'Yellowjackets' Episode 9 Deep Dive
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Greetings, and welcome to House of R, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. Joining me today, entering the House of R for the first time and here to posit that maybe the cat was waiting in the car during the murder. It is. I can't believe it. What a joy. What a privilege. What a thrill. The genius behind some of your Ringer faves, including We're Obsessed.

an American Scandival. My personal favorite blog in the history of The Ringer, trying to decide everything we need to know about everybody on Mare of Easttown based on their beer choice, Yingling or Rolling Rock, it is Jodi Walker. Mallory, I can't believe I'm here. Thank you so much.

My House of R debut. I'm just, I'm overwhelmed, honestly. And if you'd asked me how we would come together here, I might have guessed our main nexus of interest, The Outer Banks on Netflix. There's still time. There's still time. But I'm actually, I'm thrilled that it's Yellow Jackets. I'm thrilled. I'm elated. I sent you a Hail Mary slack.

Are you current on this season of Yellow Jackets? And I didn't know what the answer would be, but as always, the wilderness provided. And here you are. We've been working together for years now. This is somehow our first time podcasting together. Is that possible?

It's a little overwhelming. I remember when I was getting this job at The Ringer, trying to get this job at The Ringer, the first time I spoke to you on the phone, I was like, I am speaking to the voice of a generation, Mallory Rubin. Oh, my God. Hearing your voice come through my headphones, and now it feels the same, but professional. Professional. Oh, my God. You're the best. It's...

You want to just say nice things about each other for the next 90 minutes? Yeah, I guess so. Just stare each other deeply in the Zoom screen and compliment. Eventually, you know, we will probably have to take sides. We'll turn against each other. And I want to be clear. Yeah. I would eat you. Every time that I hear you and Joanna talk about, you know, what your behavior, what might go down in the woods, I'm like, am I insane? Or is it just that they're so much sweeter than me? I don't know. I wouldn't.

I would turn to cannibalism. I want to get that on the record quick and early. Okay. I want to get in there really fast. Oh, yeah. Have we even said what show we're talking about? No, but I hope that by context clues alone, people have figured it out. Okay. Jodi, pro-cannibalism, pro-House of R. These are the important things that we've learned today. And frankly, I don't know what else we need to know. Pro-Mallory. I'd eat you last.

Thank you. Thank you. Save it till the end. No, I don't know. I think I might be team Akilah in this episode. Like once things get really bleak, once Mortimer, dear sweet Mortimer's life is threatened, the imminent peril of another winter. I'm like, I'm out.

Become the meal. Yeah, I'm talking out. Be the meal before you have to make the meal. Exactly. I'm not like Shauna. I'm not like digging a knife into anybody's joint. It's not for me. You know what I like to do? I like to open a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and have a delicious snack and then fall asleep on the couch in pajamas with my cat napping in my arm nook.

And you don't think that enough hunger in the woods could make you wonder if fingers might have sort of the same kind of element as a flaming hot Cheeto? You went to a specific body part quickly in a way that makes it clear that you have given this careful consideration. I've been watching Yellow Jackets for three seasons. Okay, great. That's why you're here today. Listen, never say never. I'll remain open-minded on today's episode and for as long as Yellow Jackets runs. Jodi.

Before we mix a couple Martini a la Misty's, double chocolate, extra shaken, just how she likes it, let's just very quickly hit a few programming reminders. It is a poppin' time across the network, as always. In case anybody listening to this is like, gee, I wonder, did anyone talk about the White Lotus family? Guess what? The answer is yes. Joanna and Bill and I did a...

live stream on the Prestige TV podcast, Ringer TV YouTube channel last night, Sunday night, based on when you listen to this. And that's waiting for you. We got to watch that episode once and then had to talk about it in real time. Check it out. Here on the House of R, Joanna is enjoying some time away. And so at the end of this week,

Daniel Chin and Ben Lindbergh will be joining me to talk about two things. The latest Daredevil Born Again episode, of course, episode eight, and the newest Black Mirror season, Black Mirror season seven. We're going to be talking about both of those things. Over on the ringerverse, mint edition, new pod, waiting for you. Here comes the pitch game adaptations edition. This is, of course, inspired by the imminent arrival of Last of Us season two. Button mash,

Potting on Tuesday about the sensation, a Minecraft movie. I'll be there. Yeah, same. Can't wait to listen. Midnight Boys, pew, pew. Daredevil episode eight on Wednesday. Jodi, what about you? What do you have cooking on your myriad podcasts? What would you like to tease?

Listen, if you, which if you're listening to this podcast, you do, enjoy going real deep, 90 minutes at least, on your obsessions. Is 90 minutes considered deep? We're like, oh, that was a short one. Saying over on, you know, my area of the culture feed, they're often, you know, maybe hoping we'll wrap up around an hour. And it's just not the case. If I am going to be explaining to you

What, you know, the preeminent Timothee Chalamet fan account, Club Chalamet, is up to on Twitter. If I am going to be explaining to you why, like, a morning rituals video featuring Saratoga Water just absolutely shaped the internet, it's going to take a while. So if you enjoy internet culture with the sort of obsession that Joanna and Mal are bringing to Twitter,

their fictional universes, come on over to We're Obsessed. We're having a good weird time. I love it. I love it. And of course, if you enjoy the Bravo world, come on over to Ring of Reality to listen to Morally Corrupt every Friday. We're having a great time. Wonderful stuff. Wonderful stuff. Okay.

How can everybody follow along? Listen, it's easy. Here's what you do. You follow the pod. We just talked about a bunch of them. Follow the pod that you're interested in. Find it, follow it on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. But here's the thing. On Spotify, you can see full video episodes of House of R, Midnight Boys, et cetera. You can also, of course, find those video episodes on the Ringerverse YouTube channel. And you can follow the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing. And I am not here to tell you what that should be. Follow your heart.

Following your heart. Knowing that we were going to be on video today, I really, really waffled on if I should apply some Shauna-style mouth blood. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or maybe a backwards Mel hat. I almost wore a Mel hat. I strongly consider this. Honestly, this is actually just sitting here for when I have a bad hair day.

You're, first of all, no such thing. You are not capable of having a bad hair day. What are you talking about? You would be just horrified at what this hair. Get out of here. Actually, I would maybe just let myself die and not eat anybody in the woods so that like no one ever had to see the back of my head when it's gone too far. You're making it sound like you have like a severance problem.

procedure hole in the back of your head or something. I think that everybody would be able to handle it. The lush, robust curls. The hat was great. Is that a ringer hat? You know it. Ringer dad hat. Great stuff. Great stuff. I got props. Maybe I'll wear a backwards hat for the finale in honor of Mel. You got to. Yeah, I think so. I'd like to think I'd make some different choices in life than Mel, but...

I'm still going to do the hat. If you want to do the Shauna mouth blood, go for it. If you want to hurl a jar of jam on one of your walls, frankly, seemingly at random, go for it. I don't want to do any single thing Shauna has ever done. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. If there's anyone to emulate in this episode, it's Walter. Helicopter arrival. As usual, Fit Lord. Yeah.

I know. I hear you guys talk about, like, unfortunately, we are often lifting up the men on this show that is almost exclusively about women. What do you think about that when we do that? Are you like, these two should be ashamed of themselves? Or are you like, yeah, same. Team Walter, Team Jeff, where is Randy? It's so easy to tip your hat to men doing so, so little when you...

When you get such insight to like what a wonderfully complicated place it is to be in a woman's brain and mind. Yes. And I did just have the thought when I said, I don't want to ever do anything Shala's ever done. I did think like, except Jeff, that was, that was my thought.

As you know, he's my favorite character in the history of television. It's incredible. Another astonishing performance from Jeff Sadecki today, who basically spent the entire episode looking at his legs, mistaking the restaurant squab for pigeon, which like fair, who among us, a very Tim Riggins moment from Jeff Sadecki, my heart warmed to him, weeping freely in front of his daughter when he talked about the loneliness of marriage and then telling his daughter how to properly roll a joint.

Listen, is that going to be extremely scarring for Callie one day as she looks down the barrel of romantic, possibly heterosexual love? Yes, it is. But is having a vulnerable father also a positive? Yes. We give and we take as parents. Here's the thing.

Ivan Cali has bigger problems than anything that happened with Jeff in this episode. So as usual, it all comes back to Shauna. Listen, should we have issued the spoiler warning before we said everything we said in the last 12 minutes? It's entirely possible, but we're figuring it out in real time together today. I think it's a beautiful journey. Spoiler warning. We are here to talk about-

Uh, really anything that has ever happened in Yellow Jackets could come up today, but we will be going beat by beat as usual through episode nine. Okay, Martha misdirects. That's it. Let's pod. We're going to start as always with the opening snapshot. Okay. Episode nine, how the story ends. Before we talk about this episode, we're going to give as usual, like our quick opening thoughts on the episode, where we are in the season so far, but Jodi, we got to pan back.

We need to acclimate. We need to dip a toe into that wilderness lake with you. What is your relationship, period, to Yellow Jackets?

Oh, man. I've been with Yellow Jackets since the very beginning. I truly think I watched the first episode, you know, got my free Showtime trial that I absolutely never canceled. And now I have Paramount+, so congratulations to me. Oh, man. You have so many Taylor Sheridan shows you can watch now. So much I can dive into. I do think I was really there from the first episode. I love playing

plane crash narrative. But what I love even more is just a show about adolescence, but specifically...

adolescent female friendships. Yes. I remember so specifically when this show was coming out that Pen15 was nearing its end. Yes. And that is, to me, one of the greatest pieces of art ever made. I love Pen15. And those two shows really, these two shows really line up for me. Like, one is the comedy version. One is the horror version. And I was just so immediately taken away with...

Really showing what is the most horrific time of a girl's life and the most sort of like viscerally upsetting, but also engaging and also silly. And I think that the first season does that perfectly.

so well and then and then things get pretty complicated you know as they do when you get stranded in the woods but I've loved it I've loved it since the beginning I I love tuning in and even when it whiffs it I love being with these characters yeah that's that's how I feel about it too even the inconsistent uh stretches of season two and three it's such a

It's such an exercise in debauchery, but also like deeply resonant and moving themes every single week. And season one is just obviously like one of the best freshman seasons of a show ever. Season two and three, I think the mileage may and has varied a little bit, but broadly, what kind of time are you having with season three in particular?

I mean, I do think in many ways, like the show set itself up for a very difficult task. The most exciting thing about it from the beginning were the dueling timelines and that you get to both experience...

of friendships and relationships and also this absolutely harrowing sort of otherworldly experience. And then in the adult timeline, that was also really special and it remains special, but the way that it is set up is like seeing women of a certain age that you don't often see this sort of like introduction into middle age, you know, women in their forties kind of, you know, reoccurring

we're doing it over on the White Lotus now, but for a lot, like it's pretty special to get this timeline. But what we're seeing are these women greatly affected by trauma and sort of facing the lives they failed to lead. So like you are seeing women in this

fail state. And that's difficult. And it remains difficult as we watch these, the older versions of these women just kind of make like mistake after mistake when you want better for them. And yet it feels pretty realistic. I mean, what they're doing isn't always realistic, but I get why this is happening, you know? Yeah. But it, I think for season two and three, that has sometimes been a bit of the challenge, but

Season three, I really liked in the back half. With the introduction of the frog scientist and just quite literally getting some new blood on the scene. Yeah.

I've been having a good time. You're like Lottie. You're just scooping up the brain blood, bathing in it, smearing it all over. You want it in it. Yeah, every, yeah, she's, boy, I'm really glad she washed that off. It was on longer than it should have been. Did she wash it off or did it just kind of just slowly fade with dirt? I mean, she was so covered in blood and guts. What was she doing over there inside his head? Scooping.

Scooping out. Scoop, scoop, scooping. Some sludge. Just scoop. Very strange. Very, very strange. Oh, Lottie. Is Lottie one of your favorite characters? Who are your favorite characters in each timeline at this point in the story? Lottie really is one of my favorite characters. She is probably the one that I struggle with the most, obviously, in both timelines. Just the being...

Thinking that she is so special and that we've never seen anything like her before and then being like, Miss Ma'am, you cannot, you can't just be killing people. You can't just be taking the ax to the back of someone's head. And for me, in season three and especially in these last few episodes, Lottie just literally kind of takes an ax to the plot because I think that, I mean, not to get ahead of ourselves, but I think that

Coach Ben was kind of the last explainable thing. Because I get where these girls in the woods are like, we can't go back. Everyone will think we're insane. But no, in fact, we've seen planes go down in the woods in real life. And we have known that people ate each other. And what else were they supposed to do? This is my thing when Ty, even post-Edwin NoHeadwin, is like...

what's the point of going back if our lives are ruined? Now, Ty brought up many other variables and considerations last episode, but in this episode, it's like, how will we explain what we've done? Now, this idea of agreeing, making a pact, this has come up multiple episodes in a row. And so obviously, the violation of the pact and the sanctity of the pact has a role to play moving forward. But I had the same response. I'm kind of like, I don't know. You tell them you're plane crashed and you were stranded in the wilderness for more than a year and you had no choice but to eat each other. I think it

No one's like really expecting 16 and 17 year old girls to be able to kill animals with sticks. If there are even animals out there, no one knows about the cabin. No one knows anything. Another thing adolescent girls are great at lying and like, and obviously they ultimately are, but I think that that part is so easy. Now I get, I get where a real unique tension has come up with Lottie.

just killing a completely innocent person. That's murder. That's an ax murder. There's a Wikipedia page for that. It's a very specific old school style of murder that Lottie has chosen to do in front of other people. Yeah. With no pregame, it's like a very, I won't spoil any specifics from White Lotus. That's not the show we're talking about, but just, and this isn't from the finale, but it's a very like Rick and Frank,

no prep before the con kind of energy. You know, it really reminds me of when John and Sansa used to like

Have these big arguments in front of all of the assembled lords. And I'm like, you guys didn't have a single Slack exchange before this meeting? Not one? So obviously that's the Lottie dynamic, you know, acting based on instinct and belief and feeling sure that everybody else should be moved the way that she is by this voice that is speaking to her or not speaking to her. By the sounds of frogs fucking in the woods. Listen.

Listen, those parallels. I am. I mean, exactly. Hannah, she has signed up and she was willing to say in doing so and committing another murder. We had yet another murder. That this, this was the most interesting experiment, survival experiment she had ever seen. Eat shit, Arctic Banshee frogs, who if memory serves, like,

Sanford prison experiment. Absolutely eat your fucking heart out. We have arrived here in the woods with the yellow jackets. You can't say eat your fucking heart out when we're talking about yellow jackets. I'm so sorry. Because then Lottie's going to come back in and she's going to be like, see, Jodi gets it. That's why I'm telling Travis. I can eat a brain. I just wanted to remind you that Javi is still here with us. Remember when you took a bite out of his mouth?

Because on account of how you ate it? Do you remember that? You remember when you ate your brother? I remember. I think it's nice when they talk about Javi. I'm still like, no one really just like, we go six episodes at a time without anyone mentioning Crystal. Yeah.

