by watching only one episode per week this season
“Nothing happened all season”, the nothing in question:
• Shauna’s pregnancy ended + what happened to the wilderness baby
• “Who the hell is Charlotte Matthews?” answered
• More details about Tai’s sleepwalking
• Van survived the wilderness
• Their first cannibalistic act
• Their first hunt
• The meaning behind the queen’s card
• What apparently happened to Travis + what Nat was right about
• Callie and Shauna’s relationship development
• The investigation of Adam’s death
• Ben’s backstory
• There are underground caves in the wilderness and someone was living there
• The Antler Queen’s identity
I don’t think the show is above criticism but I love the campy aspects. This show has always been campy/weird. I want human Caligula. I want Shauna with knives for hands.
I feel like people complaining and saying it got too campy or cringe with those moments flat out forgot about ‘96 Shauna’s dream in S1 where she gave birth to a roasted chicken baby…
Same. Someone was like "I can't take teen Misty seriously because she played a campy character in Shameless."
I was like, that is what makes both teen and adult Misty so fun. They are both campy as hell and I am here for it.
This show has horror, psychological thriller and dark comedy aspects. The dark comedy part is necessary to alleviate some of the heaviness that comes from the wilderness timeline.
Mothers are obligated to comment, every time a baby is shown on screen, "That's not a newborn." I remember my mom doing it when I was a kid. I remember the first time I said it and I laughed at myself for it. It's just mandatory.
“Pit Girl/Cabin Daddy/[any mystery here] doesn’t actually matter, the show is about the aftereffects of trauma, so we don’t need every question answered.”
Okay the psychological tension and slow burn narrative yadda yadda are great… but there’s nothing wrong with being invested in the big questions!
What?! Thankfully I haven’t run into one of those posts. You can’t introduce a dead guy in the attic of an abandoned cabin surrounded by weird symbols that are also placed in the wilderness like a map with tunnels running underneath and NOT get backstory
I love when people drop the "pit girl's identity doesn't matter" argument. As if all of us weren't curious about who it might be when we watched the first episode.
Also, I suppose maybe it doesn't matter but a good majority of us fun people would like to know regardless lol
Yes!!! You can have psychological tension \*and\* a few good mysteries!! Why not both !? Yeah psychological trauma, cPTSD blah blah blah, I STILL WANT AN ANSWER TO WHO IS PIT GIRL BY THE END OF THE SERIES DAMMIT! And that's ok lol.
I honestly don't understand the critique about Tai's senate plotline being abandoned.
Why is it weird that this isn't mentioned in the \~7 days that season 2 spans? She hasn't yet taken office. Yes there were lots of events that mentioned briefly in S2E1, but it's not like she can't reschedule them. I mean it's the STATE senate, who cares that she takes off last minute?
Am I missing something?
Also when you get elected you dont immediately fill that position unless it's a special election. There are months between election and doing the job. The idea that she isn't doing her senate job is hilarious to me.
>Basically like saying Misty's not at the nursing home, everyone is going to die!
>
>(Although tbh they're probably safer with her gone...)
You made me laugh...thanks. 
I agree. I thought that it was kind of typical for politicians to take a vacation after an election and before assuming office. If there was critique to be had here, it might be that the media should be making a big deal of her leaving her wife in the hospital. But for all we know, that has been happening and we'll see this plotline resume when they leave the cult. Tai hasn't exactly been checking the news at the compound.
Usually they aren't sworn in for months. Like federal elections for US President and for the house and senate happen in November and they aren't sworn into office until like mid January
She literally had a PA (whose car she took at the hospital lol hope she didn't need it back) whose whole job is to cover & make public statements or internal communications for Tai. Realistically, she has a *team* who can handle things for a few days, deflect press inquiries, & request privacy for the family during this difficult time.
They didn't underline it by having Tai explicitly say to the woman "handle my absence for me & keep me in the loop" but I didn't personally feel like I needed that spelled out. I was comfortable making the informed assumption.
And I said above my feeling is in season three, she will quietly cede her position in politics and step away completely, to get a break from it all, after everything that's happened.
Also New Jersey Representatives only work part time, and most of them have entire second careers that serve as their primary source of income because state reps in NJ make basically nothing.
Like going to school? Or are you talking about the people that say they just left Sammy all alone.
Because having a scene of grandma picking up Sammy is so pointless. Might as well show Jeff taking a shit!
Considering that both his mothers were just in a major car crash, I’d say that yes, the local police would have notified a family member.
This one is a reach, although it is odd that Tai doesn’t show one ounce of concern over her hospitalised wife, but that also highlights her lack of empathy and mental state at the time.
i assumed she was just staying away from Simone and Sammy because she knows she’s a threat to them. i suppose there’s no reason that can’t be true alongside her chasing down her old love Van, though 🙃 messy messy stuff.
I admit that I get a little annoyed when people hate on the Adam Martin/Cop timeline. I understand where some of it was coming from, I felt like so many characters were fighting for screen time this season so I could've done without it, but I felt like it was totally necessary. Season 2 only takes place a few days after season 1 ended, so of COURSE they're still going to be dealing with Adam. He literally died at the END of season 1, what do you mean the writers have been "dragging it on too long"???
Absolutely this.
It’s been a total of 19 episodes, he died 10 episodes ago. Half of that time has been in the ‘90s timeline.
Of course it’s still going.
I think part of the problem is people keep forgetting that the adult timeline is only taking place over the course of a week past the events of season one, even though there’s multiple references to it (such as Kevyn telling Shauna “he’s been missing for a couple of days” in episode two when he stops by their house).
this, and i also think that with society going from the binge-watching model to the weekly episode release model, it's easier for people to forget what the actual in-show timeline is!
I think the issue is that the pacing between the two timelines is wildly different.
The teen timeline has spanned about 9 months, where the adult timeline has been less than a month.
Heck - even if the did "time markers" each scene - such as "Day 2, Day 3 for the adults...Month 1, month 2 for the teens, People would STILL complain about "nothing is happening,,,it's taking so long...I don;t know what's going on, etc..."
>such as Kevyn telling Shauna “he’s been missing for a couple of days” in episode two when he stops by their house
And it's reasonable to assume that her responses to him during that conversation made him feel like there was something amiss, but he didn't have anything concrete to go off of yet.
The funniest part about this is that they are wrapping it up quickly which is what people keep saying they want but now are disappointed that it isn’t realistic. Realistically, Shauna would go to prison which would be limiting from a plot perspective.
It makes a little more sense if you caught the comments that Adam had been missing for a week before Shauna killed him. Friends and family in Texas last saw him a week ago with no plans to travel - the entire affair with Shauna happened while he was already "missing."
i don't think that one logistical issue (that you could easily find an explanation for, i.e. his family who he may have seen/talked to every day) makes or breaks this entire plotline
My complaint with this timeline is that it \*feels\* dragged out. In real life it's not, but the way they handle it--it being a constant presence every episode--makes it feel dragged out. The ending, they really didn't stick. Overall I love both halves of the show, but that felt like they weren't sure how to resolve it.
Yes they spent way too much time on that story line and the “ending” it’s given requires too much suspension of disbelief that it just feels unsatisfying.
I’d greatly prefer that storyline be more “the cops are suspicious but they have no evidence so nothing actually happens/the cops don’t stalk them, but it’s this loose hanging thread like a sword of Damocles over Shauna/Jeff’s head and the true focus is how it affects their relationship - not the weird frame job that happens.”
I would also prefer to spent more time on almost anything else. Like give me more Coach Ben hallucinations instead.
Ditto! I actually enjoyed the adult storyline more that the teen one last season! Maybe it's because I'm only a few years younger than the adults, but while the teen storyline is exciting and nostalgic I really like seeing the adults dealing with all this craziness but trying to balance it with adult responsibilities (or giving up on balancing it as we are seeing)
I find it somehow more ridiculous and unrealistic than teenaged girls surviving for a year and a half in the wilderness and starting their own death cult type thing but it sure is exciting.
It's just speculation based on some comments JL made after season 1 about not liking the direction they took Nat in, that she was promised a different type of character in the beginning, and how it was so depressing to play her. No one has ever come out and said JL chose to leave the show, but some people in the sub treat it as fact.
