Were girls always doomed to become what they did?
Spoilers to s03e08!!!
I find it interesting that the three characters who didn't want to come back from the wilderness are the three characters who came home to live exactly the life they feared. It's tragic, yet they're the ones who ultimately make it happen as if there was no real choice, like they were always doomed to live it.
Tai
Taissa tells Van in the Wilderness that she fears they won't be able to be together because the society hasn't changed and progressed that much since they left. But this is exactly what she does once they get back! She ditches Van for "respect" and her "law degree". And as Van says, the tragic irony is that she ends up gay anyway. Not only openly married to a woman, but she's a public figure married to a woman. Yet, Tai is clearly unhappy as she gave up a big part of herself, Van, who is always somehow connected to this free side of Tai, and as I've said in my other post, that's Other Tai. We can see the man with no eyes looking over Tai's shoulder when she tells Van she wants to stay, which could let us assume it's Other Tai's decision. It's a decision based on desires, but that has to be abandoned once they are back in the real society, and Tai needs to bury Other Tai and her desires to follow a rational side of herself. She fears losing Van, and she fears it so much that it ultimately leads to them falling apart and her breaking up with Van.
Shauna
I've seen several explanations as to why Shauna doesn't want to come back, and I want to give my own view on this. I think she doesn't want to come back because she fears becoming "boring" again and getting back to living in the shadow. Shauna keeps on telling everyone how 'boring' they are - Jackie, Melissa, Jeff. But it's truly just that she's insecure about being nobody, and it's something ghost Jackie calls her out on again and again. "So much potential and so little to show for it". When Shauna gets back, not only does she spiral back to living in the shadow of Jackie as she tries to live the life she thinks Jackie would have lived, she also becomes exactly what she destined herself to become when playing sleepover games with ghost Jackie in the meat shed: a housewife married to Jeff. When Melissa talks about all those normal boring things she can't wait to do, when girls dream about such boring, everyday life stuff like toilet and bed and a slushie, Shauna is dissociating at the thought. She's terrified of that possibility of a "normal, boring life" as her mind wanders to the exact image she's dreaming of as an adult in the beginning of the episode: a cashier with nothing to show for herself. She and Melissa live the same life in the adult timeline - a marriage out of shame and guilt, mothers. But Melissa likes it, and Shauna hates it and is constantly looking for a thrill that will let her feel the way she felt in the Wilderness. She doesn't want to give up that freedom but her actions in the Wilderness are exactly what makes her fall back into a boring life with Jeff, holding onto the Wilderness is exactly what keeps her from going for what she dreamt of before the plane crash and what leaves her to be what she feared most - a normal, boring housewife.
Lottie
I find it so tragic that Lottie didn't want to go back because she was convinced that she wouldn't be well back in society. Because she knew she had no life to go back to, that she would just be put in a facility to be dealt with, put on meds that make her probably feel not like herself and that she once again will be lost and made to hide her true self as one with different kinds of conditions often is to adapt to the society that wasn't made for them to live in. And it is exactly what happens. She is put in a facility where she goes through such awful and traumatic experiences like shock therapy. And all that after losing something so close to her heart that maybe was the first place she ever felt at home. The Wilderness. When she says that the scientist "will ruin everything", she means it. She knows that the appearance of outside people means everyone will want to go home, and she can't take it because for her it means she's going to lose home. Nobody will believe her again, nobody will listen to her, and nobody will care for her like people did in the Wilderness. She fears it, and she is doomed to live through it. And not only once, but twice. 25 years later, she again loses her cult, the home she built for herself, only to be sent away to be "dealt with" in a facility.
While Tai and Shauna make choices that make them fall right into their destined end, Lottie doesn't get a say in it, which I think makes her story even more tragic and sympathetic (and I am aware she axed a person and ate their brains out). In the end, the girls are living a Greek tragedy. No matter what they do or don't do, they will do exactly what will land them in those positions. It's fate decided by fatum that they can't escape.