Oh, no. No one's looking for Crystal. Not even. The shit ridge comes up. But Crystal, I mean, every now and then. They're like, oh, we're going to make sure Cody doesn't go over the edge. We definitely want to take care of Cody right now. But what we're not going to do is just peek down there, see if Crystal's down there.

Never going to look again. Where is she? That's a real, that's a real loose Chad for me. That's a hanging, that's a hanging thread. You know, in general, everything with like that, with the symbol trees and the connected cave network underneath and Javi's friend, whoever that was. I mean, we basically had the beginning of this season, like Ben was hiding out there, which we knew from, you know, seeking refuge at the end of last season. And then having the conversation in the shadows and the distance that my queen Mari heard, um,

And it's like, was he talking to another person? Was he just talking to his boyfriend who he'd been having these visions of in his mind? It seemed like that. But like, huff some cave gas and that's it. We're not really talking about this like connected tunnel system under the wilderness at all again. Very odd. Anyway. There's so much to keep up with. Also, like when Ben got the supplies and then eventually I guess the girls found out about the supplies. This

sort of lightly mention like, oh, these folks are from the name on the supply box. Yes. But no real... Yeah. No real, maybe we should go dig around in some other holes, tippy tap our feet around, see if we feel any boards. Great point. Make another pit. Dude. You know what's better than one pit, two. Such a good point. No...

They should be combing every inch, especially after the froggers showed up. First of all, ask them, you got any more? I mean, obviously the tent supplies, they were kind of like, we don't need them. We're not going to be swayed by this. But in general- And yet you smell like peanut butter. Are there any more power bars out there? Any other protein bars and or packets of hot chocolate and or canisters of bear spray anywhere that we could dig up. I

I need a little bit more of an active sort of entrepreneurial spirit. Yeah. Very entrepreneurial about homicide. We are often ready to kill and eat. Yes. Everything else a little lax. You know, I'm entrepreneurial about the shelter building. Yes.

Yes. I still say gorgeous shelters. Too gorgeous. Too gorgeous. I'm sorry. I don't believe that they would look that good. These, these could be featured in architectural digest. This is absurd to me. It's crazy. They don't have doors is, is a thing. Um,

And so I am wondering for everyone who's just like, we can make it through another winter. We did it last time. Do they not remember that they were in a cabin with a fireplace last time? You know, Van had that line in this episode to tie, like the mind, you know, it like forgets. And maybe one of the things that they forgot. Yeah. Was how they used to have a literal cabin with doors and a roof and windows that closed and a fireplace because then the cabin burned down and it was painful. Yeah. I know. Trauma. Trauma.

Won't it do it? Anything else you want to tease about episode nine in particular, your thoughts and feelings about this penultimate episode? We only have one left. The season finale of Yellow Jackets is mere days away at this point. How did you find this penultimate episode and how do you think we are positioned heading into the finale of this season?

You know, I know that Joanna didn't plan her vacation for this specifically, but I did find it pretty suspicious that you brought me on for the death of a redhead, which you knew would be very painful for me. It occurred to me, yeah. I can't believe we lost Van. I know. I'm actually pretty mad about it.

You want to talk about it now or you want to talk about it later? I want to hear your thoughts and feelings first, and then we can just get right into it. Yeah, might as well. I guess I waffle between this sort of

meta feeling of like, I know, because now at this point, Lauren Ambrose, who plays Van and Tawny Cypress, who plays Ty have sort of joined Juliette Lewis and Simone Kessel in like speaking out a bit to Vanity Fair about how they're just not thrilled with these character arcs. Like,

I think Lauren Ambrose is like, yeah, I thought I was coming on for more than a season. And I do not want any iconic actresses to get baited in Switch. But I do, given this episode, find it kind of an interesting meta-commentary on how these are not heroes' journeys. They're not even...

anti-heroes journeys. Like these are women who have been pummeled by their circumstances. Yeah. And we are finding them at this point in their life. And it's honestly kind of a miracle that they're alive, that they have families, that they have roofs over their heads, that they have a VHS based business. Yeah.

Like that they made it out of there. Albeit not a thriving one. Not a thriving one. We saw the bills piling up. Yeah. But when your business isn't thriving, just re-find your old rich girlfriend. And what? How is she still rich? And why did that card decline? I've got my eye on it. My biggest question about all of that is still why scan a card when you guys are like,

On a secret mission. Just nuts. Because they are fueled by the hubris of the wilderness. They think that they will never be... They live in fear of being caught, but also think that they will never be caught. But for me, the sort of like...

constant failure of these women. And I guess maybe the ultimate failure is death. I don't like how many of the women in our later timeline have died this season. Frankly, we're, we're losing a lot, but in some ways I get it, but I do not like losing van because like, if there is any hero, if there's any hero's journey, if there's any morality left standing, it's her. So what does this mean?

Yeah. I thought that this episode was a real mixed bag in isolation. I think it actually sets up the finale pretty successfully. Like, I'm excited for the finale. I think we're poised for a strong finale, hopefully, and a strong end to the season. But I'll hit the last point first and then circle back to, like, Van in particular. I really agree with you that we've lost too many characters in the present timeline. Like, it just...

Joe and I have been talking about the – and this is an unknown element, but the question of how much road is remaining. Is it just one more season? Is it going to be two more seasons? Do they definitely know the answer to that question as they're making these decisions? If we only have one season left, I was very compelled in real time by the pitch that Joe was making last week of like,

It's kind of every yellow jacket for herself and, like, the idea of, like, who's going to be the last jacket standing. Then I get that you sort of have to thin the field a bit. But I think that, like, okay, obviously just from the jump, Travis is gone, right? We know – we've talked many times about, like, the external casting circumstances, like, that led to the Nat decision in season two. But –

The impact that that had on the show is, I think, irrefutable. Just irrefutable, taking that out of the rest of the time. Well, it also seems to have a similar impact as things have had on Shauna. Like, just a bit of bloodlust. Now we're just killing everybody. Yes. And so there's almost like this, okay, well, why staunch the wound? Maybe the point is that we just bleed it dry, which I mean, I don't know that we have enough clarity at this point to be able to assess that. But losing Lottie...

really quickly and then losing Van pretty quickly. Like, it is having... I think there are plenty of ways to compellingly navigate the past timeline even if the character has gone to the present. Certainly. But...

But at a point, that does tip. And I think, without question, Nat's storyline in the past has been impacted by this, just like what feels like a creative specter of, okay, maybe this was like... Yeah, what does it mean that Nat's gone now in the future? How does that impact the decisions we make in the past? So that just is, I think, an undeniable tension with the show right now. With Van in particular, young Van...

Is my favorite character on the show, period. Yeah. I'm just really bummed that, like, it was one of the great delights and surprises, the shock and the thrill to realize that Adult Van was alive and was going to be joining the show. And it never quite worked. Something never quite clicked into place for me with, I don't know how much of it was just the, even in the multiple moments where the overall group came together and mixed, but

The large and frequent siloing of adult Van and adult Ty into their own side storyline, how much of it was that, but...

It just never quite had the same... I don't know, Young Van has always just operated at this, like, pitch-perfect frequency in every scene all the time. And I don't think you can really make the case that that was true in the present. But still, is the solution then, like, all right, this isn't working, let's just kill this character? That's, like, a slightly worrying possibility. I'm not saying that's what happened, but it's a worrying possibility. So that's a bummer. And I also just thought that, like...

This was, again, and I'm with you, in a season I'm broadly enjoying overall, though I think it's been mixed. What happened with Adult Van this season in particular felt like a real failing of the character. I watched the show pretty closely, and I'm just like...

And trying to track adult Van's relationship to the pull of the wilderness and when they should be moved to violence, etc., etc., I think there's a difference between something that we really love to see in this show and in many of the shows that we all cover, which is doubt, dissonance, and

The self-reflection, a journey, an arc, like people's feelings change and that's actually interesting. They should. That's good. We want to see a character who's moving and evolving.

That's a little different from what felt like kind of ping-ponging story mechanics to kind of like suit the need of a moment. So broadly, really bummed that Adult Van is gone and bummed that Adult Van overall didn't land better in the show, given really the chief and central importance of Young Van in the past. It's just sad.

It is sad. It's a sad loss. I guess maybe I felt a little... What you're explaining has made me realize that perhaps... Well, either I'm numb to death now because of Yellow Jackets or because her integration into sort of the adult group was often siloed with just Ty, was slightly less successful. There was something about like...

losing adult Van that was not as impactful to me, but the overall... But isn't that a bummer? Yes, that is sad. That is sad. And can I tell you what I really didn't like? Yeah, please. And maybe I am alone in this, but the explanation from young Van to old Van that... Not good. This was all in service of...

saving Ty from other Ty? No thanks. Here's the quote. I die? I'm dead? Why would you send me in here if you knew I was just going to die? Young Van says, it wasn't my call. This is just how our story goes. You said I was going to be the hero. You are. You saved them. You got the real love of our life back. You show me a better treasure. If I am ever sitting in the middle seat of the middle row of a plane with a younger version of myself and they're like,

You saved Adam. Isn't that the real treasure? I'll show up and I'll knock him right down. No. Yeah. Yeah. Like I was thinking that I was like, well, yeah, we all love Ty. But if you said this about a man, I'd knock you the fuck out. Like I was here to save my partner.

I don't think so. I just, I did not like that. While also, I did really like that scene because watching Lauren Ambrose and Liv Hewson. It was great to see them together. Like, and it really brought out something, I felt like, in the older Van character, watching the parallels of,

of how they enjoy pop culture, how they tell a story, how they see everything as like a movie narrative, which in some ways I didn't feel like we were getting as much with older Van. And to see them together, it did really bring something out, which like you said, then again, makes it all the more sad that we're not going to get more of this. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're mourning like the possibility of what could have been. Yeah. I think so.

All right. We have a lot to get to. I know. I know. It's time for our deep dive. Okay, Jodi, we're going to start in the past. We're going to start in the then, where the rescue, kind of officially, though, there are some secret side plots been put on hold. I want to issue a formal thank you to Natalie and Travis for doing what everyone should have done and saying, fuck off.

You're a loon. You don't get to tell us that we don't get to go home and try to leave this place. However, I am then forced to take back the trophy that I have just awarded because this is...

Rift 101 stuff. Oh. You can't stand there passively and let your enemy take the rifle out of your fucking hands, Natalie. What the hell was this? Shauna now has a gun. When Shauna first got the gun, I had to rewind. Me too. Excuse me. How does Shauna have

When did Shauna get the gun? They're like, Shauna's not letting the gun go. I was like, well, somebody let the gun go because how did Shauna get it? I had to rewind and see Natalie, our hunter extraordinaire, just kind of go, you know, noodle hands. Astonishing. She just took it right out of her hands. And I agree. I was glad to hear some logic from – I really liked when Travis said –

We've literally been in hell. Yes. You have no right to keep us in it. Yes. And that is correct. No one has a right to make you stay in the woods where you have been stranded for a year eating your brother to stay alive and also for religious reasons, I guess. Yes.

When Joel McHale comes to save you, make you stay there? Yeah. No. But they say it, and then they're like, okay, well, actually, I guess you can. We'll come up with another way. Good Travis episode. I have some notes for him, as I do for all of the characters, but I was proud of him that he at least really tried. He felt compelled. He felt moved. I had the same experience with the gun. I was like, oh, shit, did we fuck up last week when we said –

this is where the gun is. So this is what that means for dynamics. And then I realized, no, I'm trying to flat out took it out of Nat's hand like she was borrowing a pencil. So can you remind me, where is the crossbow? So we saw that in a couple different hands in this episode. It was moving around. Travis had it at one point. It was moving around. So...

The crossbow is in team let's get out of here, but team let's stay has the gun, which is obviously worrying. We know that Shauna is always well armed with various hunting knives. Just feels to me that one quick crossbow to the person who has the gun makes for a pretty effective crossbow move. It's a great point. I would say particularly after the person holding the gun wasted recklessly. Yeah.

Some of the ammo just to make Mel piss her pants in front of everyone, which, listen, not to go out of order, but can I just say, I'm really excited to talk about that whole sequence because I think it's a very rich text. It was an important stretch in terms of cementing what's happening in the present storyline. Here's what it made me think of. I don't know what this says about me. Oh, boy. But I am here to be honest with you, just as you have been with me today. Not enough people on this show are pissing their pants. They're not.

And not nearly enough pants shitting and pants pissing. Do you know how scared they should be all the time? Like they would be soiling their clothing constantly. Why is this not happening every few episodes?

I'm trying to think of the last pants piss-worthy event. The last time that someone was... It seems like any time a giant animal shows up, that definitely... How about the hunt across the ice near the end of season two? Oh, let me tell you when I would be peeing my pants. Any time I'm on that ice.

Like, I cannot believe there. No, I mean, you know, I'm from the South. Good place to do it, too, because then it just freezes and you'd be like, no, I just, I don't know. It's so wet out here. It's crazy. I am not from a place where ice freezes solid. You could not catch me on a frozen body of water ever. Yeah. At least not with dry pants, I guess. No.

So I agree. It's not what that scene made me think, but now you have made me think it. All right. Well, you know, we're here to ask the important question. Sometimes it is about the depth of darkness and despair inside of us all and where that can lead us. And sometimes it's, are enough people wetting themselves out in the wilderness? And all of that is worthy of consideration and discussion here on The House of R. Speaking of worthy of discussion, the reason that Shauna grabbed the gun was to try to stop Cody from leaving. Now,

Listen, Cody's not going to be around for long, so we have to talk about him while we can. And I just want to take a moment to celebrate this line.

Have fun braiding each other's hair and partaking in some light cannibalism, which was his parting word, what was supposed to be a parting word as he attempted, failed, but attempted to leave. Thought this was great. I thought overall this was an incredibly strange use of Joel McHale in this season of television, actively baffling, given that he has now left this mortal coil out in the wilderness, stabbed through the eye by Hannah. Have some questions about Hannah when we get to that later. But this was very amusing. Yeah.

I think that, like, just as we are excited to watch, consume, and podcast about Yellow Jackets no matter what, people are pretty excited to get on it as well. It's an amazing cast. Like, it's probably a fun experience to, you know, just be roughing around out there. And I do think it was a role well cast in terms of, like, this alpha male, you know, character.

It all comes with Joel McHale. You get the snark built right in. Yeah. But I would have liked more. Yeah, I definitely would have liked more because he presented a real thorn to this community that they have not otherwise seen. And I guess I would have liked to see them take him down in an even more significant way because, yes,

saying braiding each other's hair and doing some light cannibalism is extremely condescending and this man is a misogynist and we don't deal with that in a matriarchy. Exactly. That was made clearer a little sooner than I expected. It was very funny.

It was very funny when Shauna was like, and he's like, you even know how to use that thing about the gun? And she's like, my boyfriend taught me. That was a good moment from young Shauna. Knocks off good lines in that scene because my favorite was when they send him off to like the animal pen and she says, take their shoes. That's such a power line. Take their shoes. This was in a great way, utterly demented. This is, of course, the animal pen where they kept Ben as he was

hid his food, soiled himself, and then was eventually stabbed after days of pleading. The glee in Shauna's eyes to ensure that if they tried to escape, and she was right to suspect that they would, Shauna's paranoia isn't always misplaced. It was not in this case, that their feet would be shredded to ribbons.

by the terrain they had to tread. Let's not forget that they are lucky to be keeping their Achilles at this point. Like, she's done way worse to keep someone still. But just the... It is... I love seeing the things that they learn and when they learn them. Just... We've never seen that power move before. Take their shoes. The animal pen. It was good. What are they going to do with Cody's body? You know, they allowed Cody and Hannah... I've got a pretty good guess. Yeah.