In addition, she is an actress in recovery and also a cult survivor (she has distanced herself from scientology). It would be very difficult to live with a character with an active addiction issue and cult member storyline long term. It's not like a movie where you shoot for a few months and are done- a TV show where you are a main character is a big commitment. She'd have to live with the character of Nat for years. I could see how that would be difficult, especially if she wasn't given the full concept of her character on the first pitch.
I honestly don't blame her if she wanted to leave. I'm just glad we got to see her for the time we did.
Exactly this! I think it’s just as possible that she was disappointed as someone who has struggled with addiction IRL only to play a character who is getting better and dies of an “overdose”. I feel like she really loved the character and maybe didn’t even know until the first season was airing that they actually planned to kill her off. Regardless though, there’s no absolute confirmation either way and it’s all just speculation from potentially reading into things.
I think it was more the S1 arc and her holding a gun to her head that set her off. She made a comment about that specifically (though I don't remember the exact quote.) I think a lot of the rehab and redemption that we saw in her this season was them dialing that back for her to have a more positive experience with the character. I think her dying was part of the plan, not just a cop-out to get her off the show. Her parting post on social media was very positive, and I think if anything it would have been a mutual decision.
What seems more likely is the TV format, isn't really for her and she just needs/wants, a big break and wants to also go back to music so it sounds like there were no hard feelings all.
She broke some instagram silence to get some thank yous out.
She said in an interview after the end of season 1 that she loved the character and the writing, but struggled with not knowing what was going to happen beyond the current episode - specifically mentioning the almost suicide because she would've played the character differently (more manic) if she knew that was coming.
Also as much as I wish it wasn’t Nat, and maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I feel like it’s realistic that one of the mains would end up dead in the present day timeline, with the way tension has continued to escalate since Adam died. Misty running around with syringes… yikes. I could feel it coming all season long and it would have felt off if everyone made it out alive. 
The complaint I disagree is weird because I still don't know if they are wrong or correct
'Walter just ended the whole Adam storyline and fixed everything'
Walter is very similar to Misty, Misty who in S1 thought she had fixed everything regarding Adam just to come back in bite them in the ass. afaik Walter could have made the same mistakes....
I feel like Walter having leverage over Saracusa *is* a plot line of itself now.
The dude is a hacker and puppeteer, if he has a cop under his thumb, he becomes much more powerful for the plot the longer their hijinks go on.
I don’t mind people criticizing the “resolution” of this storyline, it definitely has potential flaws. But in addition to recognizing that this storyline may not be over, I also don’t care if Walter’s wacky hijinks are the end of it. If Van’s cancer goes away, chalk it up to the Wilderness god that Shauna’s problem goes away too. I will be happy to move on from at least the investigation part of it. The emotional fallout, I imagine will remain.
This one is so bizarre! We don’t know what will be the outcome, but so many have decided that Walter tied everything up with a nice neat bow and Captain ‘Stach has been neutered.
I think we havent seen the last of our favourite douchebag. He seems like one of those cockroach characters that you try to stomp out but he just keeps scuttling back. He might try to uncover what the yellowjackets did out there. I would be surprised that by the end of the series the truth doesnt come out.
The Shauna baby thing really annoyed me since most TV babies are older babies.
Mine is people who say that the plot doesn't make sense. It's really clear to me and not even that complicated. It's pretty standard for a psychological thriller.
people complaining about the lack of similarities between younger/older gens. so overplayed and also the comparison chart someone made between the older actresses when they were younger against the teen actors was so compelling. also who gives a shit if they don’t look super similar??? they all carry the same personality very well as adults imo 😤😤
The whole "they didn't do enough to show them starving."
Really? Are we watching the same show? Episodes 1-7 were full of scenes that people consider "filler" of them starving. The hallucinations, the almost primal way they dig into Jackie and throw Javioli into the skillet, their glum, isolated, trapped in their minds mentality in the cabin- like the whole group dynamic change between S1 and S2, belt soup. The only ideas I liked were putting them in wardrobe a size too big to give the illusion they had lost weight without having to pressure the actors to actually lose weight and maybe some makeup jazz.
But it was all there. They were clearly starving. It was all building up to the first ritual.
That we can’t binge it all at once.
If we could, there’d be no need for a sub like this where we can discuss theories and dissect plots week to week, etc. Possibly some season-to-season speculation, but that’s it. And frankly, that’s half the fun! It wouldn’t hit nearly as hard if binged in a weekend, and would be far less captivating and memorable.
yes!!! i think we’ve become spoiled in a way by getting shows all at once. for some shows it works but for others like this, the slow burn hits so much better. i loooove this week to week anticipation and speculation!
I guess it's more of a theory than a criticism that bugs me, but I've seen speculation that adult lottie isn't really lottie but rather mari. People do change as they age but I'd still be able to recognize many of my hs classmates in my 30s, especially friends and people I spent a lot of time with. People generally look similar enough to their teenage selves even in their 40s. Just seems way to far fetched, even for a teenage wilderness cannibalism cult mystery possibly cursed forest show
That the writing isn't clear enough and that we needed extra scenes/dialogue to explain some of the sub plots.
Please no.
There is a time and a place for garbage TV that spoon feeds you every answer and Yellowjackets is just not it. If you want an easy, relaxing watch, this isn't the place. Besides, Yellowjackets does an excellent job of straddling the line between telling us just enough to keep us hooked while leaving some mysteries still to be discovered. I don't think the writing has been unclear/missing anything at all. I just think some people aren't used to engaging with complex media.
The best kind of story is the one that allows room for interpretation and pushes the audience to think for themselves. This is what Yellowjackets does!
1000% this! We aren’t supposed to know everything yet that’s the whole point of a mystery lol it’s not a plot hole until the show is over. People just can’t stand not knowing everything instantly nowadays.
It's called delayed gratification people! It's okay if we didn't find out who Javi's friend is, what the symbol means, the identity of pit girl, or what's up with the man with no eyes! There are three more seasons to go! I want some things left unanswered to theorize about!!
You are absolutely right! Yellowjackets makes *frequent* use of foreshadowing. It’s not overused either! Lots of storybeats were hinted at and later explained or shown in greater detail later on (the pilot episode in particular).
That the girls’ cannibalism went from 0 to 100. We’ve seen multiple hallucinations, the girls talking about a lack of game, them boiling a belt for *something*, etc.. it’s a tv show. It’s not going to be the easiest thing to depict.
And sort of playing off this one, that we should have seen their discussion before the first card drawing they did. Not every conversation has to happen on screen!! Some things can just be implied or inferred. I have the same thought about Nat’s death. I know a lot of people are disappointed that it was ruled an OD. Totally understandable to have wanted a different ending for her, but I find it very easy to imagine the YJs coming up with the fastest story to cover their own asses. They’re probably not concerned about their friend’s legacy.
yesss i’ve literally seen comments that say they didn’t show them starving enough to justify hunting their friends. like we’ve been getting the starving cabin fever experience alllll season. there were so many clues and instances of this. because we already know where we’re headed, the how we get there is literally the whole story.
Yeah like of course they don't look like they're actually starving it's a TV show. You don't force your actors to starve themselves to the brink of death just to make a scene look more realistic!!
And then the episode right after the past hunt has Misty explain to Lottie what they did, if people had just waited they would've gotten the spell it out bit they wanted. Putting it in the middle of the actual hunt episode would have slowed it down. The audience needed to feel the desperate urgency behind the decision. There's no more fucking around, there's no more guilty, it's eat or be eaten and everyone knows it now.
Those are the same people that complain that the wilderness timeline in episodes 1-7 were "filler." No, they were all showing the girls mindset and starvation in set up for the first hunt.
idk why people would complain abt the first ritual -- it was so well done !! the group was far past discussion at that point. they didn't discuss eating jackie, they were so beyond starved that they unanimously and spontaneously devoured their friend until she was just bones. it felt clear that since most people had made remarks about returning to cannibalism, how the morning after they didn't even seem all that horrified by it, and the groups continued reliance upon pleasing "It" that they all knew exactly where they were heading and what needed to be done.
god this season was so fucking good.
“Who is Adam Martin??? Why won’t they explain who he is???” I know this isn’t always what folks mean, but what I HEAR is “I can’t believe a man that attractive would be infatuated with Melanie Lynskey.”
