[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 3.]
Since Yellowjackets premiered in 2021, it’s been clear that no character is protected. From Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) to Jackie (Ella Purnell), the wilderness rapidly started to take its choose of the ensemble solid of characters. However, with Season 2, it grew to become clear that the writers have been adamant to convey some sorrow to the grownup timeline as nicely. Whereas this wouldn’t essentially be an issue, the adults the writers proceed to kill off are all linked by a basic facet which joins them: From the teenager timeline to the grownup timeline, these characters have been suffering from the Doomed Character Trope.
A present like that is fascinating due to the unpredictability of its circumstances. When every dying depends on characters who’ve already suffered tenfold, it’s inconceivable to not really feel nauseated every time somebody is picked off. Though this development feels prefer it began with Natalie’s (Sophie Thatcher, Juliette Lewis) dying within the Season 2 finale, it was preceded by the dying of her on-again-off-again boyfriend Travis (Kevin Alves, Andres Soto) who was discovered lifeless within the third episode of Season 1. He and Natalie have been joined by a chord from the wilderness again to the actual world, making an attempt to bury their sorrows along with medication and alcohol.
Whereas we all know Travis nicely within the teen timeline, the grownup model of him was relegated to flashbacks that target the minutes earlier than his dying. His passing has an immense impression on Natalie, but his dying looks like a blip within the present’s unfolding storyline. Regardless of this, the Travis we all know has suffered maybe probably the most of all of the survivors. His father died within the preliminary airplane crash, he was virtually killed by the women in “Doomcoming,” and his brother was hunted and murdered earlier than being cannibalized. Now, in Season 3, he hangs within the stability between sobriety and intoxication, ingesting mushrooms with the intention to talk with the wilderness.
Travis’ dying leads Natalie to reconcile with the opposite Yellowjackets, however her dying results in the group fracturing as soon as once more. Within the midst of this, each of them appear to have been making an attempt to heal from their respective addictions — with Travis searching for out Lottie (Courtney Eaton, Simone Kessell) as a substitute of Natalie earlier than his dying, and Natalie lastly on her method to sobriety proper earlier than hers. The writers have snatched away any semblance of peace these two may have had sooner or later, and the truth that they have been on a rocky highway to restoration when this occurred makes their deaths much more painful.
After the backlash the Season 2 finale prompted, you’d assume the writers would look inward and perceive that killing off your most tortured characters could also be a nasty resolution. However, in Season 3, they’ve continued to pressure their characters right into a perpetual state of struggling. Within the closing moments of “12 Offended Women and 1 Drunk Travis,” it’s revealed that Lottie has now met her demise as she lays lifeless on the backside of a unclean flight of stairs, similar to her teen self envisioned again in Season 1.
Lottie’s dying might be probably the most surprising of the collection. After one other temporary stint in psychiatric care, she appeared on Shauna’s (Sophie Nélisse, Melanie Lynskey) doorstep, trying to make peace with the ladies she has at all times discovered herself at odds with. She was being arrange for an intriguing bond with Shauna’s daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) and gave the impression to be on a journey of therapeutic after a lifetime of electroshock remedy and being medicated. However, simply when she was on the precipice of taking the ultimate step in direction of the sunshine, it was snuffed out.
Season 3 has continued to weaponize this trope, following Lottie’s dying with that of Coach Ben Scott (Steven Krueger), who is maybe probably the most doomed on-screen character within the final decade, in “Thanksgiving (Canada).” Even if it appeared like he was destined for dying in Season 1 after dropping one among his legs within the preliminary airplane crash, Ben continued to outlive. This made him an underdog, similar to Travis, Natalie, and Lottie, and allowed audiences to not solely sympathize with him, but additionally root for his survival. However, he lastly meets dying, after Natalie mercy-kills him and witnesses the second father determine in her life die earlier than her eyes.
Ben’s dying, after being speculated because the present’s beginnings, feels lackluster. After a second season during which he reckoned along with his sexuality — taking type in dream sequences and flashbacks that includes his ex-boyfriend Paul (François Arnaud) — there was a light-weight on the finish of a darkish tunnel when Ben fled from the Yellowjackets and their ritualistic practices. In dying, there isn’t a decision to the love and life he sacrificed when he received on the airplane with the soccer group, and his brief life as a substitute ended with him being eaten by the identical group he tried to nurture.
After so many characters have suffered below the darkness of the wilderness and of their house lives earlier than, Ben’s demise looks like one other occasion of the writers forcing its characters right into a unending limbo of struggling. It’s all encompassing, a lot in order that the present’s most resilient characters are pressured to die as their solely method to escape it. In the long run, their hand is pressured by a script outdoors of their realm of existence, forcing its viewers to witness one other character arc that ends in distress.
The dying of those characters — outdoors of the teenager timeline — doesn’t heighten the present’s stakes. As an alternative, with every dying, it feels as if the writers are hitting one other nail into an indication that reads, “The one means out of trauma is dying.” It’s a slap within the face not solely to the gifted performers who inhabit these now deceased characters on display screen, but additionally to the viewers at house who might even see themselves mirrored again at them whereas they’re watching.
In weaponizing the doomed character trope, Yellowjackets has develop into a shallow model of a collection that after promised innovation within the huge panorama of recent tv. By portraying the remaining grownup characters as unaffected husks, the present feels prefer it’s making an attempt to pressure them and the viewers to neglect that these different characters even existed. As an alternative of honoring the lifeless by consuming them just like the Yellowjackets do within the wilderness, this collection has cannibalized itself to the bone, making it extra unrecognizable with every episode.
Yellowjackets, Fridays, Paramount+ With Showtime, Sundays, 8/7c, Showtime