Allow them to bury Edwin. But now, I mean, Hannah's like, let me be one of you. Cody's dead. Snack up, right? Oh, that head is going on a plate of ornamental lettuce, just like Coach Ben's. And they are going to... I mean, because... Well, I've never really quite made heads or tails, excuse the pun, of...

What are the best parts of the body to eat? Like, is it better because he's so muscly? I don't know. We'd have to ask Ty. She famously ate the face, so she's prepared to comment. Save the face for me, Clark. Yeah, she prefers the face. Speaking of Ty, this is where Van kind of pulls Ty aside and says, you know, were you... Did you mean it, what you said about this push to stay? It doesn't have to be forever. Now, obviously, like, Van is...

hoping that the rift between the two of them doesn't have to be lasting and severe, that maybe they are still more aligned than not. My note for Ty here is like, how could you possibly know? You guys have been out here for more than a year, and this is the first real genuine conversation

promise of some way home. We're not trekking off on our own and then having to return because Van got mauled by a wolf. We're not sending Laura Lee up in the Bumblebee only for it to explode over the lake. This was the actual genuine chance to go. Where would Cody have led them? We have no idea, but that's almost not the point. When Ty says it, it doesn't have to be forever. What are you banking on? What evidence is there to bank on anything at all?

And she says it doesn't have to be forever, but I feel like everything she says after that suggests that she's pretty ready to set up shop forever. Like second to maybe only Lottie. Yeah. And I'm not totally clear on what her reasoning is, except that she's scared. I think that comes through really clearly. She's scared of what will be at home for her. And I mean, we do know about Ty from...

the very beginning of her characterization that she is very driven by perception, by the life she will build for herself. And I think she sees her dreams of being a big time lawyer just going down the drain. So what's left for me, if not a law degree, I guess. But she is such a practical person. If they stay out there forever...

they're going to run out of bodies. Like what is, what's the plan? Right. And that is of course what Van is, is voicing. She's imploring her to remember what the last winter was like, how grim it was when Ty says we're better prepared this time. We're well stocked. Van is like uber practical. You cannot be prepared enough for what awaits. Like we will run out of game. By the way, they didn't need to run out of game to eat a person. They just ate coach Ben, even though they had an animal pen full of

of non-human meals. They were still ready to start munching on each other. We got, we were treated to the wonderful exchange where Ty said we survived and Van said we ate a fucking kid.

So that was good. I really appreciated that little bit of perspective from... It's an important reminder. You're totally right to say favorite character, young Van. Yeah. The best. Because let's not forget, Javi was a kid and we ate him at that point because we had to. But we were pushed to that place...

And now you got all kinds of other factors pushing you to all kinds of other places. So, okay, here's what we know that they don't. We know that they're going to be there for another winter because that's how the show opened. So in this episode, when Nat has received the news that the escape plan was botched and she's sitting and she's weeping and the snow starts to fall and it's almost like hallucinatory and dreamlike, Nat,

It's just doom, right? It's a harbinger of an inevitable doom. And we know it is inevitable because was there the prospect that some people managed to escape? Joe and I have been talking a lot this season about

Spoilers for Lost, but the idea that maybe some people could get out, but not everybody. So that was and remains, honestly, a possibility. But at the end of the day, the pilot of the show, the first episode of the first season, we see in the depths of winter, fully kitted out under animal furs, multiple members of this team eating human flesh. That's happening. So, like, my question for you is, how has that happened?

foreknowledge that we possess, it influenced how you're watching all of these scenes where they're debating whether to stay or go. Have you been able to maintain the possibility that maybe still some of them get out? Or has it been like, wait, what is the point of all of this arguing about it? We know they're not going to get rescued. Or is it, well, you

you know, it's not just about the outcome. There's a lot of interesting thematic text and turf to parse, regardless of whether they leave or stay. It's like, what do they want and what do those impulses tell us about them as characters? Where have you been with all of that? Yeah, it's really led me towards being

newly intrigued and invested in the interpersonal dynamics. Yeah. I cannot, it, and I, in this way, I think that season three is, is working really well and that they're, they're ending the season strongly leading into this because I've never been particularly invested in the like,

How are these two teams going to shake out? Like, who's going to land in full cannibalism court? Because we know it's not... Probably not all of them. And where does that leave the other people? Like, I've just...

frankly, you start a show off with cannibalism, I'm there. Like, it is interesting that that scene from the pilot episode that was so compelling and that absolutely, like, drew a crowd, that it could now make the show less interesting by being like, well, we know that it's, we know that's where it's going, but I have found with this breakdown of

It's really interesting to think about that the people that we absolutely know are alive are, for the most part, team we keep our asses right here. It's fascinating. What does that mean for how this shakes out? Who ends up in the sock bunny ears eating hearts again next winter or this coming winter? Yeah.

And where does that leave everyone else? Does it mean that they're escaping? Does it mean they're hiding? Does it mean they're somehow living in like a little bit of harmony? Is it a full hunter-prey scenario? I don't know. I'm interested to find out. I've liked the, even though I'm like so annoyed, I'm so annoyed.

Shauna, I'm so annoyed at you. Stop making that face. You're not the boss of everybody. You did get the gun. That was good for you. But it's so completely frustrating that anyone would say, no, we're staying here. I know. Yeah. But I find the way it's shaking out pretty interesting. Yeah. What about you? I'm with you. I'm in the same place. I'm like...

you know, this is a total apples and oranges. This is sort of a weird comp to invoke, but I, I, I find it to be a handy one. Um, you know, in the, in the wake of infinity war, um,

And people are like, well, they're definitely all going to come back. So, like, what's the point? What are the stakes? I'm like, to me, like, the stake is not just pure life or death. It's not just the thing that happens. It's like, where do we find the characters we care about in the wake of whatever unfolded? Yes. And so you get to see Steve Rogers and Natasha, like, in that peanut butter sandwich scene in Endgame. And they are – the fact that people are going – spoiler – that everything – you know, it goes where it goes is, like –

in no way diminishes the place that we find them, I don't think, at the beginning of Endgame. So I'm with you. I'm like, really, in some ways, it actually allows us to like...

especially in a show that is often quite oriented around plot and mystery and theory corner to like quiet that part of our brains in this slice of the story and really focus on, okay, what does it mean for like a character set like Van and Ty that they are not on the same page about this? That's very interesting to me. So I am like frustrated that anyone would be like, yeah, we should stay. But I think they actually have done a good job of clarifying on a character by character level why that would be the case and that what it means

if your romantic partner, your best friend, whatever the case may be, is not in the same place as you. Like all they have out there is each other. So when they lose that, what is left? That's really interesting to me. And then I think especially as like, you know, this idea, we've talked a lot about Lost and Ariella Jacket's coverage. We talk a lot about Lord of the Flies and Lord of the Fries. It's dinner time. I'm getting hungry. I will be the Lord of the Fries at some point this evening. She's ready to eat a brain.

But, you know, we talked about this a lot in like the trial episode when you're trying to like reforge some semblance of society. What are you even chasing? Is it just the comfort of structure? Is it being able to rely on the thing that you built? I was really interested in that respect in this little moment between Ty and Van in this scene where Ty said, good thing you've been practicing with the cards, which like kind of called back to that moment.

A couple episodes ago where, you know, Van was handing out the cards and there was that moment that between Van and Ty and like, I was trying to. So is your read on this that Van knows where the Queen of Hearts is and is in some way seeking to control who gets it so that it doesn't or at least make sure that Ty doesn't? Because that way lies the

This is, first of all, obviously just like cheating, right, basically. And seems like it would blow up in their faces if that's what's happening. But more than that,

To channel Lottie, it's like, that's not the spirit of the exercise. The spirit of the exercise is it chooses. Once you seek to take control, you've violated the entire premise. And I don't think that will go very well for Van if that is uncovered. What did you make of this? Was this your read on it too, that that's what Ty was alluding to? Yeah, I think everything we've ever known about Van is that she could learn close-up magic at some point in her life.

And I did immediately take from this that she's counting cards. That, like, yeah, she's trying to rig the deck. And I actually think... So...

Two things. One, to just circle back a little bit pre-cards, is that I've always been invested, like most invested in the human dynamics here. I am someone who kind of like watches White Lotus lights off clowns in my head. You know, I'm not trying to figure out who died. Like I come to House of R for my theories. I'm not...

I'm not the most skilled in that area. What I love is some classic human behavior breakdowns, you know? And so like, that's always what I've been invested in, in this show. So to see it coming back around in this way is really fun. And I think like credit where credit is due to writers and creators who are often sort of accused of like not knowing where things are going. Yeah. Maybe not totally having things planned out. If that is the case,

the case, then I think in this area they're doing something really successfully, which is showing why sometimes and then sometimes not, showing why the adult dynamics might be what they are retroactively by what we're finding out here. So like I thought this was an incredible young Natalie episode. The moment that you talked about with the snow falling.

Natalie has been broken. She has been broken by these people and by their lack of empathy, their lack of practicality, the ways that they have turned. She is obviously the audience conduit. In her, we see what we would hope we would be in this scenario. For me, definitely eating people, but trying to do it with a conscience.

So, like, and then that makes a ton of sense for ultimately how broken we found her because I think a lot of times it hasn't made sense between young Natalie and older Natalie. Like, how did we get here? And I really think, like, in these last two, three episodes alone, I've really come to understand that. And then a little bit for Van in thinking about the way that she has been characterized as an adult is kind of like,

sometimes really into the Lottie stuff and sometimes not at all. And I guess it could make some sense to me that if she both believes it and is trying to rig capital I-It, like trying to fool the wilderness with a trick, with sleight of hand,

Yeah, like you can kind of believe two things at once and maybe that's ultimately what she's doing. Bad idea. Or good idea, actually. I'd try it. I mean, yeah, I would be tempted, certainly. I mean, I think that the characters who are trying to take their fate into their own hands are compelling to watch right now. Is it risky? Is it dangerous? Does it feel like they're courting some sort of doom? Yeah, but that's why it's interesting. And let's get to Travis then on that front because, dude, Travis made this list.

Okay, now let me say this. The pit is a little more male coded than I would ultimately like. Well, now we know a dude made it. Spiked by Travis. I don't love that, but like what a reveal that Travis made the pit.

I thought this was honestly really inspired. Like, when we first panned to Travis and he's down on the ground playing with twigs, I was like, my guy got back into the mushroom team. Oh, yeah. What is that guy ever doing? What's happening here? But then, like, the surge of the score and the reveal. I mean, this is presumably the Ben pit, right? Famed not only for the supplies that Ben found, but more importantly, the...

very minor need dislocation that Mari's... For ultimately getting Mari in that pit in a different way than expected. Wild stuff. Still great. Again, that's like one of the things this season I'm like, they're cooking. Like putting Mari in the pit without putting Mari in the pit was just really good. Do you just like lightly feel like they listen to this podcast though? Because...

Starting her character turnaround in the pit, they got Mari in the pit and then they made her lovable. I know. Joe and I did have some moments at the beginning of the season where we're like, you know what? Is this for us specifically? Mari is in the pit. This feels like it's just for us. I've said it the last few weeks. When Mari, this episode, was like, we're just so close to a cheeseburger. I'm like, I have never felt so seen by... I just...

I can't believe it. She's a bit of representation for you between the slurpy and the eagerness for the cheeseburger. I just can't believe that Mari became, like, the best character in the show. What an absolutely wild circumstance. Some interesting stuff from Mari. She's moving and shaking. She's trying to get some stuff done this episode. Not to the extent that Travis is, obviously, but...

So we'll quickly run through what happens with Travis in the pit, and then we'll talk about what it means and what we took from it. Basically, he has filled the pit with impalen branches, as you noted, very phallic, in an effort to lure Lottie with a wilderness lie. I heard something. I'm trying to figure out what it means. Will you come help me? And...

Travis, yet another believer in it, believer in magic, also manipulator of it, manipulator of magic. Did he really see the vision of Akilah or did he just turn her over to Lottie? Maybe we'll never know, but he said both. Yeah, lied about it to like offer her up as a pawn and...

I think that Travis's evolution and journey with belief, I really like. It's like, how do we get to a point in the present back, you know, or the past of the show, but the present timeline where Nat could say, and maybe it's just what Nat needed to tell herself, Travis never believed in any of this stuff. And obviously, we know at some point he did, but where was the end point? But then we know that he's, I mean, he's hoisted up. Right?

Right. With the symbols around him. Now, we only have Lottie's account for what happened there to go on. But this question of like Travis's relationship to the belief, you know, we can think back to the hand on the heart, the calming hand from Lottie and then the instant boner. Very memorable moment in the history of the show and tough for Travis and all all involved parties. The ritual as they were hunting for Javi, etc.,

The relationship that he has with Lottie then, the relationship that he has with Nat, the way that those things are constantly in opposition to each other. I thought that Travis rebelling against Lottie and her chokehold on the tribe and the idea of the way that this belief and this thing that they have opted into is something to trust in in full was like...

really necessary and I was glad that he did it. The fact that he weaponized her belief in order to do it, I thought was...

I was like Team Travis here, to be clear, but I thought it was quietly one of the more insidious things that's happened on the show. Like, this was so dark and so sinister. And so even the characters who are like, we need to get home, we need to return to civilization, we need to return to a pure way of life, are doing, like, hideous things. And so I'm curious for your read on that. I was really struck by the fact that, like, Travis is basically building something desperate dark, but building something that he hopes will be a path home.

And then what does this pit become? It becomes the ultimate symbol, whether it's in the show itself or shorthand among fans and viewers, of the descent. The descent into something feral and tribal and base. That is so deeply tragic. I thought this was like really a masterstroke in the episode and I loved it. And I'm curious for your Travis read and also your lot here.

Because it seems to me like she was like, I'm sussing out what is happening here, and I am going to put my fate once again into the wilderness's hand and prove to you that I will be protected. What was your read on all of this? I mean, I think you're totally right that it is really –

and kind of frightening. I think for me, that feeling most came from that he is doing this completely alone. He seems to have partnered with no one, told no one, and we don't see that done very much. What do you think that's about? Does he think it's too dark of a thing to put on somebody else? Does he not trust anyone enough to bring them in? I personally read it as him

him seeing his the the part that he has ultimately played yeah in bringing Lottie to this point in bringing their whole community and village to the point where they would listen to Lottie or listen to Akilah or listen to him right when they say that Ben is a bridge right so we have to keep him alive we have to literally shove food down his throat to keep him alive and

just so he dies and then we eat him and then we put his head on a plate and then people see the head on the plate so then Lottie puts an axe in someone's head so that when we had the chance to go home we couldn't go home and I do think so he's feeling culpable and he believes he has to fix it that's how

I read it. Like, that was really the only way that I could read him doing this alone with Lottie. Obviously, there's also the murder aspect to it. And mostly only Lottie right now is, like, solo murdering. And so...

