i think that sometimes people focus too much on wether the show is supernatral or not, that they overlook certain elements that, for me, give the show it's magic.
because the thing is: it doesn't matter. psychological or spiritual, real or collective psychosis, human nature or nature's magic; none of it makes a difference. maybe to us it does, obviously, but it's all the same to the characters themselves. and i thinks it's kind of the main axis for the adult timeline. because they're at a point in time where they claim to have gotten over the crash, where they admit to themselves that what happened out there was wrong, and it probably was some sort of psychological phenomenon caused by the extenuating circumstances they were in. but they all still fall victims to it, whatever the hell it is.
and you can see it, because taissa wants to kill some random person to save van, and van thinks she should kill melissa if she wants to live, and, hell, even melissa herself killing van, even though she had no logical reason for it - i mean van wasn't going to kill her. and we also see it in shauna, in her paranoia, in misty, who's manipulating things (like cars) and creating situations in which she may not be wanted but she's definitely needed. it's all very reminiscing to their time in the wilderness. and it shows us that they never left, not spiritually or psychologically. that's the whole point, it doesn't matter why, because they don't even know for sure, never will, but they still feel it, and they act on those feelings.
so, you see, it doesn't make any difference if you recognize that all the violence comes from within, like shauna, or if you think this nature god-like essence became entwined with them after the crash, like lottie, because the effect is all the same. it's in all of them, and none of them has managed to escape it so far, no matter how hard they try.
this is also why i love that line during the adult timeline hunt in season 2, when, answering to shauna's claim about how it was just them out there, lottie says "is there a difference?". because it shows how, whether the girls acted out of divine intention, or some primal, animalistic, killer instinct, their actions never changed. they were all doomed to fall back into these old patterns, because they never left, not really. and they'll never leave.