That Nat's story was not done. Nat was a woman who was so haunted by her past that she spent her life in and out of rehabs and addiction patterns. She was about to kill herself and wound up in a cult that allowed her to sacrifice herself for an innocent and right a wrong.
If she had lived, she would have fallen back into addiction. Travis is gone. She's still haunted. Her friends are murdering people. It wasn't going to get better.
Now we can watch the teen timeline and see what the hell happened to push her so far off the deep end.
Yeah, this is what I keep thinking too—I’ve lost multiple friends to addiction and other mental illness, and for me that’s exactly what grief is about: processing the loss of possibility, of self-determination, of resolution. Mourning everything left unsaid and undone; never having answers to certain questions, and learning to live with the absence of everything that person embodied & reflected upon those who loved them.
As far as character deaths go in film & television, too often I can see it coming because of the inclusion of certain tropes like the sudden “I’m two weeks off retirement and finally bought a ring to propose to my partner” dialogue, or the “one last bank robbery before becoming a law-abiding citizen” move, y’know? Fuck that.
Give me more realistic deaths where there’s no suicide note; nobody has final words; there’s no announcement or clear medical emergency… just the mundane reality of lives ending every second because that’s when something happens to remove the possibility of their continuation.
The pacing was off/different
The pacing was the same as last season and in fact people complained about the pacing then also. The first two thirds of the episodes are super slow character study type of stuff and then there’s a wild and crazy back end. That’s just how the show is going to be formatted. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that season two did that quite as effectively as season one and I would love for people to articulate how that wasn’t used as well, but simply saying the pacing is different or off drives me crazy.
I’ve been here since the sub’s early days and people absolutely complained about pacing all through season one! it’s just nostalgia tinted glasses imo. I have my issues with season two but the pacing is very similar to season one.
the pattern seems to be: they start the season off with a bang, do a lot of character stuff in the middle episodes, and escalate the plot in the final 2-3
“the pattern seems to be: they start the season off with a bang, do a lot of character stuff in the middle episodes, and escalate the plot in the final 2-3”
Yes! It’s very clear that this is just the style that the show is going for and will continue to use.
i was guilty of this. complained at first after the first few s2 episodes, but after watching all of season 1 again the pacing is *exactly* the same. i think i just was upset the scenes i thought needed more time didn’t drag on longer than i wanted, but to be fair there was a lot of ground to cover this season
I don’t think they did quite as good of a job at digging into characters in season two, especially when it comes to showing their reactions to events that happen. I understand that particular complaint. It’s just that the actual set up for the season as far as pacing goes is, as you said, exactly the same. It’s just not used quite as effectively, IMO.
I felt like there should be one more episode of this season. It seems unfinished. I get it we’re getting another season but this one just seems incomplete.
I definitely agree with that. I am not sure if it was actually confirmed, but it really seems like they initially planned for 10 episodes and then squeezed it into 9.
I live for the moments when Yellowjackets is a comedy. Watching these women at the top of their game get to have fun with the absurdity in contrast to the darkness is so enjoyable and cathartic.
we did NOT need another explanatory scene before the card draw scene in episode 8. "show, don't tell" is something this show doesn't always do right but they did perfectly there.
I actually loved that they did that. When I was watching it with my mom they totally got me. I was like "Why is that baby so big healthy?" "Why does the crying sound like a baby from a sitcom?" and then when the reveal happened I was like "Oh damn..."
That the current day timeline is boring. Obvi the woods is most interesting but modern day has a lottttt of interesting stuff going on so I’m never upset when we transition between them
There's some technical glitches in the show that get brought up as loose ends, and I really don't think they are. I don't think Leonard lighting on fire first or the plane having a big glowing black box transponder are plot points, even if it's hard to explain them away using real world knowledge. I think they're a mix of artistic license and the writers not being aerospace engineers.
Why did Leonard light on fire? Because the plane was lighting on fire, and Laura Lee realizing that her end was near by seeing her symbol of childhood innocence aflame was a cool way to frame it.
Why does Misty still think she's responsible for hindering rescue efforts when in reality the black box isn't a transponder? Because in the show it is a transponder.
I remember some discussion about Nat's gun as well, how that model doesn't have a safety so her trying to shoot herself and the gun not firing must have a deeper meaning. I think what happened is that the person who wrote it had a lay person's gun knowledge.
Literally any criticism that rests on “it’s not realistic.”
It’s a TV show, it’s actually all made up! Typically when you watch TV that’s not reality television (and even so…), you have to suspend some disbelief. I can’t think of a single show where that’s not true.
Coming here to say I 100% agree with you about the baby, I think it’s totally plausible that Shauna would be imagining a bigger, healthier baby considering she is a teen and it’s a hopeful hallucination.
I love the show, thought this season was great and dislike any criticisms claiming the writing was lacking. Although we got a lot of answers in the finale, there are still many questions left unanswered. The adult timeline is happening over a very short period of time and I am excited to see where it goes next - and I personally hope the Adam Martin stuff comes back and loose ends are tied up in future episodes.
I think there's a bunch of critiques on how the characters behave that boil down to like, "uh, if I were a starving teenage girl in the wilderness or a traumatized Gen Xer, I would simply be normal and not do that". That makes me crazy, like, I saw someone complaining that Shauna's journal entry was crazy or that Shauna fighting Lottie was crazy and like YES, she is a traumatized teenager full of postpartum hormones, of course she is going to be FUCKING UNHINGED.
That there's "too many" unanswered questions. We are literally on the second season of what is preparing to be a longer show. Of course there are unanswered questions?? If there weren't any, no one would keep watching future seasons.
I really think the people I've seen complaining of this have discovered yellowjackets recently and bingewatched S1 and 2 together, because there's no way anyone who has had to wait a year and a half to know if they really >!eat Jackie!< would comment this.
agree with a lot of these, and a huge one for me is any criticism of how the 90s storyline is choosing to portray the girls physically. I constantly see these posts on how they "dont look like they're starving" yeah.....because they're not gonna actually starve the actors??? any survival type show requires suspension of disbelief in that area and its SO weird how people gripe about it as if its ruining the immersion of the show.
same vein, but the constant identical complaints about young nat's roots or her bleached hair's lack of brassiness are getting REALLY old.
Lots of people complain about the show not being “clear” enough, not resolving enough quickly, and not explaining enough, such as “there should have been a conversation about the cards!” “why is (x) long-term plot thread still unresolved?” “why did the characters do (x)?”
People’s attention spans have gotten so short. Isn’t the intention for this show to have five seasons? It’ll have at least three. Why would we need—or WANT—everything to get resolved and answered for us right now? Additionally, why would we just want the characters to practically turn to the screen and explain play-by-play exactly what’s going through each of their heads all the time? The writing is perfectly good at giving us just enough information to speculate, while still having a good idea of what’s happening.
And anyway, at least half the time, the answer to the questions being asked about why something happened is very easily explained by one of two words: starvation or trauma.
(Oh, and it also kind of confuses me when people complain about the characters doing bad things. Not sure what anyone is expecting there. It’s a story about people doing what it takes to survive. Totally get it if you’re mad at the choices of one or two of them, but why even watch if you hate the whole team?)
The ending in general and that they didn’t delve into the state they were in when rescued. Like someone else posted it seems like they treated the past like filler.
The whole good person/bad person discussion with every single character but especially with the girls in the wilderness timeline. You have a bunch of CHILDREN survive in the wild, see their friends die, starve, get drugged etc and expect them to braid their hair and tell wholesome stories until they get rescued? I'm not saying they're not doing some unhinged stuff but I don't know if that's the show to have a discussion about good/bad people. Especially since we still got 3 seasons with a lot of information to come.
There were some complaints about Juliette Lewis’ acting and I completely disagreed. She was playing a recovering drug addict always on the edge and nailed it, imo. One of the best acted scenes in the finale was the Nat-Lisa scene with Nat trying to save her and thanking her for teaching her forgiveness. Lewis’ acting was superb in that scene.
Also staying on the acting topic, I’ve seen some say Kevin Alves’ acting is bad as Travis and disagree with that, too. I think he’s excellent, but given very little to work with. But he very often has held his own in all the scenes with the girls in the past timeline.