Him doing that without asking. And Hannah. And Hannah. A quick learner, that Hannah. Just a real, real sharp curve on her learning. True, like, Anchorman that escalated quickly stuff from Hannah in this episode. My goodness. She's, yeah. I won't say I like her, but I'm fascinated by her pretty quickly. But yeah, I think just with the Travis stuff, I found that really interesting how he was embarking out on his own, taking

taking a pretty big risk building a pit he seemingly hasn't told anyone else about that he's luring Lottie to. I don't think he's taking the spikes in and out of it every time. No, that's just there now. And then I also just sort of visually found it

Like, because as you mentioned, this thing that he is building to hopefully try to cut the knee, well, literally, cut the knees out from Lottie so that they can go home so they can kind of end this mess. And then ultimately it traps them and it really becomes this, like, this symbol of the thing that is keeping them there and how they have turned. I also saw it as this interesting inverse symbol of this, like, Coach Ben is a bridge motif. And now we have this, like, gaping hole of...

Yes. Love that. You know, just taking the bridge right away, keeping us here, keeping us further entrenched in this idea that the wilderness gives to us if we give to it. Oh, is that... That's a great observation. I love that. It makes me think of... Puts me in a very...

Lord of the Rings headspace, the like, you know, they delved too greedily and too deep. It's like anytime you're going down, down, down, down, down, even if your intentions are good and noble and pure, you're

And like Ben was a bridge, you know, if Ben, if you have to use a bridge correctly, if you go under it, you're not going to have a good time. Like Ben, if Ben had been listened to, if he'd spoken up more, if he'd been used correctly, then he maybe would have kept them away from pit territory, from the pit territory we know they're going towards. The essence of Ben, it lured Hannah, Edwin and Cody. They were like, what is that?

What is that smell on the breeze? You know, real like Thrones never knew Bannon could smell so good stuff. Do we have a vinegar sauce over there? A mustard base? What are we dealing with? What's the New Jersey barbecue sauce? Real Carolina energy for me right here. Real Carolina. You just really geographically located yourself for all of the bad babies here. Side counsels. Despite everybody still actually physically being there, maddening. They are not actually all.

content to remain. And we have a couple councils. We have Council 1 Team Shauna. It's Shauna, it's Mel, it's Ty, it's Van, it's Misty in this meeting. Lottie is, of course, Team Stay as well. But what is so striking about this is that

There's so little actual unity and cohesion in this group. Mel will be on the other team by the end of the episode. Ty and Van, as we've talked about, have true loyalty to each other, but are actually not like operating from a same core belief here. Maybe,

Misty is like double, triple agenting her way around the entire camp. And I can't wait to talk about what we think is going to happen based on Nat spotting her digging up the transponder that she busted. This is a rule by fear alliance, which is never a lasting thing ever. And Shauna is like,

I know they're up to something. And I was like, what? What do you think? Well, if I had known, I would have stopped them. It's like doomed from the start here. Doomed from the start. But as you observed and as Joe noted previously, like the fact that so many of these characters are standing at the end is very difficult not to take seriously and think about in terms of what that means. I want to celebrate one of the best moments in the history of the show, which is when Misty said, well, I can play double agent. They all know you kicked me out before.

Van called her double O Quigley. And I will be referring to her as double O Quigley moving forward. Oh, Van. You're welcome to join me. One more gift before you go. It was a great, it was great. Really great. Then there's the other team, the other faction, Team Nat.

Nat, Jen, Mari, Akilah, Travis, not in a council meeting, but obviously also aligned with this side. This is where Akilah says the line that we already talked about. Like, if we're here, I hope the wilderness chooses me first. Very grim. Very grim. Mari talking about cheeseburgers. And Nat is like, I have a plan. We don't need to just steal the gun back. Let's enlist the prisoners. And so once again, a plot involving urine. Hannah's like, you're taking me –

Maybe more pee stuff is happening on the show that I'm giving a credit for. There aren't a lot of regulators in the woods. They don't have a schedule they have to stick to, but everybody's got to pee. Everybody's got to pee. So they're taking Hannah out and she's like, this is...

Why are we going so far? And it's ultimately so Nat can hand Hannah a knife so that she can cut herself and Cody free in the dead of night and they can all escape. This is kind of the core place that we find the character sets for the events that follow. And one of the people who is most eager to participate in those events is Double Oak Wiggly. It's going to stick. I can tell. Yeah.

it's perfect. The reason that I like it the most is because it's, it's a time where Misty is like, has the self-knowledge that she's annoying and uses it. It doesn't work because she was spotted. She's a terrible double agent. And she was annoying than introducing herself to the other side. But I like, I just, there's something that I like to know that she knows how other people perceive her and,

She doesn't always use it to her advantage because she can't. She's not really capable of changing her behavior, but she's capable of knowing. I really like this. I felt glad that Misty was being deployed a little more actively in the past. This has been a...

for adult Misty. Yeah. Just dynamite start to finish. But young Misty has been a little less active than her prior seasons. And so, you know, all of the different ways that various people are going to respond to Misty, like Mari saying, we saw you with...

Team crazy, quit embarrassing yourself. Very funny. But just to see Misty, and like Misty's on both ends of one of those kinds of like sloppy discoveries. Misty's the one who sees Van sneaking away and follows Van, spots Van collecting the wires from the plane wreckage. Misty must have the quietest step. She is always just seeing what people are up to. I guess my read on this, because this is like...

could really be the kind of thing that bugged me in a show like this. I think in this season, not season of television, but season of the year, where, like, there's a more active presence of wildlife and frogs are fucking and screeching all the time, et cetera, maybe there's just enough natural sound so they wouldn't hear a footstep. But, yeah, like...

We hear Twig very notably crack when Lottie takes a step near the pit. So I'm kind of like, how does anybody sneak up on anyone? I don't know. Sees Van go dig up the sat phone, collecting the material to try to repair it. We'll talk about the Misty part of this more in a second. I was fascinated. Okay, Van and Ty discover the sat phone in the Frogger tents.

They both know, but clearly have not told anybody else about it. Now, I think this is smart because Shauna would have gone out and destroyed this thing immediately, clearly, right? Lottie would have destroyed it, taken the axe to it, something. But it seems that Van is seeking to repair this without Ty's knowledge. Is that your read? That's my read, yeah. I don't know because do we see...

take it? I wondered if Ty knows the location. Right. That it was because we see them find it. We see them acknowledge that it's broken and be upset. And then a little later on, Ty makes her decision that she wants to stay and live out the rest of her would-be lawyer life in the woods.

But I don't know when the sat phone makes it back to camp, kind of. And I definitely don't know if Ty knows where it's hidden. I also, I did, I liked this little moment for like, oh, maybe this is when Van becomes kind of interested in gadgets, you know, in outdated gadgets. Yeah.

kind of doing around with wires. We've seen her playing around with a lot of old tape recorders, et cetera. But yeah, I actually, I didn't think about that so much that that is yet another thing that we're seeing a Yellow Jacket and Travis do in isolation, do completely on their own. Yeah, it's like so much of this discussion and so much of this part of the story is about rifts and fissures in the team and like these dueling moments

factions, but inside of that, everybody seems to have their own agenda increasingly. Well, right, because as you pointed out, like, over on, you know, Team We Stay Here, completely different motivations from everyone. They're all fear-based, but they're completely different fears. And so it does seem like everyone's sort of starting to strike out

to find their own solutions to what they see as their own problems. Right. And maybe it helps the group and maybe it doesn't. Right. Right. Well, Misty, one of the people who is acting unilaterally here, as she did in the past when she destroyed the transponder in the first place, she's like, sees what Van does, realizes, oh my God, I might have what we need. There is a

thingamajig, a doom hickey in that transponder box that she destroyed and hid. And she's going to go get it and then use it to fix the sat phone so that they can call

for rescue. Now, Natalie sees Misty do this. And the way that Misty's face fell when she went from, I know how to get us home, into like, oh, fuck, now it's very clear that I knew the transponder was here and hid it. What do you think this means? How will Misty get out of this one? She doesn't have to reveal that she's the one who broke it, but just the fact that she didn't share with anyone that she knew the location, thus not allowing them to attempt to repair it,

Would seem to be one of, I mean, maybe one tier below Lottie putting an ax into Edwin NoHedwin's brain, but like pretty high up on the list of unforgivable things that nobody should have been allowed to decide on their own. Is the way that she's going to save herself by actually then fixing the sat phone? Is that the only path forward or like what's going to happen here?

It was interesting a second ago hearing you list off all the people that if Van had told them about the sat phone, they'd go and destroy it immediately. Because I was thinking, oh, well, when Misty destroyed the transponder, everyone would have been furious. She would have been an outcast. She was correct about

To not tell anyone that she did the very bad thing. Now we have all kinds of people doing all kinds of crazy shit because everybody's been in the woods eating ears for a year. Arm Pringles, delicious. I want to talk about arm Pringles later. So my feeling, my immediate instinct, because of the moment also that we're catching Natalie in where she is –

broken by knowing that they had a chance to get out and now Hannah has knifed Cody's face and that chance has gone away. She seems for the first time betrayed in a real way that I think she's been holding off.

And she seems so burdened. And my immediate feeling for her when she saw Misty with the transponder is like yet another thing for her to be burdened by because she sees a real moral question in everything that other people don't always seem to see in these circumstances. And now she has to decide –

does she keep Misty secret? Does she expose it? And how does it affect the way that she treats Misty for the rest of her life? I mean, I think this is yet another thing that gives us layers to the relationship that we see older Misty and older Nat have, especially in season one. It's a great call. Doesn't she introduce her? She's like, Misty. My best friend.

But doesn't, isn't like Natalie's first line to Misty, like, Misty Quigley, you fucking bitch. It's like, you crazy bitch. Yes. Like the way that in that present storyline, Misty is always like, and we all, you know, we see Misty behave so out of step with like other people's perception of the reality that they both inhabit that it almost doesn't feel totally unique, but it is the most heightened where Misty is like, you are my dearest friend and the most important person in the world to me. And Nat is like,

You're crazy and you ruined my life. Yeah. You ruined my life. Could this be, could Nat not revealing what Misty did to the secret knowledge to everybody be the source of Misty's devotion to Nat? Part of what is so interesting to me about Nat in this episode, I've really loved listening to you talk about where we found her here. Her

One of our favorite sound drops here on House of R is always the Jon Snow, I don't want it. And like, we love to talk about this and Nat's relationship to being thrust into that leadership role has been so interesting to track. And like the reluctant leader becoming the adept and capable one is something I'm really interested in across stories. And that's part of what Nat is burdened by too. Like, oh, I...

To be clear, I don't personally think this is Nat's fault, but Nat will be blaming herself. I didn't get us out of here. And so, like, maybe what she's seeing when she looks down at that is –

betrayal, deception. Maybe what she's looking down and seeing is, I have another chance to help. I have another chance now to figure this out and save these people. And I believe it is my responsibility to try. This particular dynamic is really rich. So many characters think it is their—we just talked about this with Travis—it is their responsibility, specifically their responsibility, to get everyone out, to keep them there,

But they all have a different motive and a different reason. So when everyone is moving toward a pursuit for a different purpose and in a different way,

You end up on that ice and it cracks beneath you. Like, no question. That's the only place it can go. And I think what we're describing with both Natalie and Travis is it's their responsibility to undo the wrongs that they have done, to undo the things that they have contributed to that have kept them there. And I think particularly for Travis and Natalie, that is a feeling that we see haunt them for the rest of their lives. They are much more haunted by,

by the wrongs that they have participated in. When you got Shauna over here, absolutely ruining everyone's life at every turn, being a pill, just, you know, being a tough presence around camp in general.

And then she goes back home and hides from it. She marries Jeff. She has a kid. She cooks rotisserie chickens in the kitchen. She slaughters bunnies in the garden. And she acts like everything's fine. Is that a peaceful way to live? If you're Shauna, kind of, maybe. Right.

But we see the real differences in how these people handle things in the wilderness and how that tracks all the way to how they handle it as they keep going. Right. Yeah. Who has learned something from the error of their ways and made an adjustment and who has just like descended deeper into the same tendencies. That's a great shout. Speaking of Shauna, let's talk about this stretch a little bit more. We've talked about some of this already, but with Mel and Shauna in the past,

We heard a couple episodes ago, episode seven, in the present, adult Ty say that Jen and Melissa had gotten pretty close to Hannah. And we start to see the beginning of that here. Mel is standing guard. Hannah's bound. Put their chatting. I would like to stay for the record. I would also, like Mel, have asked, do you know where they're filming this season of Real World? And this would be 97, right? So it would be Boston. And I just want to say, great news. Everybody gets home in time for Seattle in 98.

If you make it out alive, you get to see Seattle. Mel, I'm so glad you said this because I was just realizing that while I was like completely on board with her being like, you know, where's the real world this season? I didn't look it up. I guess, you know, somewhere in my memory, I know that it's Boston, but oh, they make it back for Seattle. A thrill. That's probably why Mel is seemingly doing okay. She got to come back. Exactly. Got to come back and meet David? Watch Irene? I mean, my God.

My God. They're talking about TV and Hannah's like, it's mostly Nickelodeon for me because I have a kid. I have a 10-year-old. She's working, Mel. Clearly. She says, I'm sure all of you really miss your families too.

By the way, do you think we'll be prisoners forever? And Mel says, very effectively foreshadowing, perhaps even in some ways, accepting and inspiring what Hannah does with Cody, people are willing to do some messed up stuff just to see another day when they're out here. They're laughing. Who's hornier? The frogs, teenage girls, and Shauna, just full cartoon villain, emerges from

With an evil sneer on her face to be like, what's so fucking funny? She is going to journal about this so hard. Nothing's funny. My best friend is dead. My baby is dead. Everybody's dead. And these motherfuckers are laughing. Dude.

I watch a lot of Survivor. And so when Hannah tracks, she's studying. She says, right, like, this is the most fascinating survival study I've seen. And she tracks when Shauna kind of pouts and leaves and Mel pursues her. Hannah is clocking every part of that. And it really reminded me of, like,

The way a good survivor player, when there's a tribe shakeup or the merge, they're not just looking for allies. They're looking for rifts in other alliances. That's the way that you ensure you move forward. And that was definitely the energy we were getting from Hannah here. Before we get to this really horrific fight that Mel and Shauna have, anything on the Hannah front here that struck you?

I think that's a great observation of the way that she is studying and tracking like a scientist or maybe even like a behavioral scientist would. And especially when you think about that she's doing that with Melissa and Shauna, because I think we've seen Melissa do this in a very elementary way. She has aligned herself with power in the hopes that it will give her power or protection as well. And it has not. It has put her in a very...

poor position to be harmed by Shauna's very reckless power. Hannah, just a sharper person, just a smarter person who sees...

the actual way to do this. Still maybe impulsive and still maybe like taking a beat too strong from Shauna's drum, but we'll kind of see, well, I guess we know how it plays out, but we'll see how it plays out in the immediate effect. I did have a question about her child. What I took from a couple of episodes ago when they read the obituary and said, well, it was a teen pregnancy, was that someone else was raising the child. So she is...

completely playing Melissa and everyone else in this way with the invoking of... She certainly does have a child that she obviously wants to return to from the recording that she made. We know that she cares about this child, that she considers her. But she's not watching Nickelodeon every day. This is my read on it. I think it's possible that either...

