Picture Supply: Paramount Photos
The opening scene of Netflix’s “Yellowjackets” begins with one of the crucial haunting TV sequences in latest reminiscence. A dark-haired woman in a nightgown runs via a frozen forest, trying scared for her life — and for good motive. As she runs, a pit opens up beneath her toes, and she or he falls in. The following frames present her limbs nailed to the bottom with sticks, after which she’s getting hung up by her toes and flayed whereas a bunch of individuals clad in animal skins look on. Ultimately, after the woman’s stays are positioned in entrance of an antler-clad determine, the group devours her.
The specter of that scene haunts all of “Yellowjackets,” which tells the story of a women’ soccer workforce who crash-land in a forest and are compelled to outlive there for 19 months. Interspersing that story with scenes set 25 years later — when the surviving women are struggling adults — the sequence is generally about trauma and its lingering results.
By the start of season two, the ladies are nonetheless nowhere close to the brutality of that first scene — although they (spoiler alert) do get pleasure from their first style of human flesh by the second episode. But it surely’s necessary to notice that the ladies’ first act of cannibalism occurs in a second of impulsivity, and the sufferer is somebody who’s already lifeless; it is a far cry from the ritualistic homicide scene at first of the sequence.
Because the starting of the present, one in all viewers’ most urgent questions has involved the id of the antler-clad chief, whom followers have branded the Antler Queen. Whereas the present appears to have all however confirmed the face behind the veil, a sequence like “Yellowjackets” might simply be planting purple herrings in every single place to be able to mess with viewers’ heads. This is what we all know to this point in regards to the Antler Queen.
Is Lottie the Antler Queen?
Lottie (performed by Courtney Eaton as a teen and Simone Kessell as an grownup), who offers with psychological sickness and begins having visions of the forest as quickly as she runs out of her meds, has at all times been the principle contender for the Antler Queen. In a single episode in season one, she’s proven in entrance of some antlers hanging on the wall, which body her face as if she’s carrying them as a headdress. She additionally sees a deer within the imaginative and prescient she has when Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) baptizes her, and items Van (Liv Hewson as a teen and Lauren Ambrose as an grownup) a deer’s bone as a talisman to maintain her protected.
Picture Supply: Paramount Photos
Then, within the ill-fated, psychedelic-distorted celebration in season one’s “Doomcoming,” Lottie really places on some antlers and a scarf that resembles the Antler Queen’s. Lottie turns into a cult chief as an grownup, and by the start of season two, younger Lottie has already begun main the stranded Yellowjackets and firm in morning rituals and superstitious rites. She additionally appears to have some sort of means to speak with what she sees because the spirit of the forest. For all these causes, it is simple to imagine she’s the motive force of the violent acts that the workforce commits.
Are There Any Different Contenders For the Antler Queen?
It is doable that “Yellowjackets” may very well be messing with viewers by framing Lottie. Shauna (Sophie Nelisse as a teen and Melanie Lynskey as an grownup), who has at all times displayed consolation with blood, appears to be rising more and more erratic, and it is possible that she might change into possessed with sufficient rage to change into the Antler Queen. Nevertheless, she appears strongly averse to Lottie’s ceremonial actions, so it is most likely not her. The identical goes for Taissa (Jasmine Savoy Brown as a teen and Tawny Cypress as an grownup), who admittedly does bear hours-long fugue states — although the Antler Queen’s ritual appears to have taken quite a lot of planning, which means the staunchly realist Taissa most likely could not have performed it whereas sleepwalking.
We additionally know that Misty (Samantha Hanratty as a teen and Christina Ricci as an grownup) is risky and attention-hungry sufficient to do one thing like lead blood rites, however we all know she’s positively not the Antler Queen; she’s the one particular person within the authentic scene who takes her masks off, revealing she’s the face behind that creepy bear costume.
Nat (Sophie Thatcher as a teen and Juliette Lewis as an grownup) can be strongly towards Lottie’s spirituality, although her looking associate Travis (Kevin Alves as a teen and Andres Soto as an grownup) has begun to point out indicators of infatuation with Lottie, so it isn’t not possible that Lottie might have manipulated him or one other one of many teammates into main the sacrifice. Nonetheless, given Lottie’s cult chief tendencies in maturity and her obvious connection to supernatural realms, she appears to be the most certainly Antler Queen of the bunch.
Figuring out “Yellowjackets,” although, something might occur, and given the present’s slow-burning first season, we’d have to attend some time to know something for sure. However no matter who the Antler Queen is, one factor is obvious: what occurred in that forest will not cease tormenting those that survived it.
Episode three of “Yellowjackets” season two premieres on Showtime on April 9.
