I can't stop thinking about the fact that, even if they don't physically eat her, jackie taylor is the first person the girls cannibalize.
we see it most intensely and most obviously with shauna, who consumes more and more of jackie's life. before the plane even crashes, shauna takes jeff's virginity, which was supposed to be jackie's. she takes jeff, jackie's boyfriend. after the crash, she takes the team's loyalty; more and more of their teammates start confiding in and working with shauna, ostracizing jackie, until the team firmly chooses shauna over jackie, their captain. shauna goes on to marry jackie's boyfriend and have the suburban little life that jackie was supposed to have. hell, shauna even takes rabbits from jackie—jackie "loved them", but we only see rabbits when it's about shauna. they're symbolic of the wilderness and who shauna has become.
but it's not just shauna. the longer they're in the woods, the more the rest of the girls start taking from jackie, consuming bits and pieces of her identity until there's nothing left.
jackie is the leader. she's the team captain, and her role is to lead and keep her team together. we're explicitly introduced to jackie this way. coach martinez points out how the other players on the team are better than her, but what she has is influence. she's specifically chosen to be the one to lead her teammates through difficulty. and at the party, we see her in action. we see her take a fractured team and put them back together! she fixes them, she leads them, she heals them.
but after the crash, jackie isn't a leader. misty is the one calm under pressure, who gets them through the first few hours. taissa steps forward and pushes the team to move from the crash site, the one with the initiative to go look for help on foot. laura lee is the one brave enough to try and fly the plane. akilah stops them from eating poison. nat hunts for them, provides for them. lottie protects and guides them.
she almost finds a foothold with the seance, almost finds the old part of herself that gives pep talks and lightens the mood with distractions. but van can weave stories by the campfire, and mari can lead late night line dances and make booze.
so what's left for jackie? each of the girls cuts and picks at the facets of leadership until there's nothing left of it for her. until she's a worthless captain to a group of girls who have figured out how to break her up and share her between themselves.
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
prguitarman
stormborns
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
snowghoul