The obituary, like, I don't know that they misinterpreted the obituary or what that meant or something. But yeah, it struck me more as, especially because we got to hear her record that message and it was this like,

I don't know, though. I guess you could look at it now back and say, oh, no, she's talking to a kid that she is raising and really misses. I had read it as like, I thought I might like make my way back to you one day and now I won't get the chance. And I hope you know I loved you. And so, yeah, I think it seems like this is a lie because it's a tactic. As Shauna, who I am really reluctant, given the way that she is behaving here, to give any credit to.

I think rightly clocks when she, I mean, this, this fight is harrowing. What she says to Mel is hideous, but I think this part of like, she's using you, she's manipulating you. She's trying to make you emotional. Seems right to me. Shauna had me there. She lost me with everything else. When did she lose you? When did she lose you, Mallory? Pre or post firing the gun? Um,

Honestly, Pri, she had lost me well before she made Mel piss her pants in front of everyone. Thought, first of all, that it was really fascinating to hear Mel tell Shauna about the kid because when we watched Shauna listen to the tape in the present timeline and then share this news with the rest of the Yellow Jackets, like, it certainly seemed to me, to us, I think that...

Shauna did not know this thing. Now what it seems like is she's like, oh shit, the thing Mel told me was true and I thought it was bullshit. I thought it was a lie. Yeah, because what we know about Shauna is that she would say that Hannah is playing Mel whether she is watching Ren and Stimpy every day or not. Like she has no way of knowing that she will believe the worst or she will believe the thing that...

you know, reimposes her point most powerfully. Yes, absolutely. She is only considering of self at all times and increasingly so. So we know she'd say that no matter what. We also basically know that her getting this comeuppance 25 years later and seeing that it is somewhat true that Melissa was right and

It won't do shit. It has no impact on her. She literally said, I don't care about that at all. She will still chomp, chomp, chomp right into Melissa's arm and arrive at her home to kill her. Arm sashimi, as Ty said. Arm sashimi, Jodi. Oh my God. Yeah, totally. Like, Shauna saying to Mel, like, I didn't know you were this fucking stupid. There was a lot of vitriol and venom behind that. But when Mel then left and Shauna was like,

The exasperation, she's like, I simply cannot abide the fact that you would walk away from me. Real Cersei Lannister, no one walks away from me energy from Shana here. She said, I'm not done talking to you. Shocking and scary. It's scary. I mean, it's certainly felt because we know that the relationship that these two have, it feels verbally and emotionally abusive. She's a very young person, but like that is, it feels...

Melissa is in a very bad position, and she's got a gun. Yes. She's got a gun. This was kind of what I was... Sounds like a fucked up thing to say about a scene that we're describing in these really dire terms, but this is kind of what I was asking for more of the last couple episodes because...

I think seeing there's such a, to invoke Tony Stark in Iron Man 3, why not? Such a we create our own demons thing happening here with Shauna and Mel. And in order for then the present storyline to fully land, we have to see what went wrong between these two people. And we had seen certainly that Shauna was treating Mel like shit, but...

To lean into that, like their actual relationship, their dynamic, how are they with each other and then how do they behave? To see that abuse unfolding in private, unfolding in public, in front of everyone. To see the way that Shauna delights in diminishing Mel, in making her afraid and making her feel small.

I don't need a lot more after that to understand why Mel would want to do these things to Shauna in the present if that is what is happening. So I was like very upset watching this, but actually really glad that we got this scene. I think we really needed it. And listen, was it horrible to hear you think you're important? No one gave a shit about you until me. It was.

Did I chuckle? Because this is so clearly a meta wink to the audience about Mel suddenly becoming like the most important character in the show after being a total not entity. And what does Shauna say to her? Like the first interaction, like, oh, are you not boring? Or, oh, do you have an actual personality? It's all very meta, but it also very much feels like a callback to the worst things that Shauna did.

Jackie's saying to her. Yes, yes. I am the most interesting thing about you. People only care about you because of me. These are the things that she believes. What you're saying about like, yes, we needed this to then understand their dynamic in the future, to also know that one of the first things that adult Shauna says to Melissa is, are you still in love with me? Yeah.

Insane. Insane. To know that this is the way that she's treated her, a prominent interaction in their past for adult Shauna, an adult, no longer a teenager, to maybe consider, to think that Melissa would be in love with her?

Obsessed with her? Who wouldn't be? Really worrying. I love that Jackie call out because, you know, I think in the Jackie relationship, certainly this is one of the things that warmed us to Shauna so fully in the first season. Shauna was on the other side of this, right? Where it was like,

You don't think about me at all. You don't care where I want to go to college. You don't care who I'm interested in sexually or romantically. Like, it's all about you all the time. And this is a very poetic and poignant and sad thing. The specifics of Shauna's life are not things that we can recognize or understand. But this is, I think, a very true-to-life thing where, like, you start to make other people feel the way someone made you feel, right? And then, like, you think about where Shauna is. You know, we'll talk a little bit later about...

Jeff and Callie, but like, you know, we were laughing last week about Jeff being like, I'm affable, but like he is trying to be present for her, even to be in cahoots with their crime lord suburban ways, trying to explain why they need some karma points. And she's just like,

Can you go get me a snack so that I can lie to you again? You know? Right. We see the adjustment that she's made, and it's not to her behavior. It's to the way that she manipulates. And that's pretty terrifying. She sees, as a result of this abuse towards Melissa, that Melissa leaves her. I mean, we don't know what's down the line for them, but we do know that in this case—

She goes to a different gorgeous tent in the woods and says, I live here now. I can't be with this person anymore. And it really makes you think about the softer way that Shauna treats Jeff. She is certainly not...

verbally abusing him, but she's lying to him and she's doing whatever it takes with Jeff to keep him on the line, but to kind of let her treat him however she wants. The theme is, I think what you're observing about the evolution of the manipulation of behavior is genius. Treating all of them like, I expect that you will be here and remain loyal to me and I take you completely for granted. And like,

you know, it was, I felt quite sad to see Jeff breaking down and crying and telling Callie, like being married to your mother is just a really lonely thing. I thought that the,

A lot of the characters on the show have done galling things, but Shauna having the fucking nerve to say to Mel, like, you should have listened to your wife about Chekhov's empty gas tank. Frankly, how dare you? Like, how dare you? You're going to tell someone else that they should have listened to their spouse? You're going to use a piece of information you got while hiding in a closet with a knife that you bought with a credit card at an Ace Hardware to, like, bring this person down? Price tags still on.

Price tag still on. Oh, my God. Well, Shauna has a new person in her life who is eager to be taken under her wing or at least pretend to be eager to be taken under her wing. And that is Hannah. Because it's time to cut the bonds in the middle of the night. But first, it's time to say to Cody...

Eric Chong, who is that? Who's that name on your rucksack? And Cody's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I liked that the seed Edwin had planted had really like taken root in Hannah's mind and kind of poisoned. Like clearly you should, you should cut, you should cut the rope and go, but that's not what's happening here. I had really thought that at some point someone would go on an excursion and Cody would deceive them, lead them to peril in some way. I actually, I think ultimately this is, while I'm sad that Joel McHale is very quickly gone, um,

Odd. I think this is a lot more interesting that like it is kind of another version of Adam in season one. Like we see enemies, we see ghosts everywhere. And actually, like maybe he wasn't a threat. Maybe he could have helped us get out of here. But Hannah stabbed him in the eye. And so we'll never know.

We'll always know, though, that he was the closest to being able to get us out of here. He could have deceived us and thrown us over a cliff, sure. But he's also literally the only person we've encountered who knows how to get us out of here. Hannah's commitment to the people who she arrived to find a head on a plate is...

I mean, I do find it interesting, and I liked seeing over and over again Hannah disprove this thing that Cody said in the woods when she wants to go back to camp. He wants to, you know, keep running away, and he says, you have no instincts. That is clear. Right.

She has a very different set of instincts. She has been an adolescent girl and she has the instinct to align herself, to get into a clique, to power play within. Yeah, seek refuge in the clique. Exactly. Yes, totally. Does that always work? No. Right. Sometimes it does. She's taking a pretty big risk. So what is your read on this? The haste with which she joins the murder club. And also this is a...

don't know that this would be the first way I killed someone. Like, just a knife to the eye? My God. Christ almighty. She pins it on Cody when Shauna, you know, who again, rightly was like, something's up, sitting in her hut fingering the hair chunk, by the way. Let the record state that Shauna is fingering, much like Matt Murdock has been fingering his devil horn over on Daredevil Born Again. Shauna is just stroking and fingering the chunk of hair that she pulled from the woods.

Weird and gross. Hannah's like, yeah, Cody did it. I'm going to stab him in the eye. So why is Hannah doing this? Is it the scientific curiosity that she cited? Is it the idea behind what Mel said, right? People are willing to do some messed up stuff just to see another day, and she can clock that this is the only path forward to get into an alliance with some of the people who are out here. Is it...

Some more genuine calling and pull some sort of actual desire and sense of belonging or is it purely tactical? What do you think is happening here?

I think it is somehow both tactical and impulsive. I think that, you know, one of the funniest parts of the harrowing scene we're talking about between Melissa and Shauna is when you see Hannah over in the animal pen, like, basically looking over the fence like this, watching what's going on very curiously. Yeah. And...

And she sees Shauna shoot at someone, you know, and she doesn't know if she missed her on purpose or on accident. But when she sees the rage in Shauna's eyes, when she comes over and realizes that they're trying to escape, I think it is tactical to throw Cody under the bus. Yeah. I think Cody then calls her a cunt. Um,

right here in a matriarchal system. And I think that is some incentive to stab him in the eye. I think his sort of microaggressions have been building and building, and she just sort of goes for it. I think that is impulsive, and I think it is a learned impulsiveness that she has seen in just a matter of 24 or so hours in this encampment. It's like, this is how we're operating.

We're putting axes in the back of people's heads and we're shooting at our girlfriends. Right. Right. We talk a lot, you know, it's a, we're a week away from Last of Us season two, as previously mentioned. We talk a lot when we cover that show, when we talked about season one about like the us and them, who's an us and who's a them. And, you know, it's so interesting to think about like how quickly that can change and swing. Well, which us are you going to maybe be able to see another day with? Yeah.

Is there something there that scares you into that adherence? Is there something that like titillates and stimulates and intrigues you? Those are not mutually exclusive possibilities ultimately. And it feels like maybe that's part of what's happening here with Hannah. I think on the is Hannah pick girl from the pilot front, Hannah opting into being a member of the team makes it way more likely to me. Prisoners are just kind of like,

and eaten, but a chase through the wilderness, that means you pulled a card because you're a part of the ritual. And if you pulled a ritual, you're part of, if you're part of the ritual, you're part of the group. So I think Hannah pick girl stock just went way up and really, I just need it not to be Mari. Well, and what we, if you're pulling cards, what we also now are suspicious of is if the cards are being rigged, might van not rig it for, you know, first one in first one out.

That's an easier moral pull. Totally. I mean, yeah. How many, I wonder how many people we're going to see fall into that pit now that it's there. It should be a lot of people. I know one person we're not seeing fall into it. I know. God. I guess, would it be, I'm realizing that we didn't actually even say that like when Travis takes Lottie out there,

She walks over the pit like Wilderness Jesus on twigs. Yeah. She's just like, I'm going to prove to you

That it will spare me. That I have nothing to fear from your shenanigans. Like, I am part of something bigger and greater, and I trust in it, and I know it. So you think she knew she was walking out onto a lattice of twigs? I think it is open to interpretation whether it was... Certainly when she hears the twig snap and pauses and looks back at him and kind of, like, smirks, I think at that point she's like, you're up to something, I know it, and, like, I've been warned, basically, by the sound, and I'm out. Yeah.

That's maybe most likely. I think it's possible that even before that, Travis was behaving so erratically there. Like on the one hand, he was really clear and lucid. Like, it's bullshit. You're bullshit. Like, I can't let you do this. I can't. I won't. But then he was also kind of like,

and like muttering and murmuring and just behaving in a way that is kind of like distinct other than all of his like mushroom tea trips from how he typically conducts himself. And when she invoked Javi and the wind came and she just let it like, you know, bathe her face, like,

It's such a like Bran, Osha, like who do you think sends the wind boy moment where like it just – and then she starts to walk forward. So it felt to me like at least possible that she's like I can tell – Travis is being weird. Does Lottie have the – okay, listen. I'm talking myself out of it. Does Lottie have the best gauge for when people are being really weird? Like maybe not. But it seemed like she was like Travis –

is behaving oddly and is perhaps seeking to do something, but I am in control because I trust in the wilderness. And so she steps forward. What is she walking forward toward otherwise? I don't know.

Oh, you know, I do think we know about adult Lottie, at least that like she has harnessed both believing in a pretty wild system of beliefs and also knowing how to seem ethereal. Like knowing how to wear robes and whisk about. So that might be a bit of the walking forward into the wind. But it's an interesting moment for season three, which I think has done a good job of

laying out groundwork where you could use lots of things as proof for the supernatural in the exact same way that you could use them as proof of the practical. Yes. This, I wonder, you know, is there a physics explanation? I mean, frankly, yes, there is on Reddit. Couldn't understand a lick of it. But like...

Travis doesn't know what he's doing. He could have laid this lattice of trees just wrong enough for her to be able to walk on them and not fall into the pit and fall into the sticks. And we hear it creaking and cracking. And when he tested it, he threw a log with like great force. A giant log.

Whereas Lottie is ethereally whisking about. Dance, mass, vectors, I don't know. I don't know. But the wilderness Jesus in this particular moment is looking pretty real. Certainly, whether there was like a clocking in real time by Lottie or later, at some point they have to widely become aware of the pit. She's going to be like, oh, fuck, yeah, I'm special. I've been chosen yet again. Whether that's already happening or she'll...

She's going to say, give me my crown. Give me... Loves it. Give me... Love those antlers. Give me them antlers. So the is it supernatural or is there another explanation comes up in a few different ways in the present storyline. So let's shift there. We're going to very quickly talk about Jeff and Callie and Misty and Walter, though frankly, we could do the entire pod on Misty and Walter, but it wouldn't feel right without Joe. No, it wouldn't. We shouldn't delve too deep. Exactly. We'll quickly talk about them and then we'll get to

Everything with Mel, Shauna, Ty, and Vam. Jeff and Callie, we kind of already talked about this, but is there anything you want to add about Jeff finding Callie rolling a joint? She's like, I can't find my pipe. Very amusing response from a teenager to their dad finding them in their room rolling a joint.

He's got some feedback on proper technique. They smoke together. They get high together. Interesting parent-daughter bonding moment there. He wants to go celebrate. He landed the gig with the Joels, Jody. He did it. The Jolly Hitcher is going to be his to furnish. What a day for Jeff Sadecki. And he wants to go celebrate. Not a pigeon at Squab.

