It’s mentioned a fair amount that Yellowjackets was inspired by Twin Peaks but I just want to talk about what that might actually mean.
I once saw someone say about that show, "Twin Peaks tells you exactly what it's about every three episodes but people don't see it because there's a horse in the living room." And that's so true for Yellowjackets too. Picture it like a nesting doll. If Twin Peaks was a show about male violence wrapped up in a crime drama wrapped up in comedy wrapped up in a psychological horror, then Yellowjackets is a show about loss wrapped up in a survival drama wrapped up in a comedy wrapped up in a psychological horror. And it's loss in so many forms; loss of the self, loss of innocence, and most of all loss of community.
Yellowjackets, like Twin Peaks, is just a commentary on society but once again "people don't see it because there's a horse in the living room". Or in this case, because theres a schizophrenic teenage prophet who may or may not be communicating with some wild, bloodthirsty, nature god. When the truth is, the horse isn't important. Whether the Wilderness is or isn't real, isn't important.
It's about ego vs id, civilisation vs the wilderness, and innocence vs brutality. The other, "bad" side is always waiting, like Mari talked about, and its something that both exists within us and in our society. Like with Tai, the other side isn't innately bad but if we let it rule things it can become incredibly destructive. There has to be a balance. That's why they're a soccer team. It's a sport that is all about balance. You can split a soccer field in half 8 different ways but you will still always get a full set of 11 players who hold 11 different positions. It's a perfectly balanced, symbiotic community that is built on trust and understanding. The brutality is part of the game too, but theres a balance that comes with the rules and the way the game is moderated and consented to. The message of the whole thing being that community, love, friendship is what saves you. Its when the characters lose these things that they lose themselves, become vulnerable, die. It's why everyone in this show is complicit in the death of their best friend. The writers set the stage with Allie's treatment in the pilot. The whole story in contained within that first episode and ultimately her not being able to come results in a lack of balance within the team. It's why as the show goes on the girls become less and unified in both timelines. Now they've got to the point where they're splitting into factions in one, and talking about having to kill each other to be "safe" in the other.
Shauna's right, it wasn't the wilderness that killed anyone, it was always only them. All of them. When Shauna says "You know there's no 'it', right? It was just us.", its a very similar outburst to the one Laura Palmer's boyfriend has at her funeral in Twin Peaks, saying "All you ‘good’ people – you wanna know who killed Laura? You did! We all did.”, making a point about how the enviroment the town created resulted in her death more than anything else. The person who murdered her was just hand of that enviroment, the way Shauna always seems to be too. She holds the knife, but they all put it in her hand. Every single "sacrifice" to the Wilderness so far has resulted from a group decision to push someone from the team, an idea that started back with Allie before the plane even crashed. And this same attitude immediately doomed them again, because it was Misty’s desperation to hold onto her newfound sense of community and belonging after being ostracised for so long that had her destroying the transponder. “He’s not one of us” about Ben, and “They don’t belong” about the research group. The idea of "the other" used as justification for violence.
Jackie’s death was the most pivotal because she was the death of community. She was the first to be ostracised, the figure that once represented unity between the girls. As we saw at the party, she was the only one who could reestablish balance between them, and they killed her first.
This show is about a lot of things, guilt, grief, sanity, etc, but I do think that actual main commentary is on our current society. Twin Peaks was so fantastical but at its core it was only ever really about the evil that men do and a society that fascilitates it. Yellowjackets in its turn is about the ostracisation of the "other" and how this only hurts us. Weakens our communities. It's not lost on me that at least half the known survivors are able-bodied queer women, and this is a womens soccer team. In the world of womens soccer I would say that's the majority class. I don't think that's necessarily a mistake. The Yellowjackets ostracise people who aren't like them, aren't "useful", don't abide by their religion, and who push back against the status quo. Doesn't that sound familar?
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