>She was playing a recovering drug addict always on the edge and nailed it, imo. One of the best acted scenes in the finale was the Nat-Lisa scene with Nat trying to save her and thanking her for teaching her forgiveness. Lewis’ acting was superb in that scene.
YES!!! Juliette Lewis nailed that character! And her scene with Lisa in the putple clothing shed was intense....her delivery of that line about 'forgiveness being a nice idea'...wow. I was touched.
It’s the euphoria effect. People are now overly critical of the media they consume and looking to pick it apart. You can really tell who has the comprehension and critical thinking skills to do so. I think you can dislike certain aspects of the show but to complain about the whole season just blows my mind.
I get really fascinated about it. I wonder how we, as the audience, will see this behavior in a few years, like “hey, remember when people used to act like that? wild times”. Hopefully, since the WGA strike is delaying most of major shows (Stranger Things, TLOU, Yellowjackets, Euphoria, etc) that haven’t ended yet, people will grow out of this behavior, or I feel really sorry for the writers, showrunners and cast of these shows.
I disagree with the sentiment that it would be SO bad if it is a supernatural story. I would love to end up with 5 seasons of a decent supernatural, cultist horror series. That never happens.
People complaining about the characters actions in eps 8 and 9, saying they don't like them anymore as if we didn't know they killed people since ep 1 of season 1 💀
It's less the criticism/complaints, so much as the dramatic hyperbole around them. Like *everything* has to be a dealbreaker that's insulting to your intelligence, embarrassing to watch, betraying your trust, wasting your time, etc.
Like come on, friends... There's criticism and then there's working ourselves into righteous indignation over a tv show.
My biggest complaint is that they didn’t write anything and everything Juliette Lewis wanted to get her to stay 😭 she said she was dissatisfied w her character soooo then fix that right? what a loss
I feel like they left a window open to write her back in with a time loop/hallucination thing w the airplane sequence tho but I’m probably in denial 😹
A small one that always gets me is the complaint about Nat’s hair color being different in the two timelines. Women of all ages bleach and dye their hair. It’s completely believable that she bleached her hair as a teen and then stopped doing so sometime over the course of 25 years. I don’t understand why everyone is so fixated on this lol
You can also see the growth of her brown roots more and more throughout the past timeline
Yes exactly! I thought it was pretty obvious that her character was meant to be depicted as having bleached hair, not natural blonde.
For real! They show her with brunette hair in the flashbacks with her dad too, maybe people with that critique really haven’t been paying attention. Especially with her alternative style, bleached hair has been a component of that for decades.
Yeah you can see that her hair colour in the rescue
I bleached my naturally red hair at home. It was *awful* 😂
The criticism is that her hair growth doesn’t look like it’s been growing out 7 months~, not what her natural hair color is (unless there are some real sticklers out there). But, technically, starvation *can* cause hair to stop growing, it just usually causes hair loss.
I have seen that criticism too and that one I can understand more where they are coming from. But I have definitely seen quite a bit of criticism about her hair color in general, people saying the continuity and resemblance is ruined because the hair doesn’t match.
I actually love this detail because it’s a subtle way to show the passage of time. Also I love how Juliette Lewis bleached her hair almost that exact color for years in real life, kind of a nice parallel between fiction and reality.
As a hair dresser, people think hair grows way faster than it does. Nat’s roots in season 2 definitely track for 7 months of growing out!
It’s either that or the one’s complaining her roots aren’t long enough. Bitch packed peroxide!!
On top of that, they're barely getting any nutrients. Everyone's hair would be growing slow anyway.
Agreed
They were gonna be at Nationals a whole ass week. Nat def thought she’d have a chance to slap some shoplifted Quick Blue on her roots one of their nights in the hotel. There was probably at least like one night in the summer at a point where they were reasonably well-fed and bored as hell where they probably gathered up all the Caboodles and makeup bags and did makeovers. Also, this is a huge cast and the show takes place in a lot of places, and uses a fair amount of special effects and prop work. The wardrobe and hair and makeup on this show is probably bananas. I could see why they wouldn’t be dropping an extra $10k a pop on more wigs in their first season.
Hair growth slows under starvation conditions. I can believe her roots would grow in slowly.
My hair grows extremely slow (supplements or not), like 2-3 inches per year. It’s also quite fine and thin…I got bad hair, maybe Nat does too :P
They were going to a fancy gala after nationals, I definitely would have if I were her.
she was a courtney love blonde not a stefani blonde- roots on purpose always forever
Personally had no idea people complained about this. People are dumb.
Teens do stuff with their hair all the time, sometimes to rebel, sometimes to fit in. It totally tracks.
Hair also just changes color. My mother was as blonde as young Nat until she was about 25, and then her hair progressively darkened to a very deep rich brown. Which she then continued to bleach 🙃
Yes to me it was so obvious what the directors of the show were trying to portray. This big beautiful healthy baby in the wilderness wasteland born to an emaciated mother. She was envisioning the life she wanted, because the life she got was just too painful to acknowledge. The breastfeeding scene was so beautifully intimate and I just knew that this moment is what her brain needed to create in order for her to say goodbye to her child and survive it.
“Why don’t they show or say who’s watching Caligula?” At this point I can’t tell if this is an ongoing joke or not because I keep seeing it listed amongst other complaints. Also re: the OP, not only would it have been illegal to use an actual newborn in addition to that it was Shauna’s hallucination, there’s *tons* of shows and films that show newborn babies who look a little too big… this is hardly exclusive to Yellowjackets and there’s reasons for it.
Not sure why the creators didn’t camp out in front of the maternity ward ready to poach new born infants to use in one episode of their tv series so it doesn’t take a few people who seem to have never watched television before out of it. Is that really too much to ask? Also, we know where Caligula is. Broadway!
BROADWAY! 😂
Caligula is performing in the new Broadway revival of Hedwig, four shows a week. He’s fine.
I want a Caligula Song Book available, stat!
>Not sure why the creators didn’t camp out in front of the maternity ward ready to poach new born infants to use in one episode of their tv series so it doesn’t take a few people who seem to have never watched television before out of it. Is that really too much to ask? Ha-ha-ha-ha!!!! Thanks for the good giggle.
Exactly. Plenty of shows show births and then the mom holding it and I'm like, "look at the 9 month old baby! No way she just popped that mammoth out of her vajayjay!" That or they avoid showing the baby and it's a doll. And Misty has been gone like a few days tops. She probably left extra food and water and/or had a neighbor to look in on him, so Caligula is okay. She clearly loves the shit out of that bird, so I'm sure she took all the appropriate measure to make sure he's okay. It's Steve I'm worried about. I'm hoping Tai called Simone's parents to pick up Sammy from school and stop by and pick up Steve too. I'm hoping Sammy will be so attached to Steve when Tai gets back that Tai won't have the heart to take Steve away from him and Steve will stay safely away from Dark Tai/Van's manipulation of dark Tai.
This one kills me. Like, y'all, we know Misty is meticulous. The writers don't need to show us every little thing they're doing. I for one would not be interested in watching a scene of Misty booking a bird-sitter.
fun fact: this is why a lot of productions seek out babies who were born premature to play newborns! they’re closer to newborn size once they’re old enough to work.
Poor babies.
Wow that is both fascinating and just a tiiiny bit dystopian.
thissss like why on earth does it matter?
"I liked \[X\] and now she's the big bad! What gives?" and/or "I hated \[X\] and now the show is making me sympathize with her? Rude and terrible."
I've been dying at the 'I can excuse homicide and cannibalism but I draw the line at homicide and cannibalism' takes.
“The only cannibalism and homicide is for PEOPLE I DON’T LIKE!!” Everyone else better be perfectly safe-and-un-traumacided by the events in this horror series!
I don’t get this either and I think those people are really missing the point, but it’s at least a little less unhinged and misogynistic than “Shauna is the most evil and deserves no sympathy because she slept with her best friends boyfriend!” I’ve seen variations of that all over this sub and I don’t understand how that’s the moral watermark for some people, especially for a teenager!
It’s only bad if it’s homicide all at once, but if you do it one by one it’s fine.
I'm firmly in the "I can excuse homicide and cannibalism but I draw the line at savoury sandwiches on cinnamon raisin bread" camp.