The fact that the stakes are $80 seems like the whole point. He wants to rebel against Shauna's tight chokehold on the family. And when Callie asks him, like, is that thing that you said to the Joels about mom? Is that how you feel? Do you believe it? And he's like reluctant to engage. And she says, it's okay. I feel that way. I feel that my mom is reckless, crazy, destroying our family. And then Jeff begins to cry.

I thought that the look on Callie's face here, I have been like kind of maybe frankly too resistant given that all theories are in the mix at this point. Maybe too resistant to the possibility of Jeff or Callie being the ultimate like, oh, that's what happened with Lottie reveal. The look on Callie's face here when she was watching Jeff was the fullest I felt sucked into like

So I'm curious how you parse this scene and also just in general where you are on Callie Lottie Corner and whether you think Callie was involved in some way. I will tell you, I did not know how to read that look on her face when she is looking upon her father like that. I mean, I think my...

My just sort of main take if I were in real life and not watching Yellow Jackets is a little bit like you can't let your kids in on your marriage like that. I know she's already in pretty far, but this is a little much. Although I recognize that Jeff is in a vulnerable position. I thought the sort of most telling exchange or the least like, you know, the Texas text exchange is when they're talking about squab and how expensive it is. And

I believe Jeff said, or just Callie said, one of them says, mom would kill us if we spent that much. Yes. And the other says, yeah, she would. She would, yeah. In a way where they're really entertaining the thought, like, might she kill us? What is she capable of? There was that threatening moment with Shauna and Callie earlier in the season with the tape recording that, like, I still can't totally shake.

She's down. She is. And maybe it's just kind of I thought this about the way in which she bit into Melissa.

That's muscle memory. And I do think that like her threatening of teenage Callie from time to time is also sort of muscle memory of like what she went through in the woods, the way she is willing to sort of intimidate her in a way that she doesn't do with Jeff, perhaps also knowing that they will respond differently and that.

Callie is stronger than Jeff. We see that too. The other thing that this scene made me think is when is, you know, that in the absence of Shauna, the way that Jeff has been pursuing the Joles and pursuing this job and that he ultimately gets it and he wants to celebrate is it reminds me of after Natalie's funeral, when Shauna is talking about what people would say at her funeral. And she's basically like, here lies Shauna. Yep.

Her husband prospered in her death. Yeah, thrived without her, yeah. Her husband's better off. And maybe. I can't quite tell what's happening with these two if they're finally giving up on her and if she finally deserves it. I know. It's such an interesting place for the show to be because...

You know, we've been chatting about this a lot this season. I think, like, Shauna's, well, I'll do it to protect my family logic. While on the one hand, that's part of what can be, like, insidious is what you use to, like, rationalize your own behavior to yourself. But also it did feel true and like a code and like a real kind of, like, mooring, like an anchor to some humanity. And...

I don't know what feels more treacherous as a possibility that Jeff and or Callie actually will lose faith in Shauna and will reach the point where they can't abide by her behavior anymore. They can't like sanction it and co-sign it or just that she thinks that's happening. Like it's really scary to me to think of what Shauna would do if she believed that they had

left her. But it's like, but it's a great point for them making the turn on their own because she could come to believe it no matter what. And that is what we see with Shauna. And that is what we so see really being made a point of at Melissa's house is that

She did it with Adam. She's done it here. She will make the truth what she wants to be. She will create her own circumstances and then she will make herself the victim of them and she will blame other people for them. Yeah. And it's very reckless who she might blame. And I think the last people you would think she would blame will be her daughter and her husband. But how far is she willing to go, especially if we're starting to work under this

The last yellow jacket is the only one that's safe mentality. Yeah. Well, and I really love your muscle memory observation because not only does it help to maybe explain some of what we saw in that moment with Shauna and Callie with the phone recording, but like at some point then when that is awakened...

when that suspicion like starts to worm its way through you, through your mind, through your heart, through your soul again, once that, like, you know, we saw young van at the beginning of the episode, like inject the, the, the darker serum into adult Vans IV bag. And it's like,

Once that drop of something noxious is in there, the whole thing is polluted. And so then how would Callie or Jeff or anyone remain immune for long? So this is all very worrying heading into the finale. I'm still like...

I'm still really like team Sudeikis family. Yeah. I thought as fucking deranged as it was, like seeing them all end up out in the season two finale, not my favorite episode of Yellow Jackets, but like everybody kind of winding up in the thick of it at Sunshine Honey. You know, frankly, of course, one of the many things that you could point to to make the case that Callie is maybe more actively involved now. And of course, the Swift Eats episode.

Bag of guts that old Randy delivered. Plenty of other. The intestine suspension, not one that the school usually has to roll out. This is very new. Very new, even in Jersey. Don't have a slip for that one.

One of the many people who Shauna has alienated is, of course, Misty. So Misty is with Shauna and the rest of the other Yellow Jackets in the episode. We're going slightly out of order here to hit Misty once she leaves and winds up with Walter. She departs Chateau Armflesh and takes a Tesla Dash.

We will also be sure to check out this guy's aquarium ornaments on Etsy. We make the pledge now. Goes to an open field and Walter comes in via helicopter. This was so funny to me and so extraordinary. Says specifically that he borrowed from Keith Morrison. It's like perfect for Walter and Misty, of course. So glad that these two are back together. I, like Walter, was like, wow, can't wait to see them work the case. And then, of course...

Misty's just playing him yet again, needs intel. I love being in Walter's home, whether it's the helicopter or this beautiful house. I love anything in the show that reminds us that a bunch of scaffolding fell on Walter and he has a plate in his head and got millions of dollars in a lawsuit and is secretly really rich. I just love any time the show dabbles in that space. It's wonderful. The Wilson Phillips is playing. Mm-hmm.

Wonderful stuff. I just have no notes. He makes the martini a la Misty's. And Misty is like, I've got some questions. I've got some thoughts. Here they are. Could we have been wrong about Shauna killing Lottie? Are we putting too much stock in the DNA evidence? By the way, I looked into some Humane Society records and Shauna did, in fact, adopt a cat. This is when Walter says...

maybe the cat waited in the car during the murder. I believe this is in the running. Of course, like there's no book club kind of can't be, I think can't be toppled. This is in the running for like next best line in the history of the show to me. This is just absolute perfection. And you are saying stated by a man. I just want that on the, this is another line from a man for the best line on the yellow jacket show. Oh no, what's wrong with me? I can't help it. It's, I'm going to,

rework my power rankings and find something that Mari said to put up there. I promise. That's my, that's my pledge from me to you. Thank you. Van saying we, we, we ate a fucking kid. Very, very good as well. Um,

And Walter's like, listen, I know that you don't like when I editorialize on the interpersonal dynamics between you and your teammates. It's all about a person who learns a lesson. That's an unusual trait to see from a, from a boyfriend on a television show, but he does try to learn that lesson. I heard your feedback. I've processed it. I would, however, still like to let you know that I do believe your judgment is clouded where your teammates are concerned. Um, Missy's like, you know, you might be right. Um, do you have that cloned phone? And here's my single biggest note for you on the episode.

Unless I missed something. Entirely possible. This phone was not password protected? He puts it down, walks away. Misty is able to unlock it on her own. I do not believe for a second that Walter would not lock and password protect this clone phone given that it is a key piece of evidence in their murder investigation. This drove me crazy.

She does a bit of tippy tapping before she gets into it. You think she entered the password? You took it as entering a password. I felt like she might know the password. Great. But I'll take it a step further. This guy...

isn't leaving a phone with 00 Quigley... Yeah. Too trusting. ...without knowing that she might get into it is my belief. I mean, he's not going to make that kind of mistake, although...

Their behavioral dynamic where she says, oh, what, no chocolate shavings, kind of tricks him into going back inside. And he says, I'm so glad we're working together again. And she's like, oh, me too. And then the second he turns around, she rolls her eyes. Yes. It reminded me a lot of the former Coach Ben Misty dynamic where he kind of knows he needs her, can't stand her, and is tagging her along just enough. Yes.

is obviously what Misty is doing to Walter here, which would suggest that he is tag-elongable, that he could be manipulated by his feelings for her, that he maybe could leave a phone there. He seems concerned when the phone goes with Misty out of his gorgeous home, but not that concerned. I just needed him to be like,

You know the password. You can figure it out. Wink, wink, it's a puzzle for you. Like, something. But, okay, so you think he may...

This is interesting because one of the things I wanted to ask you is like, she opens the phone, she looks through, we see the camera roll, we see like a flower, we see a wine glass, and then we don't see what Misty is looking at, but she sees a photo that makes her eyes bug out, eyes go wide, and she says, oh my God. She had previously said to Walter, like, I'm missing something. And so it feels like she has seen here the missing piece, right? Right. This is what's going to allow Misty to do what she said when she left Chateau Arm Flush and actually crack the case. One of my reads on this was like,

Okay. While we don't know who she saw or what she saw, it felt like it eliminated a couple candidates from Theory Corner on who killed Lottie, one of whom I thought was Shauna, just because even though here she's like, are we sure? You know, the DNA, oh, the cat. Like, she had been so dialed in on Shauna as the leading suspect that I don't think she would have been like, oh my God, I think she would have been like, see, fuck, yeah, it was Shauna. So I'm like, all right, it's not Shauna. Okay. Okay.

I also eliminated Walter because I'm like, Walter wouldn't leave evidence of his own involvement unnoticed.

Early in the season, a big pet theory of mine was that Walter would go seek to harm one of the Yellow Jackets in order to then solve the case with Misty and form the exact trauma bond that she told him he could never understand. He's always been a fan of the one Yellow Jacket left standing theory, and it will be Misty. And he will be the mastermind behind it. Yeah, and like loves murder, was so ready to kill hot, hot Kevin last season. So-

Walter was like a leading candidate for me for a long time, but I was like, oh, he's not going to leave evidence of his own involvement on a phone that Misty's going to scan through. But now you've brought me back. Like,

Do you think he wanted her to look through that phone and find something? Do you think there's a chance he's leading her somewhere deliberately or no? Is that not possible? I don't think he wanted her to because he did not seem to want to give her the phone. He just wasn't panicked that she had it. He's going to figure it out. They're always just going to figure it out, I think. I mean, we know that

I think that she's looking at Lottie's cloned phone. So it has to be something on Lottie's phone, camera roll text that she's seeing. I think the easiest theory is that she sees a text or correspondence from Callie. And I think that would be the most shocking, but also concreting of something she knew in the back of her mind, but didn't know completely about.

It could also maybe contribute to this DNA thing. I've always been assuming that Walter was lying, but this could feel kind of like a half-truth. If the DNA cemented that it was someone in Shauna's family, but not her exact DNA, then he could, you know, kind of find his way around something. I don't know what's going on with that guy.

I honestly thought that she wasn't drinking that martini because she thought he might have poisoned it and then or drugged it. And then he drank a sip of her martini when she left. Oh, my God. I'm going full yellow jacket. I'm feeling insane. Trust no one. What a journey that was. I I'm this is the most and I've been on on Callie is going to be the Lottie reveal, whether it was intentional or just an accident. I'm

I will find out. But I think this idea of, like, the darkness in Shauna being in Cali, like, if we think back to them watching the gut suspension incident and bonding over it, I think that, like...

Of all the scenes this season that, like, we have felt like a very, like, a thrumming, humming, pumping vein that we haven't fully tapped, that mall trip between Lottie and Callie, like, it just feels like, sure, inciting Shauna's rage when she got home and saw the necklace on Callie, obviously that led to somewhere immediately, but, like, what was going on ultimately with Lottie and Callie? And we had the, like, you know...

truth and dare deception and Lottie, Callie actively, not passively, like actively seeking information, intel, and understanding of a proximity to this thing that they had all done together back in the day. So I've really warmed to this theory and some evidence on the phone pointing toward Callie I think would be really interesting. And then Shauna having to confront that, if it is the case, would have to be really interesting. Any credence or anything in your mind that like is pointing to Jeff,

Ty, Van, Lisa. What about Mel? I mean, we're going to get to the Mel stuff in a minute here, but

I think we're like in like, oh yeah, no, they could just be like Mel is the villain of the season. This wasn't just an impromptu in the moment. The wilderness got hold of her again. That muscle memory that you're citing kicked in again and she stabbed Van. It's like maybe she was actually seeking Shauna. Maybe she did kill Lottie. I think that's certainly possible and seems like a competing leading theory as well. So Mel and Callie are top of my list for me.

other than maybe like literally another surprise this person's actually alive, which I think would feel like a bit much this season, but you'll never know with this show. That's honestly probably top of my list is like Lottie shenanigans. Just Lottie up to something. Lottie did it herself. Who knows? I think for Mel, it either... You kind of have to be...

either all in or all out. She either only sent the tape, she sent it with a note that Shauna never got, or she did it all. The note thing is another bit of Callie evidence, too. Right. It's just, Callie's the one who found the envelope, though, like, again, Lottie saw Callie tuck that back into the drawer in her room, so...

I also, you're just leading me further down the Callie path because when you were like, she is Shauna's daughter and the shoplifting trip, I was like, if she's Shauna's daughter, she's showing up in that red dress. She's given a quippy one-liner and then she's killing Lottie. But I think also what Misty could have seen is sort of like Callie being invited. I mean, we know that she died in this

that we've seen before with candles, very ritualistic. And she has been very ritualistically interested in Callie and her power and her heart necklace. You know, so like, it could kind of be both. I think it could kind of not be so demented on Callie's part. Right. But she could be hiding it. That Lottie invited her there. We had also that whole like Lottie apology thing. We think we know because of the $50,000 that that was Lisa. Right.

Not necessarily. How many apologies was Lottie handing out? We have no idea. But yeah, like you're saying, going all the way back to season one, the vision of that stairwell, that hallway, the candles, that this is where I meet my end kind of like the location or not having that awareness. And then, you know, what's better than a self-fulfilling prophecy? Nothing, right? The obsession that Lottie had with Shauna's baby last season and this idea that, oh, I wasn't wrong. I was just late.

And it is just Callie is like so in keeping to me with Lottie and the way that Lottie always finds a way back into that belief system and to validating it to herself. And so like Lottie

Yeah. Inviting Callie there for something and it going horribly wrong. The DNA part of it, I'm like, I still am like, I don't feel like that's not how DNA works in terms of like, it's your kids. No, listen, I'm not a scientist. Me neither. I said it many times.

But they were all in this, like, they live in the same home. So could some of Shauna's genetic material have been on Callie and then made its way to, I don't fucking know. Maybe. Yellowjack is just not abiding by the nature of science also seems completely possible. Like, yeah.

They might be like, it is how DNA works. God damn it. There are like levels of DNA tests. And I think that there are I don't know what levels Walter is using. He did say explicitly that it was Shauna's DNA. Yes. I do think there are jankier DNA tests that will kind of tell you like a general pattern that could be familial.

