‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 Episode 5 Recap: Digging the Antler Queen

Is it sustainable? That’s what I’m wondering after watching this episode (Season 2, Episode 5) of Yellowjackets, and by “it” I mean…everything, pretty much. The whole show. It’s true that the adult material remains patchy and in some places very much inferior to the teenage stuff, but that’s not the issue, not really. It’s more that, five episodes into its second season, Yellowjackets is maintaining enough storylines to fuel maybe three entire series. I don’t think it can handle it. Something’s gotta give.

I mean, I thought last week’s episode was busy, but get a load of this:

In the present, Callie comes onto Jeff, her adult undercover-cop boyfriend, real hard. Before that aspect of her plight can be explored, she figures out he’s five-oh. She concocts a story about her mom Shauna’s affair, framing her dad Jeff’s best friend Randy as the other man, not Adam the slain artist.

Shauna goes with it, faking a motel tryst with Randy, complete with a condom he can jerk off into and discard as evidence that they actually fucked. But Randy can’t get it up, so he fills the condom with lotion instead. 

Jeff, whose real name is Matt Saracusa, and his partner Kevin, Natalie’s former teenage love interest, break into the room without a warrant and discover that the condom is a ringer. Saracusa celebrates his instincts even though he now knows, for certain, that his cover is blown, appearing to vow to continue the ruse in hopes of manipulating Callie right back.

Misty and Walter discover Lottie’s compound and attempt to rescue Natalie, who says she’s there of her own free will and doesn’t need rescuing. She also reveals that Lottie is the leader, which Misty didn’t know despite basically stalking all the other Yellowjackets throughout their lives. 

Pivoting off Misty’s shrill and transparently bogus reaction to this, Walter comes clean: Not only does he know she was at the very least involved with Adam’s death (he thinks she killed him, which means he thinks she’s capable of murder, which we know she very much is but which she finds offensive), he doesn’t care. But Misty ends their partnership and sends him on his way, deciding to return to the compound in an attempt to infiltrate the group.

At Van’s very cool home-slash-failing video store, Taissa passes out, comes to, cleans up, discovers a stash of oxycodone, confronts Van about it, gets told it belonged to her late cancer-stricken mother, believes it, tells her how afraid she is to ask for help given everything she’s done to everyone from her wife to the family dog (RIP). When she falls asleep, Van pops a pill. Next thing you know, Sleepwalking Taissa kisses Van, admits she’s “The Other One,” and says “We’re not where we’re supposed to be.” 

Under Lottie’s tutelage, Natalie — who tried and failed to get the cult members to reject Lottie’s leadership; turns out they know she has all their private info, and they don’t care — takes a trip back in time via hypnosis. Not only does she witness the last time she saw her late boyfriend Travis alive — he helped rescue her from an overdose — she also sees the Antler Queen from the show’s opening sequence, who appears to be not a student survivor at all but some kind of separate, malevolent entity that she claims they brought back to civilization with them. This freaks Lottie out pretty bad.

In the past, Lottie’s morning prayer to the spirit of the woods or whatever has attracted more and more of the survivors, leaving pregnant Shauna, cannibalism refusenik Coach Ben, and mute mystery survivor Javi the only notable exceptions. Discovering that even Taissa has fallen under Lottie’s influence — Taissa credits Lottie’s meditations for the end of her sleepwalking bouts — and freaked out by the weird things Lottie whispers to her unborn baby as she sleeps, Shauna storms off into the woods. 

Taissa catches up with her only for Shauna to go into labor as a freak, possibly supernatural storm kicks up. They make it back to the cabin thanks in large part to some kind of psychic connection between Taissa and Lottie, established by the kids’ repetition of various mantras of Lottie’s design.

Misty and her anachronistically dubbed “bestie” Crystal go out to a cliff to dump the camp’s nightsoil over the edge while sharing secrets. When Misty overshares and (finally!!!) admits to destroying the crashed plane’s emergency transmitter, Crystal calls her a psycho. Misty threatens to kill her if she tells anyone, causing Crystal to back up and fall off the edge of the cliff. The freak storm covers her body and Misty returns to the cabin claiming to have lost Crystal in the storm.

Speaking for the first time, Javi tells Ben that “She told me not to come back.” Who? “My friend.” That’s all the info we get on that point, though the Antler Queen doesn’t seem out of the question.

Also, Akilah is still caring for her secret pet mouse. So that’s nice.

So yeah, I worry that the show’s eyes are too big for its stomach. You can really feel the creakiness around some of these storylines, and because of their sheer number and variety, the creaky storylines are going to vary from viewer to viewer. Some people don’t give a shit about the survival horror or the supernatural stuff, while for others that’s the main draw. Some don’t care about the adult stuff compared to the teenage stuff, while for others the draw of the legendary ‘90s stars as grownups will outweigh the young unknowns. Some will like the comedic bits, some will think they’re in the way. Everyone will find certain characters more compelling than others. Everyone will prefer certain casting decisions (Lauren Ambrose as Van is dynamite) to others (Simone Kessell has none of her younger counterpart Courtney Eaton’s damaged, blank-eyed magnetism as Lottie). Some people adore the big obvious ‘90s needledrops (4 Non Blondes! Danzig!), while others think the whole I Love the ‘90s thing is, ahem, overblown. 

Me, I found myself spending a lot of time thinking I wish the hyperactive score by Theodore Shapiro, Craig Wedren, and Anna Waronker would just shut the fuck up for a few minutes, allowing the tension, the dread, the quiet isolation of the woods to build. And that’s a decent stand-in for my problem with the whole thing. Pare back. Let stuff breathe. Let stuff be.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.