Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Season 1 of Yellowjackets.On a show where brutal deaths and frightening twists and turns occur, one death onYellowjacketsappears to have had a lasting impact on the trajectory of the survivors. Following the crash of Flight 2525, there wasn’t much to be optimistic about for the ones who made it alive. Any remaining hope was squashed when Misty (Sammi Hanratty) destroyed the plane’s black box that could have helped locate them.
Eventually, the group stumbled across a plane and with it, one more shot of hope. While no one was ready to fly the contraption, Laura Lee(Jane Widdop) took the initiative to learn all she could so she could be the one to get the plane up in the air. As we saw in Season 1, Laura Lee and her trusty teddy bear take the high-risk, high-reward chance that she can not only get this thing off the ground but also safely land it to locate help. In a fiery blaze, Laura Lee’s short-lived flight consumes her. It’s a harrowing moment where all hope is put to rest. We’ve moved well past that horrific scene, but the effects of Laura Lee’s death still haunt the surviving Yellowjackets even asthe show continues to move through Season 2.
Related:‘Yellowjackets’: Melanie Lynskey Reveals Laura Lee Was Originally Meant to Die in the Pilot Episode
The first plane crash did enough damage to these survivors. Seeing yet another death result from Laura Lee’s plane catching fire really put everyone over the edge. There’s a dark symbolism in not only that plane exploding, but also the ticking time bomb that had been teetering within the group. We still have so much left to explore in what really happened in the woods, but from what already know, there’s a division that begins to occur. Since nothing is keeping these girls in one place, as any chance to be found seems to be minimal, it would explain how we eventually get to the point of multiple groups going their own ways in order to survive. At the heart of this split, of course, seems to be a young Lottie Matthews (Courtney Eaton).
Perhaps the biggest ramification of Laura Lee’s deaththat we feel in Season 2is what it did for Lottie. What we know of her past is that she was somewhat of a clairvoyant, first being seen beginning to panic moments before her parents were involved in a car crash. Later, her visions not only predict things like the skeletal remains in the cabin but also the “river of blood” she warns Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) about before her trek into the woods. That same adventure is where the girls are attacked by wolves and Van (Liv Hewson) is nearly mauled to death. Lottie’s visions were never fully acted on, but when she sees Laura Lee ablaze and crashing to her death in the lake, it signifies a turn for her. As we are seeing play out, this is bad news for the survivors.
Laura Lee had been Lottie’s closest friend in the woods, the one who broke her out of her possessed state during the séance and later baptized her as a way of giving her new life. All of this was done in good faith and for a while, it seemed to be leading Lottie in the right direction. Witnessing Laura Lee die, however, removed that calming presence in her life. Having been told she was special by Laura Lee for these visions, what was supposed to be positive reassurance ultimately led to Lottie spiraling. Laura validating Lottie’s visions convinced her that she possessed a power from above. The possibility that she could ultimately become the Antler Queen makes a lot more sense when considering the fact thatLottie believes she is of a higher power. The cult of followers that we see teased through Season 1, as well as the present iteration revealed in the Season 2 premiere and onward, all seem to stem from Lottie losing any positive belief in her abilities after Laura Lee’s death.
There’s plenty of trauma that the Yellowjackets team has experienced, not just in the wake of the crash but over the past 25 years. For Lottie, though, the loss of Laura Lee could very well be at the root of who she becomes. With adult Lottie (Simone Kessell) finally debuting in the premiere and leading a present-day cult of her own, there’s going to be much more to learn about how she not only possiblygrew into becoming the Antler Queen, but also how she found herself leading a group in the current day. At this point, it’s hard not to wonder where this character’s trajectory would have gone differently had Laura Lee not lost her life.
YellowjacketsSeason 2 releases new episodes every Friday on the Showtime streaming app and every Sunday on-air.