And that, you know, if you've done a 23andMe, or if your cousin's done a 23andMe and you murder someone, you're going to have a bad time. But I think everybody's up to something. Oh, I'm getting paranoid. We got to log off. I know, I know. Well, we have one character set left to finish, but we have talked about a lot of this already. This is the Mel, Shauna, Ty, Van present day stretch. So Van and her younger self in this...

hospital bed, vision, dream, supernatural experience. Again, any number of possibilities are open here. This is basically the Goonies never say die, like inciting moment that sends Van on her quest in the rest of the episode when she wakes and tells Ty, like, I'm thinking a lot about that old man who just wanted, that's all he wanted before he died was saltwater taffy. And like, I'm not a taffy person for me. This is going to be the quest. It's adventure. Um,

I thought, like, young Van invoking Ty to hospital bed-bound Van and, like, she's been trying to show you, listen to her. She hasn't been herself lately. I know. Even more reason she needs this, too, was, like, really naughty and weird and needlessly kind of, like, confusing and bad. I think all of this has been kind of messy this season. But just in general...

How did this play to you? We've seen many characters, including Van at the end of the episode, on the brink of death, have a like vision where they are engaging with a younger version of themselves. They're in a different kind of plane or state. Did this feel to you like just basically Van having a dream and experience where she's commuting with her younger self and guiding herself? Did it feel like the wilderness guiding her? Did it feel like something else? Yeah.

It felt a little to me like the writers wanted to get some good lines in. You know, like I liked the Goonies thing. Like I like seeing them talk about this. I like the way this being. But I guess I wanted to sink into the idea that it was –

Van imagining her younger self, I think that's like a reasonable thing that could happen basically on your deathbed or even in just a half dream, even when you're just feeling existential, knowing you're looking down the barrel of death. That is something that could happen. How did my life go? Yeah. Yeah. And I like the introduction of it's a classic hero's journey, like of

that kind of being the way that Van might see life. Yeah. I think when it loses me or it loses that logic a bit is the X marks the spot. Yeah. Which, you know, invoking the treasure and then we see, but I kind of like it though. I'm sort of talking myself into it because when we see Van then say that at the railroad, when they find Melissa remembering it X marks the spot,

I feel like that's a pretty good argument for...

you see what you want to see. That's how it feels to me, too. Like, you could definitely see Van turn, see the sign, X marks the spot, and say, oh, my goodness, they have, in fact, been guided by this larger force. But I read it as, like, and maybe, right? And I do really, I consistently love that part of the show, that, like, you can interpret it. It is open to debate and interpretation. And if they ever come out definitively and tell us, I think either explanation will track in full, and maybe they will never tell us, and it will be up to us, just like the characters, to decide what we believe. Yeah.

That felt to me like Van would have, no matter if they had not seen Mel and not stopped there, something else that day Van would have ascribed meaning to. Found that X or that shape somewhere and said, this is my purpose. And looking for that purpose and that sense of meaning in your final breath actually makes complete sense to me. That in some ways makes much more sense to me than the...

Oh, it's time for me to get all stabby-stabby again, even though I really tried to tie out of this all season, and now I'm going to do it, and oh, wait, no, I'm not, because it's not me. Like, none of that worked for me at all in that episode. But Van trying to tell herself you have a quest, and Van, since the beginning of the show, like...

When Van survived the wolf attack, like, when they – every time Van made it through some horror, she actually really actively engaged with this idea. Like, I thought there was a reason. Like, I thought there was a reason. And so to be then confronted with the end and to feel like it's – oh, the ability to find that purpose –

is like a fleeting, finite thing and I have reached the end of it. And then to desperately look for it one more time, I'm actually like compelled by. Yeah. I think, I mean, I don't want to skip ahead too much. Do it. Go anywhere. What is the, I'm, one second, I'm trying to find the, um,

You know, when she really gets into it in the plane with her younger self and they have their second conversation, we've gone from the beginning to the end. We've gone through the hero's journey. Yeah. And she says, I thought this was going to be a hero's journey. It is explained to her that I guess the heroic act was saving Ty, which I think neither of us really agree with. Not a fan. Not a fan. And she says...

Now I'm dead. And, you know, she's always been trying to make sense of this. Like, what have I been saved for? Right. And I think you can find... I mean, Yellow Jackets really is a story of, like, how you can find...

wonder in normalcy and you can find normalcy in wonder. Like they can apply politics when they are stranded in the woods as a bunch of teenage girls. And then they can also be living a fairly normal life and see an ex somewhere and decide that that has some higher meaning. But I'm curious what you thought about when young Van tells her,

surviving this was never the reward. Because to me, I kind of thought, if you apply that more broadly, that it sort of means surviving wasn't the reward. The way that you live is the reward. And how does Van gauge that? I think in many ways, she's lived better than most in

But what are any of them getting out of this for? Are these the lives that they wanted to lead? Is the question that is often being asked and almost never answered. Right. Never having change applied, never adjusting. That's always what we hear, like, the specter of young Jackie taunting Shauna about. Like, this was the life? Like, this was the thing? I thought that...

surviving this was never the reward. What does that mean? If this isn't the ending, then tell me what happens. Where would be the fun in that? Was in a scene between two performers I really like and a character I care deeply about, pretty lame.

Because, like, I think what you're suggesting is interesting to me. It's like a very, we love, whenever we can on House of R invoking Station 11 and, like, survival is insufficient. Like, it's not actually survive and endure from Savage Starlight and Last of Us. Like, there has to be something else beyond just moving forward to see another day. Otherwise, why be alive, right? That part I like. This, to me, felt...

Um, a little bit like we're going to try to say something that seems really profound about what might wait beyond, um,

And it's not our job on the show to say, like, this is the afterlife or this or what awaits you. But what, I mean, to me, it's like, that's all there for us already. They're literally on a plane. They're journeying into the beyond. Like, this just felt so on the nose and just clunky in the pursuit of profundity in a way that I, like, I think particularly because I was just kind of grumpy about what was happening with Van. Like, it was like, ah.

Really? Yeah. I think if they'd cut it at surviving, this was never the reward. That was a concept I was pretty interested in. Yes. It's the next part of the exchange. Where would the fun be in that is so kitschy. It does. It really undermines, I think, what is happening and that it's, it's kind of leading you to create your own narrative about where they're headed in these planes. And it's not the same plane. It's different planes. And,

The concept of what are we surviving for... Yes, much more interesting. ...is something they're thinking about in the woods. It's something they're thinking about out of the woods. And I thought it was really interesting when they were presented with the possibility of being saved, of going back home, that the two people who are most passionate about it, most vocally passionate about it, are Van and...

And Natalie, who have the worst home lives, you know, they, I think, are considering what a reward it could be, how different of a life they could have, what they could change. And a new appreciation for trying to, yeah, like trying to either build something for yourself or surround yourself with the people who do bring you joy and make you happy. I think like, especially in a story where these characters are

sometimes out of necessity and sometimes out of desire, doing really terrible things. That question of what you are doing them to ensure, like what you are doing them to secure, is an incredibly rich text that I love. So I'm with you. Like that part of it, I felt quite captivated by. I don't think we need the like

What's going on in the afterlife, huh? Stuff spelled out quite that. But you know what? I'm talking about it in real time and I'm thinking, I think actually the reason, I think if you only kind of wink at it and allude to the unknowable aspect of that part of being alive and then dying, like what waits beyond, okay. I think there's maybe a more elegant way to do it, but okay. I think it's actually that this show is quite actively engaging with maybe a more hands-on examination of that. You know, we have like...

many examples now of engaging in this like vision dream space with somebody in their final moments of consciousness or first moments of death. And so like this show actually does seem interested in taking us into a glimpse of what awaits. And so then to be coy about it, it's like, well, wait, which thing are we doing here? But I will concede that like

I could have a different and softer reaction to that when I rewatched the season. I think that's entirely possible. That was just not my favorite scene. Well, I think your reaction is pretty similar to Vans, who's also like, what the fuck? You know? So I think that's totally fine. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

Before the stabbing, before the death, before we got wet crunch in the subtitles, wonderful stuff. This is real Netflix subtitling from our friends at Paramount Plus here. Flesh distends wetly. Shout out, Vecna. We miss you always. Can't wait for Stranger Things to come back. Speaking of flesh descending wetly, Shauna, we pick up right where we left off with Shauna and Mel. And I...

will never be able to look... I regret to inform you, but I will never be able to look at a piece of raw turkey bacon again the same way because that is what this... That is what this looked like to me. This was so gross. The dangling...

It was just so revolting. Forcing Mel to eat it. She takes it. They do the close-up profile shot of her really slowly chewing it before she then spits it into Shauna's face to make her escape. Of course, Shauna has to grab some hair. That's her signature move. Hurls the jam. I thought this was so disgusting and kind of like vintage chef's kiss, yellow jackets fashion. I almost couldn't believe how gross it was.

And then Mel gets away and I was like, wait, why isn't Shauna following her? I don't understand. Can you explain to me, first of all, how you felt watching the arm chewing? But second of all, why Shauna did not follow Mel? Why?

Was she too insecure about the fact that her minivan was not as nice as Mel's? Literally, yes. Like, that was my only thought because they give such show to Mel turning on her van with a button. And we know that Shauna has no such button. In fact, her car is so necessary of keys that Van can throw them into the woods when necessary for plot.

Maybe she didn't have her keys. No, she didn't. Yeah, no, she was driving. Maybe her keys were inside. She just parked outside waiting. Like, I... I don't... Very strange. No, I... Like, Shauna, if you have the force of will to chomp, chomp, chomp into an arm, have blood streaming down your chin and neck... So gross. Then you should have the force of will to follow her. I guess...

I don't know, she was probably just going to stab her wife when she got back. Like, I literally do not know. Okay, that was my only, the only place I could reach was like, she's waiting there to get the family as leverage. But why would she not assume that Mel would go get the family? She did know that car was out of gas, but she could never have imagined that her buddies would just...

stumble upon Mel having a terrible day. So I will now ask you about that. Is that another sign that the wilderness is in fact...

guiding these pawns on a chessboard, or was this just very convenient storytelling that our pals, Misty, Van, and Ty, happened to be passing Mel, Chekhov's gas tank, run out at last, hurling her shoulder into the side of her vehicle on the road. I did think Ty, like, chasing her down and then Misty, like, lording above her with a tire jack was very amusing. More muscle memory, yes. I do think that that was very... This is the most, like...

like their old selves we've seen. Like, it was very startling to see Shauna engage in such, like, hand-to-hand combat. We have not seen her really go for that in her adult life very often. She killed Adam. Yeah. Stabby, stabby. She looked very eager, like, when she went to the carjacking guy to get the car back and was holding the gun. She's been eager. I was like, I want to do it. Like, I want to. I'm not shaking because I'm scared. I'm shaking because I like it.

But you're right. But the comfort to do this here is like, yes, she wanted. The baptism by blood of like returning to that familiar way was, yeah, it's, there was no like, oh, how gross. I can't believe I have to do this to, to win. It was like, I like it. I want it. It feels right. I'm going to feed you a part of your arm. That's not necessary. And then just let, and then let you get away. Like I'm doing this for fun.

It was very amusing to me how when they take Mel in the car and they're all like, you know, you're meant to be dead. Not in the way that Roman said it to Tabitha on Succession, you're meant to be dead. Sorry, one of the best moments in television history.

Mel like brings up, you know, she made me eat a piece of my arm and they're all just like totally unmoved by it. It was just, that was great. I did really get kicked out of the Misty. I really liked, yeah, that little car scene of them just immediately going back into their old dynamics of like, we're varsity, you're JV. Yes. But like Misty is the equipment manager. So she's kind of like, I know they're crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. She's reading the GPS. She's like, yeah, we could go 20 miles this way, 40 miles this way. Like, Jeff would love to know that Colonial Williamsburg is on offer. He was so thrilled about that before. I liked, too, when Missy was like, you know, we're going to need an alibi. And Ty's like, well, we don't know what Sean has done.

Mrs. Yeah, no, I'm sure it's reasonable. Yeah, I bet that it's fine. That was very funny. Yeah, I mean, I think we, like, we... I did, I found this stuff pretty convincing for that Melissa is telling some variation of the truth, is not being set up to be the big bad villain. Tell me why. Because what we hear from her is...

That she changed her name, she went into hiding because of how they all acted when they got back. That it was clear that she was not included in the group. And I think that we see from the way that they are behaving towards her now, this immediate dismissal of someone who went through the exact same shit that they did, the exact same trauma, and yet she will forever be not one of them again.

I guess it could convince me either way that then could, if she is evil. That's what I was going to say. That could be the impetus for like seeking vengeance, right? But is she more evil, more vengeance seeking than Shauna? Like did she turn into Rambo when she got back? Yeah. I mean, the look on her face when she pulled away in the van to me was like evil activated. Like that felt even more so than the Callie expression with Jeff. I was like, this is a notable moment.

thing for a person's face to do. To me, yes. That was not a smile of having gotten away. No. It was a smile of having engaged in something that you took enjoyment from that you haven't gotten to engage with in a long time. Yeah. And I think you're... Well, I keep returning to this idea that you've invoked of muscle memory because I think that's totally in play that, like, when Mel says to them in the car, like, yeah, I sent the tape, but there's a lot more to it. And Van's, like, more than sending...

literal evidence of murder and all the explanations that Mel tries to provide, that then when the knife is there at the end and Van is like, am I this person or not? And Mel's like, well, I can be. I have been before and I can be again. And that there is an awakening. I think that's entirely possible that it is yet another thing inside of this episode that is more like the muscle memory activation or an awakening or instincts kicking in.

But there was something so, like, in that moment with Van, there was a pleasure in the violence. You know, the leaning in, the false embrace to get the knife, the way that she thrust it in, the, like, softness in her voice when she knew that she had won. Yeah.

Which made me think that she was on an active pursuit this whole time. And that even though Missy's like, actually, the freezer was me. I just didn't tell you because you suck and I thought I'd teach you a lesson. That maybe still we are going to learn that Mel was the one who was in the bathroom and dropped the phone. That who knows what happened with the breaks, but that Mel actually has been actively hunting Shauna for what she did.

We're like, I've been asking, kind of framing it as an either or. Is it Callie? Is it Mel? It's like, why not both? Like, it's totally possible that Mel could have been seeking out Shawna and Callie could be the one responsible for Lottie. That seems entirely possible. It does. I just moments ago in this podcast said it must be one or the other, but you're correct. You have convinced me. That's true.

That it could be both. Because you're right that, and I think to me what's most like what's going on here about the Melissa, you know, killing Van is,

Is that she kind of seems to do it for like, you know, to please the wilderness reasons. Yes. You know, Van asks, why can't that be me? Like, why can't I just do this? And she says, you don't want to be. She has said, you know, that you were always a good person. Right. And Van says, no, I don't. And that is sort of like a hero's journey moment. Yeah. And then Mel says, but I do. But I do. Yeah. Wet crunch. And thank you for putting that in the outline. You're welcome. Yeah.