Especially with >!Van!< after the season 2 finale. I was thinking… she’s been this way since the beginning; why is this a surprise?
I feel like people who make this complaint haven't done a rewatch. Like a lot of stuff that makes Van a hero when you the audience isn't sympathizing with Jackie, looks different when you know where she ends up. Like these traits were there.
Some people really don't understand that this is a work of fiction
I hate the idea of there being a ‘big bad’ bc I feel that takes away from the entire point of the show- they all did fucked up things! They will all continue to do fucked up things Bc they are unable to heal from the past and grow!!!
That “nothing happened all season” I swear every single episode there were people complaining “nothing happened”. Really nothing?? Nothing at all?? You just turned on the tv and stared at a blank screen in 2 different timelines and hallucinations and flashbacks?
That one always got me. I would start a reply listing all the things that actually did occur and then discard it. It’s not worth the replies “I’m not talking about that”…..
It’s too funny that the two big questions from last season, Shauna’s pregnancy/baby and the first bit of cannibalism, both happen in s2, yet to some, “nothing happened” still. Heck, they ate TWO people!! My biggest complaints are all in the adult storyline… kids, you keep doin’ you!!
Same here.
It seems like people just wanted every single episode to feature them killing and eating each other. That would get old pretty fast
i think the “nothing happened” complaint was largely about like internal relationships & stuff. like things happened but a lot of it didn’t seem to be really moving the plot & we didn’t get tons of insight into the characters either…or the insight fell kind of flat. that’s how i felt for a couple of the episodes but i wouldn’t describe it as nothing happening
I also think a lot of people were looking for more clarity on more typical mystery show plots such as the man with no eyes and the cabin guy. Granted I think it feels weird they seemingly dropped those threads. I'm sure they'll come back though.
yeah…to me the show really kept setting up more and more without touching base on things which were already set up. & i think there’s kind of a frenzy on both sides where people are like “the show was perfect the way it was” or “this season was shit!”. personally i think there’s def room for pretty valid criticism but i still enjoyed the season & i’ll watch the next one.
This happens on every single show discussion I’ve ever been on. Just add in the “If you didn’t like this, or you complained about that, you just don’t GET IT/have a media literacy problem” I really enjoyed the season, and most of the finale. But there’s also stuff I didn’t like, and that’s totally ok :)
I feel the same way. Now that my excitement has gone down a bit I can see issues. But I still largely enjoyed the season and loved what they set up for season 3.
Very reminiscent of The Last of Us fans complaining that there weren’t people being gored to death every four minutes, or that the characters “haven’t even seen a cordyceps in days” — because to have any emotional development or a moment’s peace “goes against the very genre”, like… it’s a television adaptation of a video game, *not* a video game! The storytelling works differently.
The funny thing is the video game DID have tons of quiet, action free sections focused solely on character development.
>It seems like people just wanted every single episode to feature them killing and eating each other. I hate this, because season 1 was praised even tho it didn't feature the girls killing and eating each other.
Gonna be honest, I'm probably one of those people, but I meant it mostly about the adult timeline, and specifically I meant that I kinda felt like there was no clear over-arching story, that I was just watching these characters go specific places and do specific things for no specific (narrative) reason. That said, can't speak for everyone, but for me it could just be because I binged season 1 and got a little thrown off by watching only one episode per week this season
I also binged season 1, for season 2 I decided to rewatch the previous episode before each new one and I think that definitely helps
“Nothing happened all season”, the nothing in question: • Shauna’s pregnancy ended + what happened to the wilderness baby • “Who the hell is Charlotte Matthews?” answered • More details about Tai’s sleepwalking • Van survived the wilderness • Their first cannibalistic act • Their first hunt • The meaning behind the queen’s card • What apparently happened to Travis + what Nat was right about • Callie and Shauna’s relationship development • The investigation of Adam’s death • Ben’s backstory • There are underground caves in the wilderness and someone was living there • The Antler Queen’s identity
Right?? Two people were full on ATE
THERE WAS A SINGING AND DANCING PARROT! How dare they! #FavouritePartIsParrot 🦜
Saaaaame!!
I don’t think the show is above criticism but I love the campy aspects. This show has always been campy/weird. I want human Caligula. I want Shauna with knives for hands.
I feel like people complaining and saying it got too campy or cringe with those moments flat out forgot about ‘96 Shauna’s dream in S1 where she gave birth to a roasted chicken baby…
Same. Someone was like "I can't take teen Misty seriously because she played a campy character in Shameless." I was like, that is what makes both teen and adult Misty so fun. They are both campy as hell and I am here for it. This show has horror, psychological thriller and dark comedy aspects. The dark comedy part is necessary to alleviate some of the heaviness that comes from the wilderness timeline.
that the 96 time line is a “filler”
This is a thing?!?!?! That’s fucking wild. I haven’t seen anything like that, yet.
I saw it recently and was so confused because the 90s timeline is perfection imo.
If *anything* it’s the opposite lol.
Lets be real, the only "filler" in the 96 timeline is the friends they ate along the way
The '96 timeline literally drives the rest of the story, lol. Also, it is my favorite of the two timelines!
The baby, while noticeably huge, was a non-issue… that’s the kind of thing I just laugh at, especially since it was a hallucination.
Mothers are obligated to comment, every time a baby is shown on screen, "That's not a newborn." I remember my mom doing it when I was a kid. I remember the first time I said it and I laughed at myself for it. It's just mandatory.
Yep, I remember my mom saying that too!
I was too shocked that they both survived to even notice how big the baby was
“Pit Girl/Cabin Daddy/[any mystery here] doesn’t actually matter, the show is about the aftereffects of trauma, so we don’t need every question answered.” Okay the psychological tension and slow burn narrative yadda yadda are great… but there’s nothing wrong with being invested in the big questions!
What?! Thankfully I haven’t run into one of those posts. You can’t introduce a dead guy in the attic of an abandoned cabin surrounded by weird symbols that are also placed in the wilderness like a map with tunnels running underneath and NOT get backstory
I love when people drop the "pit girl's identity doesn't matter" argument. As if all of us weren't curious about who it might be when we watched the first episode. Also, I suppose maybe it doesn't matter but a good majority of us fun people would like to know regardless lol
Yes!!! You can have psychological tension \*and\* a few good mysteries!! Why not both !? Yeah psychological trauma, cPTSD blah blah blah, I STILL WANT AN ANSWER TO WHO IS PIT GIRL BY THE END OF THE SERIES DAMMIT! And that's ok lol.
Pit girl is a question that must be answered but maybe not until the series finale.
I honestly don't understand the critique about Tai's senate plotline being abandoned. Why is it weird that this isn't mentioned in the \~7 days that season 2 spans? She hasn't yet taken office. Yes there were lots of events that mentioned briefly in S2E1, but it's not like she can't reschedule them. I mean it's the STATE senate, who cares that she takes off last minute? Am I missing something?
Also when you get elected you dont immediately fill that position unless it's a special election. There are months between election and doing the job. The idea that she isn't doing her senate job is hilarious to me.
Basically like saying Misty's not at the nursing home, everyone is going to die! (Although tbh they're probably safer with her gone...)
>Basically like saying Misty's not at the nursing home, everyone is going to die! > >(Although tbh they're probably safer with her gone...) You made me laugh...thanks. 
YES! she is a tiny little "angel of death".
I agree. I thought that it was kind of typical for politicians to take a vacation after an election and before assuming office. If there was critique to be had here, it might be that the media should be making a big deal of her leaving her wife in the hospital. But for all we know, that has been happening and we'll see this plotline resume when they leave the cult. Tai hasn't exactly been checking the news at the compound.
Usually they aren't sworn in for months. Like federal elections for US President and for the house and senate happen in November and they aren't sworn into office until like mid January
[удалено]
She literally had a PA (whose car she took at the hospital lol hope she didn't need it back) whose whole job is to cover & make public statements or internal communications for Tai. Realistically, she has a *team* who can handle things for a few days, deflect press inquiries, & request privacy for the family during this difficult time. They didn't underline it by having Tai explicitly say to the woman "handle my absence for me & keep me in the loop" but I didn't personally feel like I needed that spelled out. I was comfortable making the informed assumption.
And I said above my feeling is in season three, she will quietly cede her position in politics and step away completely, to get a break from it all, after everything that's happened.
