Yellowjackets Season 1 has finally come to an end, and as many answers it gave, more questions were asked. This show has managed to keep its audience on their toes, with twists and turns galore. In 1996, the girls face the fallout from their 'doomcoming' and Misty's (Sammi Hanratty) magic mushrooms, while in 2021, things come to a head at their 25-year high school reunion. "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" is almost as explosive as the penultimate episode, leaving us scratching our heads and wondering how we're going to get through this hiatus before the already renewed Season 2?
Strap in, citizen detectives, and let's break this down.
Meanwhile, in 2021...
The girls clean up Shauna's (Melanie Lynskey) crime scene — under the false assumption that Adam (Peter Gadiot) was the blackmailer — and then later that night go to their high school reunion. At the reunion, Shauna confronts Jeff's (Warren Kole) best friend, Randy (Jeff Holman), and threatens him after Jeff tells her that he was in on the blackmail scheme. At the reunion, Allie (Tonya Cornelisse), the girl who broke her leg and narrowly avoided the plane crash, takes the class through a slideshow that memorializes the soccer team.
Surprisingly, it's after the reunion where things get more interesting and more dramatic, for each of our four main protagonists. While Shauna's recent affair and murder have brought her closer to her husband, Adam's disappearance finally makes TV headlines and Callie (Sarah Desjardins) seems to notice the news story while the family is watching TV. Callie had been previously aware of her mother's affair with Adam, but now it looks like she's putting 2 + 2 together.
Misty revels in her power after she helps the girls with the crime scene. She tricks investigator Jessica Roberts (Rekha Sharma) into thinking she's free, but poisons her instead. Taissa's (Tawny Cypress) wife, Simone (Rukiya Bernard) discovers Taissa's unknowing sacrifice including one of Sammy's dolls, Biscuit the dog's decapitated head, and a human heart. Could this heart be Adam's? Related or not-so-unrelated, Taissa wins her state senate race in an unexpected victory over the incumbent.
But the big reveal comes in Natalie's (Juliette Lewis) story. Coming to terms with what she believes is Travis's (Kevin Alves) suicide after all, she falls into a state of grief and contemplates doing the same. But before she can literally pull the trigger, a mysterious group wearing the strange symbol from the woods (and the one that's been written on postcards sent to the group) kidnaps her from her motel room. We hear a voicemail on Natalie's phone from her former sponsor Suzie that reveals Lottie (Courtney Eaton) is the one who emptied Travis's bank account. From this, we can assume that Travis's death is a murder and that the group that kidnaps Natalie is most likely loyal to Lottie. How's that for a cliffhanger?
Meanwhile, in 1996...
After the girls wake up from their shroom-induced haze, they start to come to terms with what happened the night before. Javi (Luciano Leroux) is missing, and Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) helps Travis look for him, who is already traumatized enough after being chased by the team through the woods and almost ending up on the murdering side of Shauna's knife (Sophie Nélisse). At the cabin, a bear happens upon the group, but Lottie confidently steps up to it as the others retreat, and it lies down in front of her. She stabs the bear and provides the group with food.
Things turn sour later that night when everyone is partaking of their bear meat dinner. Jackie (Ella Purnell) has already been pushed to the brink after learning of Shauna's betrayal in sleeping with her boyfriend Jeff back home, not to mention the behavior from the night before, but some of the group's faith in Lottie and her strange visions finally causes Jackie to reach her breaking point. She calls out Shauna and reveals that Jeff is the baby daddy, but Shauna stands up to her and the former best friends face off with one another. Jackie threatens to leave the cabin, thinking that someone will stop her, but no one speaks up in her defense and she spends the night outside. Just before going to bed, Shauna briefly reconsiders letting Jackie back into the cabin but changes her mind.
Jackie's inability to adapt in ways as simple as lighting a fire ends up being the cause of her demise. As she freezes to death mere feet away from the cabin, the audience is privy to a scene where the people who have previously died in the woods greet her — although it doesn't seem concrete whether these are Jackie's last thoughts or Shauna's dream.
After Shauna finds Jackie's body buried beneath a fresh snowfall outside and mourns the preventable loss of her friend, Lottie, accompanied by Misty and Van (Liv Hewson), sacrifices the bear's heart to the woods, which seems to serve as a precursor for sending the surviving Yellowjackets slowly into the descent to the cannibalistic clans that the pilot episode gives us a taste of.