You're welcome. So that I'll never forget it. But what does she want the kill for? Does she have cancer? Why? I mean, this is this larger question over the show of like, we heard it a lot last season. It was one of the core refrains of season two. Like, we brought it back with us. And is that the power of the wilderness or is it just the darkness to do these things? I think we've been talking a lot about the note and it's like,

What proof do we have that there was a note other than that Mel said it? The only thing we know for sure is that Shauna's name, Shipman, not Sadecki, was on the envelope along with the symbol. That's it. Like, the only tangible evidence we have in our hands that we've seen with our eyes is that Mel was invoking the wilderness, was invoking the belief system of

that guided them? Is it cute little shorthand to be like, hey, make sure no one else opens this but you? This is about the stuff we did back in the wilderness when we killed and ate people? That's her invisible ink move. Like, that's how she, you know. That's her knock three times on the door sign. Yeah, that's her signature. That's impossible. That's possible. But I think also, like, the mounting Mel suspicion is not just happening on its own. It's happening in contrast to us softening our stance on Shauna, which makes me more inclined to think Mel is

really the villain and that Shauna has been right. Because, like... Now, granted, Shauna thought it was somebody else entirely until last episode. I don't want to overstate it. Personally, I'm hardening my stance on Shauna and maybe that's the thing here. Let's not let it pass you down. Because...

Go ahead. Okay. So Shauna is there for reasons we don't understand. We're like, why wouldn't you pursue her? But she stayed. And then they all arrive. And before she sees that Mel is back, there was this moment of, I thought, really rare vulnerability from Shauna where she's like really relieved to see her teammates. Granted, this could just be like the thing Misty is always like, you're going to need someone to clean your mess up for you and I'm not going to do it. It might just be that. Because she does say like, I think I messed up. But I found it like notable that she was like,

I ran off on my own and that was bad. Like, I need you guys. There's that, right? I think that the fact that Mel, Misty previously, Mel in this episode, so many other characters, I have been very inclined over the years, many people who watch the show have been very inclined over the years to point to like, Shauna's doing the Adam thing again. She's making the same mistake. She has rushed to some sort of judgment and is incorrectly reaching a conclusion and will behave haphazardly as a result.

The fact that the show has made that such active text makes me, and Joe brought it up at this point last week, and I really agree, like,

way less inclined to think that's what's happening and way more inclined to think that Sean is actually right in her suspicion this time and that the pendulum has swung too far and that people are like, you cry wolf, you cry wolf, we're not going to believe you this time. And the thing that she thinks is happening is happening, that Mel has done these things. So I'm like pretty, I'm prepared to be wrong about all of this, obviously. I'm pretty firmly entrenched after this episode and like,

Mel is up to no good, but I'm with you. I would be very easily swayed into Mel's back to being up to no good. Right. After what happened. I think that's completely inbounds too. Yeah. Like this is kind of a place where it could be both. Mel could be up to no good. She could have just had her former, like kind of abusive wilderness girlfriend storm into her house.

bite some of her skin off. And now she's like, well, the wilderness is alive in me now too. You have come into my kitchen that literally has a giant sign that says the kitchen is the heart of the family. And you have brought this back into my life. And now I'm going to be evil or I'm going to get you back or whatever. But I guess when I'm looking at the facts, a mechanic told Shauna that the brakes were just

old because her van sucks. Always another explanation. Yeah. Always another explanation. Misty told her that that freezer's been broken for months and that she didn't tell her about it because she thought she'd have a nice little... What about the phone? What about the phone in the bathroom? The phone is the most inexplicable for sure because the lights go off. Yeah. We don't hear anybody tinkle. No. It's just phone set down in bathroom playing Queen of Hearts. Ominous. But...

the phone didn't try to murder her. It didn't do anything bad. You know?

Just like the tape didn't do anything bad. Right. The brakes did something bad. The freezer did something bad. And those have both been explained by another person. So Shauna's like repeat. And maybe, maybe, maybe Mel paid that mechanic. We have no idea. This could get more intense. But like what we have been hearing Shauna say, someone is trying to murder my family. Yeah. Yes. And if the only things are the tape,

and the phone in the bathroom, those have been very nonviolent threats. True, true. But also- So I don't know, but- Mel was close to Hannah.

Brought that tape back. Told none of them. Married Hannah's daughter and then put the tape. Okay, no, that's wild. And then put the tape back in the board. Everyone has the appropriate response to you married Hannah's daughter? Very weird. And changed her name, lying about who she is, and then put the tape back in the mix. Okay, no, they all should have changed their names. I actually do not agree with their responses to, like,

They're all like, this follows me forever. Change your name. Change your name. I don't know. I think she did the right thing. Change your name. She did fake Sue. You know, like she did a couple other things. But change your name seems like an okay thing to do. Oh my God. I just like...

But I totally agree with you and Joe that the cards are being set up for a cry wolf scenario. We literally heard Callie and Jeff say, like, are you starting to believe that mom's making all of this up in her head? Yeah. And that would maybe suggest that she's not. Right.

But too many people saying it out loud for it to be the thing that's happening, I think. But I'm also super mad at Shauna and annoyed with her. And she's been behaving a very selfish person. So she's been behaving badly. I thought that her she has had more, though, in this episode. Like, oh, yeah, I kind of like Shauna's got a point moments than she has in a while. Like when she was like, why the fuck are you guys mentioning Adam in front of

Mel's not on our side here. Also, I was like, Van was not there for that. Why is she pretending that she was? Just because they told her around a bonfire. This is, like, really bizarre. Oh, my gosh. But, Mallory, what I take from that scene is when they mention Adam, they're mentioning it because it's similar. They shouldn't have. But she says, why did you say that? You've dug her grave. Yeah.

You just dug her grave. No, Shauna, that presupposes that you must kill someone to save yourself. Well, that is- No, those are circumstances of your own making that you are now saying must murder someone else. Listen- They have not dug her grave. If you kill her, you have dug your grave. Listen, she drove to that house to commit a murder. It's going to take a beat or two for her to come down from-

The murder eye. From not getting to do her murder. Yeah, she's, I mean, one- You're right, that's hard for her. One bit of what Ty calls arm sashimi is just not going to do it. Like, she needs another fix. Maybe she'll come out of this, you know, they leave very sloppy work from our Yellow Jackets. They're like, we got to talk, we got to huddle, Mel, like, we're going to just leave you here. Unattended, so that she's able to close the flu. And-

I've got a QQ. How long did Van go outside? And how quickly does carbon monoxide poisoning set in? Was she gone for like two hours? Very, like either very quick work from the gas or a very long trip to get the oxygen from the car. Unclear. In this like two-story house. That was crazy. By the way. Maybe it was the wilderness. Could be. Not an accident that...

Because we're going to get this, like, when Van is trying to save Ty, puts the oxygen on Ty's face, we get this Ty vision. Ty against the other one. They're fighting. The neon phone is there, the phone that rang when Van found it in the basement and she heard Ty calling her. We see the other side of it. This is still very much like, this is real. Oh, something supernatural is afoot. Work from the show, everything they've done with this phone. But the fact that Ty had this vision in the first place

When the flu was closed, it's another gas-inspired vision, just like with the cave gas. Like, how much of what has happened has just been them being, like, exposed to something at home because the flu was shot in the wilderness, et cetera? Like, it felt very deliberate to me that that was happening again here. And then we're all like, oh, who killed Lottie? Maybe her ass just died. I mean, like, they are really exposed to, like, a lot of stuff.

Lottie just having like a stroke or a heart attack on the stairs and just like. She was clocking into that gas cave every day for a week. Eating a lot, a lot of 2.5 Yelp star food. And just crunching up every mushroom she could find in the woods. I mean, there are lots of things that could be killing them. It's true. Great point. We talked already about, you know, Van goes over. I don't know why you cut somebody's.

if you're about to try to talk yourself into stabbing them. I don't know why you do that, but she did, thus making it a lot easier for Mel to kill her. Whoops. I think we talked about all of this, really. We talked about what Mel does here and what she says about what I do regarding the wilderness. We talked about Van's final moments with a younger version of herself on the plane. Anything else about any of this or anything in the present storyline that you want to hit that we haven't covered? I'm just... I'm finding that I have...

against all odds of Hilary Swank showing up in that hat have developed some curiosity and maybe even affinity. And I think it, I think it was that younger scene between Shauna and Melissa that made me be like, yeah, maybe you should do, maybe you should be up to something. I don't know. Yeah. I'm like really interested in this heading into the finale. I am. Yeah. Yeah. Jodi. I'm,

I knew this was going to happen. We were like, we told the producers before we started, we're like, it's going to be quick, but we've never potted together. And it's the penultimate episode of the third season of a show that we were both very interested in discussing. We went long, sue us. But before we wrap, very quickly, rapid fire episodes of Prolatives, odds and ends from the meat tray. Favorite fucked up food thing from this episode.

You can just say the arm sashimi. Listen, I was personally, because I had your arm Pringle in my head, I was personally calling it an arm gummy in my mind because that was what it looked like. So I'm going to at least award that the most fucked up thing. Revolting. Okay, simply because you picked that, of course that's the pick. I'll go with something else, which is just, I think the hurling of the jam jar was,

It really contributed to the crime scene, like, feel of the kitchen. Like, a very, like, not just bloody, but, like, maybe with, like, vital organ matter. Yeah, I couldn't make heads or tails of what that was she had thrown. I thought it was, like, a smoothie, and then it really clumped.

Down the, you can tune in to We're Obsessed for a pretty intense conversation about jams and jellies as it relates to Meghan Markle, actually. Yes, yes. So it could have been some classic raspberry spread. Could have been, could have been. Favorite needle drop from this episode?

It's hold on, Wilson Phillips. It has to be. Like, the sort of warmth that went through me as I realized what we were hearing in that moment and then trying to figure out if this is, like, good for Misty and Walter that this song is playing or if it's bad, I don't know. Great stuff. I do hate to tell Joanna this, and hopefully she's not listening two hours and 15 minutes in, but... Way more than two 15s.

Knock, knock, uncheck the clock. We were the worst possible people that we could put together for this. I know. I'm thrilled. I'm having the time of my life. I don't see Walter and Misty.

reconnecting. She's so she has gotten the ick. Yeah, so hard. I know. But I think hopefully part of the awakening is like, oh, I'm treating him the way other people treated me. And that's fucked up. You know, I had this thought earlier from something you said, and it was if a yellow jacket has ever admitted that they were wrong, I've missed it. And that is sort of how I feel about the assumption that that

that Misty might be able to go down that line. Totally fair. Totally fair. Do you have a favorite unreliable narrator moment from this episode? Oh my goodness. I forgot to prepare for our rapid fire, so it's not making it very rapid, but I guess like, I guess young Van, I kind of talking with you more about it has made me realize that I was a little swept away by the pairing of those actors.

but I'm really not sure what the hell they were talking about. And like, I did find myself wondering how does deathbed premonition van know death?

that X will mark the spot and therefore did it at all. And why would, does that mean that finding Melissa is the treasure? What does any of this mean? I'm going to go with the dueling ties and the gas vision. Cause like, yeah, especially because Ty woke up and it was like, it's me, I'm back. And it's like,

Who are we supposed to think that is? Does the show want us to still be doubting and guessing or is it supposed to be clear? Because then I thought a real crazy look came over her face. Exactly. Because it's like, okay, I think initially we're meant to think it's like Ty and then it's like, uh-oh, fuck. Is it the other one again? Did the other one win? If it is actually Ty proper, Ty prime, and then the first thing that happens is Van died, what's the other one going to do as a result of that? What is happening with all of that and how long will it continue? Who can say?

One thing, I guess, that makes me not totally always invested in the, like, which tie do we have is that, like, other tie hasn't really done anything super bad in a while. Right? Like...

She's ordered a lot of room service, maybe. Or, you know, she's been really indulgent. Tried to kill strangers with some cards down on the sidewalk. Thought of, but didn't. Was eager to. But was swayed by Van, you know? Really wanted to. Like, was into it, but didn't. Maybe killed Lottie. Maybe killed Lottie. I guess if that's on the table, that makes me more invested, but we don't know. Right. So, yeah, I've...

I don't know. I don't know who we have now. I guess young Van, unreliable narrator, told old Van that her entire life's purpose was this moment. So I hope we've got back normal time. Oh, God. Boy. But I don't know. Do you have any final theories you want to throw out before the finale? Anything else on Theory Corner that you want to plant your flag on? It's fine if the answer's no.

We've covered a lot of theories. Yeah, I think that, like, of theories we've covered, I'm pretty interested in Lottie walking over that pit and just kind of officially being Wilderness Jesus and maybe, you know, I don't actually think about the Antler Queen a lot, but that made me think about it a bit. And also, Shauna's twiddling of the hair, of course, makes me think about the hair jacket. And then I also have seen one, you know, something floating around that...

It's not what I'm rooting for, but I'm like, whoa, what if they did it? Which is what if the antler queen is like truly a supernatural entity? What if what we are looking at is not Lottie or Shauna, but like a Wendigo, you know, but like a true spirit or something. Yeah. Why not? Will the cat have been in the car waiting when all of it happened? What will happen there? Are you prepared to make a claim?

I'm prepared to say that the cat is the it we've been referring to the whole time, and it's not even the wilderness. We're dealing with the cat god. Can't wait to see what Walter's up to in the finale. I mean, are we allowed to talk about trailers? Because I think as we look into the finale, what we see is that we are looking at the Antler Queen scene. We are seeing the gals in their fineries and like,

I guess what I'm most looking forward to about the finale is that yellow spring filter lifting and kind of seeing them in the winter. Yeah. Yeah, I've been very anti how quickly we've moved through the time in the past and all the time we missed.

But now that we're on the brink of winter again, I'm like, I get why they did it. Like, get us back. And it might be a time jump, you know, like sufficiently be a time jump or whatever. I don't think that it's all of a sudden like the land is caked in snow, but it gives us thrill every time. The snow fell quickly last time, though. It did, yeah. Yeah, could happen. Yeah. I love a blanket of snow. I just hope Mortimer is okay. That's like the thing I'm most invested in, that sweet duck. Oh, Mallory. Maybe like, can Akilah like free Mortimer? Yeah.

I mean, Akilah was holding a rat carcass for half of the season. I mean, you know, ducks have a very specific thing that they like to do in the winter. And I don't know if they're going to let Mortimer fly south or not. We'll see. We'll find out. We'll find out in mere days. Jodi, did we intend to podcast for two hours and 45 minutes on Yellow Jackets episode nine? We didn't. But... To be honest, I had a great time. Much like Shauna, we had no plan. I...

I had a blast. This was so fun to talk about this show, this episode, but just the show more broadly, the Yellow Jackets universe more broadly with you. So thank you for sharing so many of your thoughts on the story and the world at large with us. You got to come back and join us again for a Yellow Jackets discussion in the future. What a treat this was. Mallory, I would be delighted. I would be delighted. Thrilled. You're the best. Everybody check out all of Jodi's wonderful podcasts on Ringer Reality, Ringer Dish, etc.,

And thank you, not only to Jodi, for joining us today late in the evening in her time zone. I've seen the sunset behind you. Talking about that yellow filter and wishing that I had it. It has truly gotten so dark in my home. Thank you as well to Steve Ullman for producing this episode, John Richter for his production.

video production and production work on this episode. We told the guys it'll be a quick one. Don't worry about the late record time. It'll be a quick one. Legends always here for the long haul. Thank you to Arjun Arim Kapal for his production supervision. And thank you to Jomia Deneron for his work on the social for this episode. We will see you at the end of this week for Daredevil episode eight and Black Mirror season seven. And then Joe and I will be back next Tuesday. Next Tuesday.

when we are back in town and together for the Yellow Jackets finale.