“When issues get robust on the market, these women are going to want somebody to information them.” When Coach Invoice Martinez mentioned these phrases to Jackie Taylor all the best way again within the Yellowjackets pilot, he had no concept that each he and Jackie could be useless inside the subsequent few weeks neither might he have suspected the even darker destiny awaiting the Yellowjackets crew captain, who has now been revealed because the Showtime drama’s first cannibalism casualty. Beneath most circumstances, getting eaten by your folks would really feel like a fairly conclusive finish to your story. However that is Yellowjackets, and regardless of turning into a dinner buffet, Jackie’s story feels prefer it’s simply heating up.
In season two’s second episode, “Edible Complicated,” Shauna—having already eaten one among Jackie’s ears (an off-the-cuff sentence one can solely comfortably utter about Yellowjackets)—lastly agrees to get rid of Jackie’s physique. With the bottom nonetheless too frozen to bury her, the crew settles as an alternative on a funeral pyre. However even that plan takes an enormous flip when one thing interferes. Name it the winds of winter; name it a malevolent spirit. (The present is definitely not naming names but.) However no matter drive exists on the market within the wild brings an enormous sheet of snow down upon Jackie’s burning corpse, successfully stopping the cooking course of simply in time to show her right into a five-course meal.
Jackie’s consumption lastly advances the present’s cannibalism narrative, a plot level launched within the pilot’s very first scenes. Along with fueling the story, it actually fuels her teammates, who’re ravenous by way of a chilly and hungry winter. However past each factors, Jackie’s transformation right into a human vacation roast advances one thing else: the nice thriller of the Antler Queen.
People maintaining rating at dwelling know all in regards to the Antler Queen, despite the fact that we truly know valuable little in regards to the horned determine. The Antler Queen first seems within the sequence premiere presiding over the consumption of Pit Woman, however we nonetheless don’t know who she is or what she represents.
There’s no scarcity of Antler Queen candidates. By the top of season one, most theories pointed at Lottie Matthews, who appears poised to make use of her visionary powers to direct her teammates to eat one another to remain alive—to not point out as a ritualistic sacrifice to the powers that be.
However Lottie’s ascension isn’t but canon, and different Yellowjackets nonetheless seem to be Antler Queen prospects as nicely. There’s Taissa, clearly a frontrunner in her personal proper each as a young person and an grownup—all of which obscures a darker aspect that eats filth and tries to chew off her girlfriend’s face.
There’s Shauna, whose mercilessness as an grownup (Adam who?) suggests she could be keen to steer the cost on the cruel consumption of her associates. (Let’s not neglect Shauna kicked this get together off by consuming Jackie’s frozen ear within the season two premiere.)
Actually, nearly everybody’s nonetheless a contender for the Antler Queen job, apart from Misty—the one character we have now definitively seen unmasked subsequent to the cannibal cult chief. And Jackie’s destiny factors at one other chance: that the Antler Queen could possibly be Jackie herself.
To advance this idea ahead, we have now to look all the best way again to one of many present’s earliest factors of origin: Lord of the Flies.
Creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have made no secret in regards to the present’s connections with William Golding’s seminal novel. Lord of the Flies will get its identify from the titular rotting pig head who communes with Simon, a visionary in his personal proper. Given their virtually mystical connections to their environment, Simon and Lottie are simply analogous. Her precognitive skills are what make Lottie such an apparent contender for the Antler Queen’s throne.
Most of the time, although, Lottie serves as a vessel relatively than somebody along with her personal clear understanding of her powers, no matter they might be. The blood within the tea, her therapeutic contact with Travis, the group she leads as an grownup—all of these items really feel much less like Lottie in management, and extra like one thing shifting by way of Lottie.
Enter the proverbial pig head: Jackie.
When the Yellowjackets exit the cabin and discover Jackie’s completely charred physique, there’s a direct sense of awe and reverence, particularly from Shauna. Already Simon-like in her personal proper, what along with her connection to Jackie’s ghost, Shauna utters perhaps a very powerful line within the episode, as she hungrily appears down at her greatest buddy’s barbecued kind: “She desires us to.” These phrases are introduced as if spoken by Jackie herself, harking back to how Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and the remainder of the crash-landed boys revered and communed with the Lord of the Flies. Besides, within the case of Yellowjackets, the Lord of the Flies could go by one other identify: the Antler Queen, a.okay.a., Jackie.
“When issues get robust on the market, these women are going to want somebody to information them,” Coach Martinez as soon as mentioned to Jackie. If her devoured kind turns into one thing of a spirit information for the crew, then contemplate the coach’s prophecy fulfilled.
If Jackie is the Antler Queen, how will we clarify the truth that we noticed the Antler Queen within the pilot? The identical method we clarify the fantastical method the present depicted the ladies consuming Jackie, and even how somebody like Lottie sees tree stumps within the forest and envisions them as altars.
Yellowjackets additionally has a confirmed observe document of blending actuality and surreality, which leads us to a different ghoulish chance: Jackie’s skeletal stays could possibly be repurposed as an idol of kinds donning an antler crown, a Lord of the Flies in her personal proper.
