Yellowjackets Mysteries: An Up-to-Date List of the Series' Biggest Questions (and Answers?)

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12-05-2025

Like protein-packed hot meals in the frozen wilderness, concrete Yellowjackets answers are pretty tough to come by.
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And we wouldn't expect anything less from the intricately woven, possibly supernatural Paramount+ With Showtime series. After all, mystery is at the heart of the drama, which unfolds in two timelines: Exactly what happened after a plane full of high school soccer players crashed in the Canadian Rockies in 1996, and how is that experience still affecting the survivors in their present-day lives?
We've pulled together a rundown of the show's biggest questions. Among them, in no particular order: Have we met everyone who made it back to suburban New Jersey after the horrific accident? Is Mari experiencing auditory hallucinations or sensing a portent of death? Where the heck was Javi all that time? Is the Antler Queen who we all think it is? And what about that girl in the pit?
Our list goes on… but we're sure that you've got Yellowjackets questions you'd like answered, too, as well as theories to share. So if there's something you don't see outlined below, make like a good citizen detective and shout it out in the comments.
Scroll down to see our queries, starting with…
As Jackie was freezing to death in the Season 1 finale, she had a dream in which her teammates — including the deceased Laura Lee — welcomed her back into the cabin. In that vision, a man stood at the back of the room and said, 'So glad you're joining us. We've been waiting for you.' In the show's press materials, the character is called simply 'Hunter,' and some fans have theorized that he's the man whom the girls found dead in the cabin earlier in the season, and possibly the same person who previously piloted the small plane that Laura Lee later tried to use to escape.
When TVLine asked series creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson about whether the mysterious man will have importance moving forward, they confirmed that he would. 'We definitely know who he is, yeah, and we have a whole thing [planned],' Nickerson added.
When Natalie and Travis are out hunting/looking for Javi, she comes across a tree that is surprisingly thawed despite the snow and ice surrounding it. The moss is even a vibrant, summery green! The show clearly wants us to pay attention: Nat stops, looks at the tree for a moment and notes how weird it seems.
Some fans have theorized that perhaps the heat that melted everything around the tree is coming from an underground source, potentially a tunnel or bunker akin to the one in which Lottie lit candles during the vision she had when Laura Lee baptized her in Season 1. This leads nicely into our next question…
UPDATE: As Coach Ben realized in Episode 8, the base of the tree concealed the entrance to an underground hollow that was warm, and that held (among other things) rope and matches. Javi knew about the cave-like structure, too — sheltering there is likely how he stayed alive during his absence from the cabin — and he was most likely trying to lead Natalie there when she was chased by the rest of the team in Episode 8.
… how in the heck did Travis' little brother, Javier, survive in the frigid cold without food or shelter for weeks on end? The younger Martinez was gone for two months after the ill-fated Doomcoming in Season 1, yet he seems healthy and whole — if unwilling/unable to talk — when he's found in Season 2's fourth episode.
Might Javi have hidden somewhere warm, like the aforementioned and highly hypothetical tunnels/bunker? After all, just moments before they stumble across him, Van and Tai do notice that the ice in the area seems to be melting.
UPDATE: As we noted in the previous slide, based on the events of Episode 8, it appears that Javi was hiding out in the cave under the warm tree.
There's a lot to suggest that the masked girl wearing the antlers in the series' very first episode, aka the person who seems to be in charge of the barbaric process of killing and eating another girl, is Lottie. After all, as the series progresses, both her supernatural leanings and her ability to command loyalty have grown by the episode. The present-day timeline also seems to hint at Lottie's queenly status: She was the leader of a cult (OK, OK, 'retreat center') who had antlers hanging on the building she calls home.
That said: Plenty can happen between now and then in the flashback timeline, so it's completely possible that another girl can and will assume the spiky crown. All we know for sure is that it isn't Misty, who is shown taking off a different mask at the end of that sequence in the series premiere.
UPDATE: The events of the Season 2 finale indicate that Natalie was an Antler Queen — but was she the Antler Queen we see in the series premiere? (Christina Ricci sure thinks so.)
UPDATE: Season 3, Episode 6 shows us that Shauna (on Lottie's recommendation) was made Antler Queen after the group dethroned Natalie for mercy-killing Ben.
UPDATE: The events of the Season 3 finale reveal that Shauna is the Antler Queen depicted in the series' premiere.
Early guesses on this one pointed to Jackie, given that the girl who is chased to her death in the series' premiere is wearing Jackie's gold necklace. But the jewelry has changed hands a few times since then: Jackie put it on a scared Shauna on the plane ('It's basically a good-luck charm. Now, nothing can touch you.' Eep!), and Lottie made sure that Shauna came into possession of it after Jackie died. Given the pit victim's hair and skin color and overall build, we're guessing that maybe Mari winds up impaled at the bottom of the hole?
