I’ve heard Jackie Taylor is inspired heavily by Laura palmer but while lots of people agree no one really goes into detail what this means, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on this?
Yeah for sure, I've talked about it but only in bits and pieces so maybe I should explain properly. But I will just say, the entirety of Yellowjackets is inspired by Twin Peaks. It has a lot of the same themes, uses similar symbols, and appears to have the same influences, making a ton of little nods to the esoteric, various religions, and niche psychological concepts.
With Jackie and Laura its not a like for like match, they are in themselves very different personalities, but Laura is the de-facto haunts-the-narrative character. The story of Twin Peaks centers on her despite the fact she's already dead the first time we see her on-screen. And that moment, that shot, is visually very similar to the moment we see Jackie's face on-screen when she dies. More than that, Laura was that perfect, popular, prom queen character in the same way Jackie is, she even has a homoerotic friendship with her childhood best friend who tries to mimic her in death and gets with Laura's ex boyfriend. (Though the relationship between Donna and James is markedly different to Shauna and Jeff's relationship). Jackie even has her own iconic memorial photo, just like Laura.
It also seems like both Laura and Jackie were living a lie in some way. Living a double life. For Laura, she was hiding horrible abuse and the darkness she felt inside as a result, searching out dangerous circumstances as a way to passively commit suicide. Not unlike how Jackie passively commits, by stepping in front of the plane propellers, by stopping eating, sleeping outside when she could see her own breath. I think the implication is she was living through some similar internal battle to Laura, dividing herself to bury the parts of herself she was afraid to face. Her sexuality, her anger, her depression, all her fears about the future. She pushed it all down. Every time we see her with no one looking she looks miserable or pained or angry. She puts on a mask in that very first scene with Jeff, and then again with Shauna in the car, she isn't honest with herself all the people around her. This is true for Laura as well, even if the reason for the creation of her persona is very different, and Laura's pain of a whole different extremity and nature. When Jackie explains the emptiness she feels, like a "shell with nothing inside", it's not dissimilar to how Laura describes feeling in her diary. The sense that there's nothing underneath the facade anymore.
Laura dies as the result of so many people's actions. So many people who missed obvious signs of her struggle. This is true for Jackie too. Shauna in particular; she repeatedly shows signs that she knows Jackie was lying to her, but she either didn't feel able to say anything or misinterpreted Jackie's lying about Jeff as some type of bragging, rather than Jackie's desire to ignore the truth that she felt almost nothing for him. So you have it where Shauna says nothing, Jeff says nothing (even when, as he tells Shauna later, he knew Jackie didn't love him), Jackie's parents seemingly notice nothing. It's the same for the people in Laura's life. They had every chance to say or do something to save her, and they didn't.
Ultimately, the biggest way Jackie is like Laura is that it all comes back to her. The whole story is her story in a way. All roads lead right back to her, just not in the way people expect. The big question people associate with Twin Peaks is "Who killed Laura Palmer?" but that was never the question the story was meant to answer. Lynch never even wanted to reveal her killer, he was forced to by the network. The real question of Twin Peaks was always "Who was Laura Palmer?". Likewise, Yellowjackets distracts us with a question that is never meant to be answered: "Is it supernatural or psychological?". But this isn't a question that's going to be answered, because it was never the actual crux of the show. The heart of the show always will be, "Who was Jackie Taylor?", because in answering that question, you also answer the question "Who is Shauna Shipman?" And that's the actual truth we're looking for, the truth of who Shauna really is. What Jackie wouldn't admit to herself, what Shauna wouldn't, and everything they didn't say to each other. Twin Peaks ends where it begins, folds on itself, and I believe Yellowjackets is doing this in its own way. Each season of Yellowjackets is in some way circular, showing how much the characters have devolved whilst reflecting the first episode of the season in a way that tells us it was always going to end the way it did. The entire show should follow this same pattern I believe, with the finale taking us back to the pilot (not literally, but figuratively) and showing us everything that was hidden there all along.
