I love Shauna & Travis parallels so let’s talk about the unique burden they carry when it comes to lying about what happened to their loved ones.
Sure, all the yjs must feel guilt when it comes to lying about what happened. Taissa has been keeping it from Simone for well over a decade. In flashbacks Lottie’s parents say she doesn’t talk since returning home, and the pressure of hiding what happened is one possible explanation.
But Travis spent years hiding the truth about his brother’s death from his own mother. And Shauna has spent most of her life hiding the truth of Jackie’s death from Jackie’s parents and her own mom.
In the scene where Shauna and Jeff have lunch with Jackie’s parents, I think we can get a window into what Travis’ relationship with his mom might have looked like post rescue.
There’s a lot of love there, and a desire to take care of things. The Taylors offer to help pay for Callie’s college tuition, and we can assume that’s not the first time they’ve tried to financially support them. But they are clearly not seeing Shauna. They’re looking through her. It’s an attempt to love Jackie. Shauna has fit herself into the life Jackie would have had, and her parents are trying to guide her through that life while pretending Jackie is still in it.
But there is also clear resentment. Jackie’s mom is always comparing Jackie and Shauna, belittling Shauna in such a way that Jeff is compelled to do something as drastic as ~telling the parents of his late girlfriend that he was cheating on her~ in order to defend Shauna. Mrs. Taylor makes little to no effort to hide that she not only wishes Jackie had come home instead of Shauna, but that she thinks Jackie deserved to come home in a way that Shauna did not.
It’s pretty clear that this is the way these lunches always go, so it’s no surprise that Shauna was clearly dreading the lunch and has a bad time, at one point retreating to Jackie’s room (still a perfect time capsule, of course) to hang out with her ghost rather than face her parents.
What’s even worse than the feeling of being put down time and time again is the feeling that they’re right. Shauna is holding back an enormous secret from the Taylors: that (in her mind) she is responsible for Jackie’s death, and she actually ATE her. There’s no doubt in my mind that if Shauna had the chance to go back and die in Jackie’s place, she would. She and Mrs. Taylor are totally in agreement about who should’ve come home.
Shauna definitely blames herself for Jackie’s death, and probably believes that if the roles had been reversed, Jackie would have caved and asked her to come back inside.
And who’s to say she’s not right? Jackie seems to have a knack for being left out/forced out when shit hits the fan. On doomcoming, she is locked in the closet while the group assaults Travis. In the pilot, Shauna is told not to tell Jackie about the Allie plan (despite her being team captain!) because she won’t like it.
The only moral decision I can think of where Jackie takes an active role is dragging Shauna away from the plane crash, preventing her from helping Van. She later risks her life for Van by throwing herself in between Van and the propeller plane, showing that leaving Van behind in the crash was not self preservation, it was Shauna preservation.
We’ll never know what would have happened if Shauna had been the one to sleep outside, but I’m sure Shauna’s thought about it at length.
Shauna is unable to have a meaningful connection with the Taylors for a multitude or reasons. Not only are they a reminder of the trauma of Jackie’s death, they reinforce her guilt. She feels guilt for her inability to put her pride aside and protect Jackie, for cannibalizing her, for returning home when she couldn’t. The Taylors reinforce all this, and make it even worse. In the presence of the other people still mourning Jackie, the harm she caused feels even greater. She can’t tell them the truth, she can’t silence her guilt any more than the Taylors can silence their resentment, and Shauna certainly can’t accept their money.
Post rescue, I think we might see some of that mirrored in Travis’ relationship with his mom. I seriously doubt he’ll tell her the truth about what happened to Javi, and as a result he may never process that grief in a meaningful way.
It would be hard to breach with Nat since Javi literally died in her place, and I don’t think that either she or Lottie would be equipped to help him in the immediate aftermath of the rescue, or maybe ever.
Not telling his mom the truth will make it hard for Travis to connect with her post rescue. They’ll essentially be living in two different realities. She won’t understand his guilt, and he won’t be able to tell her about it. He may shy away from her attempts to help or comfort him because he feels he doesn’t deserve it, and she won’t understand that either.
And maybe she will feel the same way Mrs. Taylor did, that the wrong boy came home. Javi seems like a very sweet kid, and I’m sure in missing him Mrs. Martinez has forgotten every time he was annoying and created someone close to perfect.
It’s hard to say for sure because by the time we meet Travis he is already grieving his father, but it seems like Travis was already struggling with anger issues and held some misogynistic beliefs. There’s a lot of speculation around the Martinez parents having marital issues based on their one and only scene together, and if true Travis would’ve been more aware of that, which could complicate things. And ya know, he’s a teenager and Javi is a kid. I’d be surprised if Mrs. Martinez’s relationship with Travis pre crash wasn’t more strained than her relationship with Javi.
In comparing the Javi she remembers to the Travis she gets back, she may well feel like there was a better outcome, even if it’s subconsciously or guiltily.
All of that is speculation, but it’s certainly a line of thinking that Travis himself could go down. Even if his mom isn’t thinking any of that, with his guilt festering, I think Travis could easily convince himself that his mom wishes she had a different son back home.
Anyways, I think a lot about that post about how Shauna made herself big and angry in the wilderness, while Travis made himself small and withdrawn. My fave foils💔
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