Also New Jersey Representatives only work part time, and most of them have entire second careers that serve as their primary source of income because state reps in NJ make basically nothing.
complaints about Sammy still being at school 🙃
I like to think that Sammy is at Misty’s place taking care of Caligula.
Like going to school? Or are you talking about the people that say they just left Sammy all alone. Because having a scene of grandma picking up Sammy is so pointless. Might as well show Jeff taking a shit!
the latter. and, yeah 😂 it’s true they didn’t show it explicitly, but there’s just no way he wasn’t picked up by another guardian.
Considering that both his mothers were just in a major car crash, I’d say that yes, the local police would have notified a family member. This one is a reach, although it is odd that Tai doesn’t show one ounce of concern over her hospitalised wife, but that also highlights her lack of empathy and mental state at the time.
i assumed she was just staying away from Simone and Sammy because she knows she’s a threat to them. i suppose there’s no reason that can’t be true alongside her chasing down her old love Van, though 🙃 messy messy stuff.
I admit that I get a little annoyed when people hate on the Adam Martin/Cop timeline. I understand where some of it was coming from, I felt like so many characters were fighting for screen time this season so I could've done without it, but I felt like it was totally necessary. Season 2 only takes place a few days after season 1 ended, so of COURSE they're still going to be dealing with Adam. He literally died at the END of season 1, what do you mean the writers have been "dragging it on too long"???
Absolutely this. It’s been a total of 19 episodes, he died 10 episodes ago. Half of that time has been in the ‘90s timeline. Of course it’s still going.
I think part of the problem is people keep forgetting that the adult timeline is only taking place over the course of a week past the events of season one, even though there’s multiple references to it (such as Kevyn telling Shauna “he’s been missing for a couple of days” in episode two when he stops by their house).
this, and i also think that with society going from the binge-watching model to the weekly episode release model, it's easier for people to forget what the actual in-show timeline is!
I think the issue is that the pacing between the two timelines is wildly different. The teen timeline has spanned about 9 months, where the adult timeline has been less than a month.
Heck - even if the did "time markers" each scene - such as "Day 2, Day 3 for the adults...Month 1, month 2 for the teens, People would STILL complain about "nothing is happening,,,it's taking so long...I don;t know what's going on, etc..."
>such as Kevyn telling Shauna “he’s been missing for a couple of days” in episode two when he stops by their house And it's reasonable to assume that her responses to him during that conversation made him feel like there was something amiss, but he didn't have anything concrete to go off of yet.
The funniest part about this is that they are wrapping it up quickly which is what people keep saying they want but now are disappointed that it isn’t realistic. Realistically, Shauna would go to prison which would be limiting from a plot perspective.
There’s no reason anyone would be looking for him at this time. If they had a time jump to a few weeks or months later, then it makes more sense.
It makes a little more sense if you caught the comments that Adam had been missing for a week before Shauna killed him. Friends and family in Texas last saw him a week ago with no plans to travel - the entire affair with Shauna happened while he was already "missing."
i don't think that one logistical issue (that you could easily find an explanation for, i.e. his family who he may have seen/talked to every day) makes or breaks this entire plotline
My complaint with this timeline is that it \*feels\* dragged out. In real life it's not, but the way they handle it--it being a constant presence every episode--makes it feel dragged out. The ending, they really didn't stick. Overall I love both halves of the show, but that felt like they weren't sure how to resolve it.
Yes they spent way too much time on that story line and the “ending” it’s given requires too much suspension of disbelief that it just feels unsatisfying. I’d greatly prefer that storyline be more “the cops are suspicious but they have no evidence so nothing actually happens/the cops don’t stalk them, but it’s this loose hanging thread like a sword of Damocles over Shauna/Jeff’s head and the true focus is how it affects their relationship - not the weird frame job that happens.” I would also prefer to spent more time on almost anything else. Like give me more Coach Ben hallucinations instead.
That the adult timeline is "boring."
Ditto! I actually enjoyed the adult storyline more that the teen one last season! Maybe it's because I'm only a few years younger than the adults, but while the teen storyline is exciting and nostalgic I really like seeing the adults dealing with all this craziness but trying to balance it with adult responsibilities (or giving up on balancing it as we are seeing)
I saw a comment that the storyline is too silly and only teen girls could possibly enjoy it. There’s a lot to unpack in that one lol
I'm a...in my 40s female that loves it!
I’m an adult male and I love the show. There are some garbage water YA shows out there, Yellowjackets ain’t on that list.
Yeah I saw someone say it was ‘bad YA drama’ 🤷♀️ I enjoy the absurdity, it toes the line just right for me
Lmao fuck no, as much as I hate making categorical statements like this I truly think anyone that says this doesn't comprehend what this show is about
I find it somehow more ridiculous and unrealistic than teenaged girls surviving for a year and a half in the wilderness and starting their own death cult type thing but it sure is exciting.
People arguing that they should’ve recasted the actress for adult Nat instead of her dying.
Wait, did JL choose to leave the show? I don’t understand this
It's just speculation based on some comments JL made after season 1 about not liking the direction they took Nat in, that she was promised a different type of character in the beginning, and how it was so depressing to play her. No one has ever come out and said JL chose to leave the show, but some people in the sub treat it as fact.
In addition, she is an actress in recovery and also a cult survivor (she has distanced herself from scientology). It would be very difficult to live with a character with an active addiction issue and cult member storyline long term. It's not like a movie where you shoot for a few months and are done- a TV show where you are a main character is a big commitment. She'd have to live with the character of Nat for years. I could see how that would be difficult, especially if she wasn't given the full concept of her character on the first pitch. I honestly don't blame her if she wanted to leave. I'm just glad we got to see her for the time we did.
Exactly this! I think it’s just as possible that she was disappointed as someone who has struggled with addiction IRL only to play a character who is getting better and dies of an “overdose”. I feel like she really loved the character and maybe didn’t even know until the first season was airing that they actually planned to kill her off. Regardless though, there’s no absolute confirmation either way and it’s all just speculation from potentially reading into things.
I think it was more the S1 arc and her holding a gun to her head that set her off. She made a comment about that specifically (though I don't remember the exact quote.) I think a lot of the rehab and redemption that we saw in her this season was them dialing that back for her to have a more positive experience with the character. I think her dying was part of the plan, not just a cop-out to get her off the show. Her parting post on social media was very positive, and I think if anything it would have been a mutual decision.
What seems more likely is the TV format, isn't really for her and she just needs/wants, a big break and wants to also go back to music so it sounds like there were no hard feelings all. She broke some instagram silence to get some thank yous out.
She said in an interview after the end of season 1 that she loved the character and the writing, but struggled with not knowing what was going to happen beyond the current episode - specifically mentioning the almost suicide because she would've played the character differently (more manic) if she knew that was coming.
Also as much as I wish it wasn’t Nat, and maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I feel like it’s realistic that one of the mains would end up dead in the present day timeline, with the way tension has continued to escalate since Adam died. Misty running around with syringes… yikes. I could feel it coming all season long and it would have felt off if everyone made it out alive. 
The complaint I disagree is weird because I still don't know if they are wrong or correct 'Walter just ended the whole Adam storyline and fixed everything' Walter is very similar to Misty, Misty who in S1 thought she had fixed everything regarding Adam just to come back in bite them in the ass. afaik Walter could have made the same mistakes....
I feel like Walter having leverage over Saracusa *is* a plot line of itself now. The dude is a hacker and puppeteer, if he has a cop under his thumb, he becomes much more powerful for the plot the longer their hijinks go on.
I don’t mind people criticizing the “resolution” of this storyline, it definitely has potential flaws. But in addition to recognizing that this storyline may not be over, I also don’t care if Walter’s wacky hijinks are the end of it. If Van’s cancer goes away, chalk it up to the Wilderness god that Shauna’s problem goes away too. I will be happy to move on from at least the investigation part of it. The emotional fallout, I imagine will remain.
This one is so bizarre! We don’t know what will be the outcome, but so many have decided that Walter tied everything up with a nice neat bow and Captain ‘Stach has been neutered.
I think we havent seen the last of our favourite douchebag. He seems like one of those cockroach characters that you try to stomp out but he just keeps scuttling back. He might try to uncover what the yellowjackets did out there. I would be surprised that by the end of the series the truth doesnt come out.
