The first thing we realized about Taissa was that she was aggressive. We chose the term “aggressive” and not “fighter” because, more than winning, Taissa seemed to like winning her way. During one of the girls’ initial conflict in one of the first few episodes of Season 1 of “Yellowjackets,” it is alleged that Taissa purposefully hurt Allie to make sure that she does not play with them in the nationals. It is only ever insinuated that Taissa broke Allie’s leg on purpose, but we saw little to no guilt from Taissa for having been responsible for it, either indirectly or directly.
In fact, when the girls get into a fight before the plane crashes and all of them have to give compliments to each other to make up, Taissa is told that the fight in her is appreciated. That comment really stuck with us because it painted the picture of a certain kind of person—the kind that people don’t like in their lives but want in their teams to ensure a victory. Don’t get us wrong; Taissa was assertive, and her initiative proved to be of great benefit to the group more than once when they were stranded in the forest. But there was still an instinct in Taissa to ignore everything and everyone and just do whatever she wanted. It is possible that her background had something to do with it. She was a queer woman of color, and that is one of the most marginalized sections of society. They have to speak extra loud to make their voice heard, and demure silence does not work for them the way it does for others. With the world just beginning to understand the shared generational trauma of entire sections of society due to the way they have been treated in history and the far-reaching ways in which it affects their mental health, we still have a lot to find out about Taissa and how her condition came to be.
In addition to this, we are also not aware of Taissa’s home situation. Taissa was an ambitious woman, and as they say, she would have to work twice as hard for half the recognition. In her case, aggression was not a vice. But the extent to which her alter ego could go is dangerous. This particular act of eating dirt strangely reminds us of the actions of a child. As little children, we can bet that a lot of us have eaten dirt just for the heck of it. It is creepy when an adult does it, but could it be possible that Taissa’s actions stem from some long-buried childhood trauma?
In the past, that is, when the girls were stranded in the forest, Taissa may still have been the aggressive kind, but she was also a team player, much to our surprise. In fact, she was an empathetic person who was there for Shauna when she needed it, and she was also a good friend and a loving girlfriend to Van. Before they got on that plane, we could have bet that Taissa and probably Misty were the least-liked people in the group, and Jackie, who was their captain, was the most liked. But things changed soon enough in the series “Yellowjackets” once the girls were stranded because Taissa and Misty were the ones pulling their weight instead of Jackie. Taissa’s sleepwalking, her eating dirt, and her entire alter ego hint at some childhood trauma manifesting due to the dire circumstances around her.
Years later, when the girls have been rescued and have moved on with their lives, with Taissa probably being the most successful of them all, things are once again under very high pressure for her due to her running for the Senate. It is often said that the political world is no less than a jungle, and that might have been a little too true for Taissa. Right from an unsavory campaign by her opponent depicting her as a cannibal to Diane Rafelson feeling entitled to Taissa’s story due to her being a rich white woman talking to someone with a marginalized identity, Taissa was being pushed into a corner. Additionally, considering the high stakes she was dealing with, she unintentionally dug up their past with the reporter, Jessica Roberts. Taissa may have felt that this was going to put her mind at ease, but it just added to the stress.
It is also important to remember that none of the girls ever sought therapy for what they went through in the jungle. They wanted to avoid having the events of that time known to the world, but most of them had mental health issues even before the crash. Shauna had crippling self-esteem, Misty was a bit of a psychopath in the making, and Jackie seemed to have trouble with intimacy, at least with her boyfriend. Taissa really needed to get to the root of her aggression and find better ways to manage it. Due to not wanting to reveal what happened in the jungle, all these girls grew up to be women whose problems just multiplied with time.
Taissa, in “Yellowjackets” Season 2, probably needed help the most out of all of them, but we don’t doubt that she was the most stubborn about not getting it, and it is once again spilling out in her personal life, more than two and a half decades later. She is still refusing to get help, but she does not realize that she is not in a jungle, and the things that happen in the real world cannot be hidden for long, especially for a woman of her stature. Unless she finds a way to resolve her issues, she could seriously harm her family, her friends, or even herself.
