Right from the beginning of “Yellowjackets” Season 1, the series has hinted at there being supernatural elements to the girls’ story in the past and possibly in the present. But we have had a hard time believing it. In 1996, when the girls were stranded in the forest, a lot of their story unfolded like a horror. However, we have a feeling that the eerie background music had something to do with that. What we mean is that a tragedy is not the same as horror, and it might just be the witchy music that is adding to it. Look at the optics of the setting: there is a large group of women with barely any men around. The message is that it is the start of a coven. And what do witches do if not living in the jungle and fending for themselves with magic? While the makers just teased that concept throughout “Yellowjackets” Season 1, in Season 2 they made it as clear as day, with the girls opening the doors to cannibalism, and it is insinuated that Jackie was not the last human who would be sacrificed to their hunger.
But most of the supposed “magic” in “Yellowjackets” is presented through Taissa, Lottie, and Laura Lee, but mainly the first two. When it comes to Taissa, we strongly believe that her alter ego was the result of some childhood trauma that manifested itself in times of extreme duress for the sake of her survival. The alter ego operated with the single thought of saving Taissa, and that is why it made no effort to protect anybody else, even when it could have easily prevented harm to the team members.
But Lottie was different. Unlike Taissa, she was in control of herself, but the journey to get there took time. When she was ten years old, she started screaming in the car, preventing her parents from driving into an accident. While her mother believed that it must be her powers of premonition, her father’s opinion was more grounded in reality, and he wanted her to seek psychiatric treatment. But we don’t think he remained in the family picture for long, as Lottie was heard saying that arranging the plane (that crashed) was his only way of being a father.
When they were in the forest, Lottie started running out of medication. It must also be noted that she wasn’t in normal circumstances. She was under the constant threat of starvation and the other forces of the jungle. It wasn’t long before she started having her visions and speaking French in a frenzy, even though she was previously terrible at it. Now, we are not mental health experts, so we don’t know how to explain this away, but should the series ever try to understand the events of the forest months without the supernatural lens, we are sure there will be a reasonable explanation for it. But going back to 1996, we don’t think Lottie ever had a complete grasp on her mental health situation. Her father, who seemed to be the more practical one, was never in the picture, which means that she was with her mother, who believed in the occult and the supernatural. She might have spoken to her daughter about it, with Lottie not getting a second opinion from the other source she could trust (her father). It is possible that Lottie never understood why she had to take the pills, just that she had to because her father wanted her to. Maybe if Lottie had been more aware of schizophrenia, she would not have taken to Laura Lee’s words as fast as she did.
Once in the forest, when her visions started, Laura Lee told her to have faith if she couldn’t figure out her situation with logic. Laura meant well, of that we are sure, but the context was all wrong for Lottie. Either way, it was the only thing that made sense and Lottie latched onto it. She started having visions, and shockingly, they were slowly turning out to be true. One theory of ours is that, in one of her states, she might have read or seen something in the cabin, and that translated into her visions. But only the coming episodes will tell if we are right or if there is something else. Either way, she became a sort of spiritual center for the group, and through that, she found her identity—the kind a damaged mind that refused to heal was comfortable with.
Twenty-five years after their rescue, Lottie is still clinging to her spiritual persona and running a cult, where she “guides her followers to the light.” We have a feeling that before the girls had left the jungle, they had discovered that Lottie’s “powers” might just be the ramblings of an unhealthy mind. But Travis was a completely different deal. He had been attracted to Lottie, and years later, despite the evidence found by the girls (theory), he must have continued believing in her. Travis was desperate to know what had happened to his brother, and this seemed like the only way. It might look like a spiritual exchange, but we see it as two sick minds orchestrating a game with a power imbalance. Travis died, and now Lottie must cover her tracks. It could also be the case that she thinks some spiritual intervention is guiding her toward her old friends. In the present day, Taissa has brought back the horror with her alter ego. Now, with Lottie coming back, it is time for the supernatural to reenter. But this time, it cannot be written off as magic but will come with an explanation that will make sense of the girls’ time in the forest and help them overcome some of the trauma of their time spent there. We sincerely hope that is what the reintroduction of this character means.