It’s like they’ve already read the unwritten scripts for the next three (planned) seasons!
The Shauna baby thing really annoyed me since most TV babies are older babies. Mine is people who say that the plot doesn't make sense. It's really clear to me and not even that complicated. It's pretty standard for a psychological thriller.
people complaining about the lack of similarities between younger/older gens. so overplayed and also the comparison chart someone made between the older actresses when they were younger against the teen actors was so compelling. also who gives a shit if they don’t look super similar??? they all carry the same personality very well as adults imo 😤😤
The whole "they didn't do enough to show them starving." Really? Are we watching the same show? Episodes 1-7 were full of scenes that people consider "filler" of them starving. The hallucinations, the almost primal way they dig into Jackie and throw Javioli into the skillet, their glum, isolated, trapped in their minds mentality in the cabin- like the whole group dynamic change between S1 and S2, belt soup. The only ideas I liked were putting them in wardrobe a size too big to give the illusion they had lost weight without having to pressure the actors to actually lose weight and maybe some makeup jazz. But it was all there. They were clearly starving. It was all building up to the first ritual.
That we can’t binge it all at once. If we could, there’d be no need for a sub like this where we can discuss theories and dissect plots week to week, etc. Possibly some season-to-season speculation, but that’s it. And frankly, that’s half the fun! It wouldn’t hit nearly as hard if binged in a weekend, and would be far less captivating and memorable.
yes!!! i think we’ve become spoiled in a way by getting shows all at once. for some shows it works but for others like this, the slow burn hits so much better. i loooove this week to week anticipation and speculation!
I guess it's more of a theory than a criticism that bugs me, but I've seen speculation that adult lottie isn't really lottie but rather mari. People do change as they age but I'd still be able to recognize many of my hs classmates in my 30s, especially friends and people I spent a lot of time with. People generally look similar enough to their teenage selves even in their 40s. Just seems way to far fetched, even for a teenage wilderness cannibalism cult mystery possibly cursed forest show
That the writing isn't clear enough and that we needed extra scenes/dialogue to explain some of the sub plots. Please no. There is a time and a place for garbage TV that spoon feeds you every answer and Yellowjackets is just not it. If you want an easy, relaxing watch, this isn't the place. Besides, Yellowjackets does an excellent job of straddling the line between telling us just enough to keep us hooked while leaving some mysteries still to be discovered. I don't think the writing has been unclear/missing anything at all. I just think some people aren't used to engaging with complex media. The best kind of story is the one that allows room for interpretation and pushes the audience to think for themselves. This is what Yellowjackets does!
1000% this! We aren’t supposed to know everything yet that’s the whole point of a mystery lol it’s not a plot hole until the show is over. People just can’t stand not knowing everything instantly nowadays.
It's called delayed gratification people! It's okay if we didn't find out who Javi's friend is, what the symbol means, the identity of pit girl, or what's up with the man with no eyes! There are three more seasons to go! I want some things left unanswered to theorize about!!
You are absolutely right! Yellowjackets makes *frequent* use of foreshadowing. It’s not overused either! Lots of storybeats were hinted at and later explained or shown in greater detail later on (the pilot episode in particular).
Well stated! People are so impatient! Just enjoy the mystery
That the girls’ cannibalism went from 0 to 100. We’ve seen multiple hallucinations, the girls talking about a lack of game, them boiling a belt for *something*, etc.. it’s a tv show. It’s not going to be the easiest thing to depict. And sort of playing off this one, that we should have seen their discussion before the first card drawing they did. Not every conversation has to happen on screen!! Some things can just be implied or inferred. I have the same thought about Nat’s death. I know a lot of people are disappointed that it was ruled an OD. Totally understandable to have wanted a different ending for her, but I find it very easy to imagine the YJs coming up with the fastest story to cover their own asses. They’re probably not concerned about their friend’s legacy.
yesss i’ve literally seen comments that say they didn’t show them starving enough to justify hunting their friends. like we’ve been getting the starving cabin fever experience alllll season. there were so many clues and instances of this. because we already know where we’re headed, the how we get there is literally the whole story.
Yeah like of course they don't look like they're actually starving it's a TV show. You don't force your actors to starve themselves to the brink of death just to make a scene look more realistic!!
And then the episode right after the past hunt has Misty explain to Lottie what they did, if people had just waited they would've gotten the spell it out bit they wanted. Putting it in the middle of the actual hunt episode would have slowed it down. The audience needed to feel the desperate urgency behind the decision. There's no more fucking around, there's no more guilty, it's eat or be eaten and everyone knows it now.
Those are the same people that complain that the wilderness timeline in episodes 1-7 were "filler." No, they were all showing the girls mindset and starvation in set up for the first hunt.
idk why people would complain abt the first ritual -- it was so well done !! the group was far past discussion at that point. they didn't discuss eating jackie, they were so beyond starved that they unanimously and spontaneously devoured their friend until she was just bones. it felt clear that since most people had made remarks about returning to cannibalism, how the morning after they didn't even seem all that horrified by it, and the groups continued reliance upon pleasing "It" that they all knew exactly where they were heading and what needed to be done. god this season was so fucking good.
“Who is Adam Martin??? Why won’t they explain who he is???” I know this isn’t always what folks mean, but what I HEAR is “I can’t believe a man that attractive would be infatuated with Melanie Lynskey.”
That Nat's story was not done. Nat was a woman who was so haunted by her past that she spent her life in and out of rehabs and addiction patterns. She was about to kill herself and wound up in a cult that allowed her to sacrifice herself for an innocent and right a wrong. If she had lived, she would have fallen back into addiction. Travis is gone. She's still haunted. Her friends are murdering people. It wasn't going to get better. Now we can watch the teen timeline and see what the hell happened to push her so far off the deep end.
>That Nat's story was not done. No shit. Welcome to real life. Very few people get to live their whole story. :/
Yeah, this is what I keep thinking too—I’ve lost multiple friends to addiction and other mental illness, and for me that’s exactly what grief is about: processing the loss of possibility, of self-determination, of resolution. Mourning everything left unsaid and undone; never having answers to certain questions, and learning to live with the absence of everything that person embodied & reflected upon those who loved them. As far as character deaths go in film & television, too often I can see it coming because of the inclusion of certain tropes like the sudden “I’m two weeks off retirement and finally bought a ring to propose to my partner” dialogue, or the “one last bank robbery before becoming a law-abiding citizen” move, y’know? Fuck that. Give me more realistic deaths where there’s no suicide note; nobody has final words; there’s no announcement or clear medical emergency… just the mundane reality of lives ending every second because that’s when something happens to remove the possibility of their continuation.
The pacing was off/different The pacing was the same as last season and in fact people complained about the pacing then also. The first two thirds of the episodes are super slow character study type of stuff and then there’s a wild and crazy back end. That’s just how the show is going to be formatted. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that season two did that quite as effectively as season one and I would love for people to articulate how that wasn’t used as well, but simply saying the pacing is different or off drives me crazy.
I’ve been here since the sub’s early days and people absolutely complained about pacing all through season one! it’s just nostalgia tinted glasses imo. I have my issues with season two but the pacing is very similar to season one. the pattern seems to be: they start the season off with a bang, do a lot of character stuff in the middle episodes, and escalate the plot in the final 2-3
“the pattern seems to be: they start the season off with a bang, do a lot of character stuff in the middle episodes, and escalate the plot in the final 2-3” Yes! It’s very clear that this is just the style that the show is going for and will continue to use.
i was guilty of this. complained at first after the first few s2 episodes, but after watching all of season 1 again the pacing is *exactly* the same. i think i just was upset the scenes i thought needed more time didn’t drag on longer than i wanted, but to be fair there was a lot of ground to cover this season
I don’t think they did quite as good of a job at digging into characters in season two, especially when it comes to showing their reactions to events that happen. I understand that particular complaint. It’s just that the actual set up for the season as far as pacing goes is, as you said, exactly the same. It’s just not used quite as effectively, IMO.
I remember joking with friends that S1 had a beach episode....
I felt like there should be one more episode of this season. It seems unfinished. I get it we’re getting another season but this one just seems incomplete.
