Sociopath Profile: Misty Quigley
From the television series Yellowjackets (2021-present) Played by Christina Ricci (adult) and Samantha Hanratty (teen) Recommended by @rickyriddle, and thanks to their analysis for helping with this one
For starters, I wanna thank the recommender for this one since they wrote an even more detailed analysis of her mental state. It goes into much more detail in explaining not just her sociopathic tendencies, but also other disorders she may have. Read it in full here. This profile will involve a lot of paraphrasing of theirs (with their permission, of course).
[MAJOR SERIES SPOILERS BELOW]
Misty is one of the crash survivors, and she already shows something off about her both as a teen and in adulthood. A lot of it could be attributed to the trauma of being forced to survive in the wilderness for 19 months, but it soon becomes clear that trauma can't really explain everything about her. Especially when it turns out that she is more malicious than she lets on.
Many of Misty's actions circle back to a desire to be wanted. She wants to have friends to not feel alone. She wants people to depend on her so she feels important. However, it is ultimately a selfish desire since many of the things she does tend to go too far. The most notable example is her destroying the black box to keep the team stranded there for longer. Why? She heard Laura Lee and Van talking about how useful she was to the group. It was an impulsive decision, but many of her later actions show that this is a pattern. In adulthood, this manifests by stalking the other Yellowjackets and inserting herself in their lives when most of them want nothing to do with her anymore, in part because of this extreme behavior.
Misty has no problem committing immoral actions. During their time in the wilderness, it does help since she can think calmly in a crisis. However, it does go too far sometimes. In the past, she was willing to be aggressive and kill if need be. While this applies to most of the survivors, she does apparently show tendencies of this beforehand when she watched a mouse drown in her pool, with animal cruelty usually an early sign of sociopathic tendencies. (She didn't put it in there, but she didn't try to help or look away from it either.) And while it was (supposedly) necessary to cut off Ben's, the ease with which she decided to do it shows that violence is something that comes naturally to her. And of course, there's the time she attempted to drug Ben to sleep with him, claiming it was just an attempt to "make a move" on him.
In the present, this manifests mainly in her abuse of the patients in the nursing home. She gets off on the position of power she has over them and the fact that they depend on her. However, if they piss her off, she's very willing to withhold things like medication to make sure they know their place. This is what she did to one old woman who upset her, and it's unlikely that she's the first victim of something like this. She's also willing to resort to kidnapping Jessica to find out who killed Travis. She even threatens to kill her father if she doesn't talk. Even after releasing her, she still poisons a cigarette to kill her. And when Shauna kills Adam, she doesn't hesitate to help her hide the body.
[to the old woman] "You know... I think the morphine might be upsetting your tummy. Let's skip this dose." [removes the medicine and leans in closer] "Don't fuck with me."
She also has a limited sense of empathy for others. She has some people she cares about, and while it can sometimes be genuine, it is usually related to what those people can do for her. She does care about the Yellowjackets, but it's related to the fact that they depend on her. She wants to be useful to them, and she will turn on them if they do things that begin to ostracize her. And because of this diminished empathy, it causes her to not care about other people as well. Adult Misty shows no problem with murder or covering up murders to help her friends. When the group needs to hide Adam's body after Shauna killed him, she frames it as a friendly get-together, something that disturbs the others.
She has some superficial charm, in that she can at least hide her worst aspects and not look like someone who would abuse patients and murder people. She is still socially awkward (especially as a teen), something theorized by many fans (even the analysis this is based on) to be a result of being on the autism spectrum, but no one who doesn't know her personally would assume she's guilty of such immoral actions. Heck, even some people who do know her personally don't notice. Her coworkers at the nursing home just think she's off, not that she's guilty of abusive behavior and murder.
It also helps her to be manipulative, usually in the service of making the others depend on her. After accidentally getting Crystal killed, she puts on the crying act, pretending that she had nothing to do with it. As soon as her friends are out of earshot, she drops it. She is willing to sabotage Natalie's car just to get her to drive with her. A very big moment of this is when she explains to Lottie that they're going to eat Javi after she died. Lottie is appalled, but Misty forces her to go along with it. Afterwards, she tells the others that she is pleased with the Wilderness's choice for Javi to save them, even though she knows Lottie isn't all for it.
Misty: It's okay. This is good! We have food now. Lottie: No, Misty. I never meant... I didn't want this... how could you let them - Misty: How could I? Lottie, you started this. It's done, and it's going to save all of our lives. So, you better not start making people feel bad about it now.
She also tends to be very impulsive, especially as a teen. The black box thing was a spur-of-the-moment action that she didn't fully think through beyond everyone else liking her for helping them survive. She didn't want to kill Crystal either, but after her reaction to the back box incident, she panicked and started to threaten her instead. This resulted in her falling off the the ledge.
In the end, everything goes back to how things affect her. Any regrets she has are due to how they negatively affect her. The breaking of the black box is something she regrets because it got her stranded for longer and made the ones who know what she did hate her for it. She regrets killing Crystal after she found out what she did, mostly because it meant losing one of the few close friends she had. In general, she only feels bad about things when the consequences of her actions end up screwing her over or make others hate her. She shows almost no regret in adulthood when committing several crimes in the name of protecting her friends (read: making them depend on her).
Despite not being a perfect example, Misty shows too many signs to be ignored.
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