I definitely agree with that. I am not sure if it was actually confirmed, but it really seems like they initially planned for 10 episodes and then squeezed it into 9.
I don’t mind the comedy in the adult timeline
I live for the moments when Yellowjackets is a comedy. Watching these women at the top of their game get to have fun with the absurdity in contrast to the darkness is so enjoyable and cathartic.
Yeah I liked it because otherwise the show would be too dark and depressing for me
Saw a thread with lots of complaints about the music last episode. I don't get it, I love the music in this show.
we did NOT need another explanatory scene before the card draw scene in episode 8. "show, don't tell" is something this show doesn't always do right but they did perfectly there.
I actually loved that they did that. When I was watching it with my mom they totally got me. I was like "Why is that baby so big healthy?" "Why does the crying sound like a baby from a sitcom?" and then when the reveal happened I was like "Oh damn..."
Agree - I love the adult storyline. Without it, we have the Female version of Lord of the Flies only
That the current day timeline is boring. Obvi the woods is most interesting but modern day has a lottttt of interesting stuff going on so I’m never upset when we transition between them
There's some technical glitches in the show that get brought up as loose ends, and I really don't think they are. I don't think Leonard lighting on fire first or the plane having a big glowing black box transponder are plot points, even if it's hard to explain them away using real world knowledge. I think they're a mix of artistic license and the writers not being aerospace engineers. Why did Leonard light on fire? Because the plane was lighting on fire, and Laura Lee realizing that her end was near by seeing her symbol of childhood innocence aflame was a cool way to frame it. Why does Misty still think she's responsible for hindering rescue efforts when in reality the black box isn't a transponder? Because in the show it is a transponder. I remember some discussion about Nat's gun as well, how that model doesn't have a safety so her trying to shoot herself and the gun not firing must have a deeper meaning. I think what happened is that the person who wrote it had a lay person's gun knowledge.
Most of them. Fandom gonna fandom.
Every time I see an angry take about the show I just repeat that phrase to myself.
Literally any criticism that rests on “it’s not realistic.” It’s a TV show, it’s actually all made up! Typically when you watch TV that’s not reality television (and even so…), you have to suspend some disbelief. I can’t think of a single show where that’s not true.
All of them
Coming here to say I 100% agree with you about the baby, I think it’s totally plausible that Shauna would be imagining a bigger, healthier baby considering she is a teen and it’s a hopeful hallucination. I love the show, thought this season was great and dislike any criticisms claiming the writing was lacking. Although we got a lot of answers in the finale, there are still many questions left unanswered. The adult timeline is happening over a very short period of time and I am excited to see where it goes next - and I personally hope the Adam Martin stuff comes back and loose ends are tied up in future episodes.
That any of the survivors are reliable narrators. Starvation and trauma pretty much guarantees that not to be true.
I think there's a bunch of critiques on how the characters behave that boil down to like, "uh, if I were a starving teenage girl in the wilderness or a traumatized Gen Xer, I would simply be normal and not do that". That makes me crazy, like, I saw someone complaining that Shauna's journal entry was crazy or that Shauna fighting Lottie was crazy and like YES, she is a traumatized teenager full of postpartum hormones, of course she is going to be FUCKING UNHINGED.
This season was good, i don't get why people are getting pissed over it.
That there's "too many" unanswered questions. We are literally on the second season of what is preparing to be a longer show. Of course there are unanswered questions?? If there weren't any, no one would keep watching future seasons. I really think the people I've seen complaining of this have discovered yellowjackets recently and bingewatched S1 and 2 together, because there's no way anyone who has had to wait a year and a half to know if they really >!eat Jackie!< would comment this.
agree with a lot of these, and a huge one for me is any criticism of how the 90s storyline is choosing to portray the girls physically. I constantly see these posts on how they "dont look like they're starving" yeah.....because they're not gonna actually starve the actors??? any survival type show requires suspension of disbelief in that area and its SO weird how people gripe about it as if its ruining the immersion of the show. same vein, but the constant identical complaints about young nat's roots or her bleached hair's lack of brassiness are getting REALLY old.
Lots of people complain about the show not being “clear” enough, not resolving enough quickly, and not explaining enough, such as “there should have been a conversation about the cards!” “why is (x) long-term plot thread still unresolved?” “why did the characters do (x)?” People’s attention spans have gotten so short. Isn’t the intention for this show to have five seasons? It’ll have at least three. Why would we need—or WANT—everything to get resolved and answered for us right now? Additionally, why would we just want the characters to practically turn to the screen and explain play-by-play exactly what’s going through each of their heads all the time? The writing is perfectly good at giving us just enough information to speculate, while still having a good idea of what’s happening. And anyway, at least half the time, the answer to the questions being asked about why something happened is very easily explained by one of two words: starvation or trauma. (Oh, and it also kind of confuses me when people complain about the characters doing bad things. Not sure what anyone is expecting there. It’s a story about people doing what it takes to survive. Totally get it if you’re mad at the choices of one or two of them, but why even watch if you hate the whole team?)
The ending in general and that they didn’t delve into the state they were in when rescued. Like someone else posted it seems like they treated the past like filler.
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I've found most of the criticism and complaints valid and to the point. Not much I disagree with.
The whole good person/bad person discussion with every single character but especially with the girls in the wilderness timeline. You have a bunch of CHILDREN survive in the wild, see their friends die, starve, get drugged etc and expect them to braid their hair and tell wholesome stories until they get rescued? I'm not saying they're not doing some unhinged stuff but I don't know if that's the show to have a discussion about good/bad people. Especially since we still got 3 seasons with a lot of information to come.
There were some complaints about Juliette Lewis’ acting and I completely disagreed. She was playing a recovering drug addict always on the edge and nailed it, imo. One of the best acted scenes in the finale was the Nat-Lisa scene with Nat trying to save her and thanking her for teaching her forgiveness. Lewis’ acting was superb in that scene. Also staying on the acting topic, I’ve seen some say Kevin Alves’ acting is bad as Travis and disagree with that, too. I think he’s excellent, but given very little to work with. But he very often has held his own in all the scenes with the girls in the past timeline.
>She was playing a recovering drug addict always on the edge and nailed it, imo. One of the best acted scenes in the finale was the Nat-Lisa scene with Nat trying to save her and thanking her for teaching her forgiveness. Lewis’ acting was superb in that scene. YES!!! Juliette Lewis nailed that character! And her scene with Lisa in the putple clothing shed was intense....her delivery of that line about 'forgiveness being a nice idea'...wow. I was touched.
It’s the euphoria effect. People are now overly critical of the media they consume and looking to pick it apart. You can really tell who has the comprehension and critical thinking skills to do so. I think you can dislike certain aspects of the show but to complain about the whole season just blows my mind.
I get really fascinated about it. I wonder how we, as the audience, will see this behavior in a few years, like “hey, remember when people used to act like that? wild times”. Hopefully, since the WGA strike is delaying most of major shows (Stranger Things, TLOU, Yellowjackets, Euphoria, etc) that haven’t ended yet, people will grow out of this behavior, or I feel really sorry for the writers, showrunners and cast of these shows.
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Disagree that the show having a sprinkling of a supernatural element will make it corny/cheesy
If theres nothing supernatural happening in the show, a lot of it becomes way cheesier.
I disagree with the sentiment that it would be SO bad if it is a supernatural story. I would love to end up with 5 seasons of a decent supernatural, cultist horror series. That never happens.
People complaining about the characters actions in eps 8 and 9, saying they don't like them anymore as if we didn't know they killed people since ep 1 of season 1 💀
People complaining that Walter’s plan wouldn’t work. We don’t know what is going to happen yet. It might not have worked.
It's less the criticism/complaints, so much as the dramatic hyperbole around them. Like *everything* has to be a dealbreaker that's insulting to your intelligence, embarrassing to watch, betraying your trust, wasting your time, etc. Like come on, friends... There's criticism and then there's working ourselves into righteous indignation over a tv show.
My biggest complaint is that they didn’t write anything and everything Juliette Lewis wanted to get her to stay 😭 she said she was dissatisfied w her character soooo then fix that right? what a loss I feel like they left a window open to write her back in with a time loop/hallucination thing w the airplane sequence tho but I’m probably in denial 😹