UPDATE: Could the girl in the pit be Hannah, one of the hikers who are introduced in Season 3, Episode 7?
In addition to the ladies in the photo above, we also know that Van, Lottie and Travis survived the team's trial in the wilderness, though Travis is no longer with us. A rewatch of the slide show at the high school reunion in the Season 1 finale doesn't shed many clues, but can you really rely on accuracy in a multimedia presentation constructed by someone who starts their speech with, 'Worddefinition.net defines a reunion as a union that is happening again'?
UPDATE: Though we (and everyone else) had been led to believe Mel was dead, in Season 3, Episode 8, we learn that she faked her death (!), changed her name to Kelly and married the daughter of Hannah, the woman the girls killed in the forest (!!).
Maybe we've just been reading too much Outlander. But there's a Scottish superstition that says the sound of dripping water in a house portends an imminent death… and that's all we can think about every time Mari is the only one in the cabin who hears that incessant, and as-yet unidentified, sound.
UPDATE: In Episode 8, Tai also hears the dripping noise, and then Mari hallucinates blood dripping from the wall where the saw, knives and other sharp instruments are kept.
UPDATE: In the Season 3 finale, we learn that Mari is the dark-haired girl chased and killed in the pit in the series' premiere… so maybe the dripping sounds was a portent of death, after all?
The symbol that showed up on the blackmail notes (nice touch, Jeff) also appears carved into trees in the Canadian wilderness and is, in fact, the shape in which those carved trees are laid out. But what the heck does it mean? Is it a means of protection, like Lottie guessed? An invocation of evil, as others have wondered? And, uh, what is that shape, exactly?
Callie, a teenager, is too young to be the baby that Shauna's carrying in the wilderness. (That kid would be in its mid-20s today.) And it's now a matter of record that the survivors won't chow down on the infant if/when it's born. Phew. So… what becomes of Jeff and Shauna's love child? Might we get to meet the littlest survivor in the present-day storyline someday?
UPDATE: In Season 2, Episode 6, Shauna has a stillbirth; her son did not survive. Given that it seems like she delivered the placenta first, it appears that she suffered a placental abruption.
Yes, there might be some otherworldly entity insinuating itself into the hearts and minds of the crash survivors, and that entity might be strong enough to maintain a lifelong presence. But when you consider what we know to be true — that these girls are scared and starving, and that some of them had mental health issues long before they boarded that private jet — isn't it just as plausible (if not more so) that circumstance and coincidence are making them think, hear, see and feel things that aren't really there?
That said: All of that stuff that happened when Lottie suddenly started speaking French and then smashed her head into the window at the seance? Creepy as hell.
UPDATE: The Season 2 finale features this interaction between Shauna and Lottie that we think is rather interesting. Lottie is referring to the wilderness and its sway over the team. SHAUNA: You know there's no 'it,' right? It was just us! LOTTIE: Is there a difference?
UPDATE: Season 3, Episode 7 reveals that the scary sound the girls keep hearing in the forest has a very mundane, extremely explainable source: Hordes of mating frogs. Yet another sign that maybe all of the spooky stuff is happening in the girls' heads?
The visionary-turned-disgraced cult leader wound up dead at the end of Season 3, Episode 4, but it's not clear who offed her. Shauna thinks Misty. Misty thinks Shauna. Van has her suspicions about Tai. And what might that cryptic comment from Lottie's senile father, about the whole thing being an accident and nothing more, mean?
UPDATE: In Season 3, Episode 6, Lottie's former cult — er, retreat center — staffer Lisa tells Misty that she saw Tai with Lottie the day she died.
UPDATE: In the following episode, Van straight-up asks Tai if she killed Lottie, and Tai doesn't deny it. (But she also doesn't confess.) But then Walter's DNA test of what's under Lottie's fingernails turns up as a match for Shauna… or maybe also Callie?
UPDATE: In Season 3, Episode 8, Mel denies killing Lottie.
UPDATE: In the Season 3 finale, Misty confronts Callie about killing Lottie, and the teen confesses. She went to Lottie's apartment building to get back the tape Mel sent. Lottie led her to the stairwell and started talking about how Callie had 'It' from the wilderness inside her, and Callie was so upset, she pushed Lottie down the stairs, ending her life.
When Shauna was stalked by an unknown person in Season 3, Episode 2, the episode's juxtaposition of past and present storylines hinted that that person might be Melissa, one of her high school soccer teammates. (Read a full recap.) Later, when her car's brakes failed, Shauna assumed Misty had tampered with them… but she later learned that wear-and-tear was at fault. In Season 3, Episode 4, someone closed the door to a walk-in freezer while Shauna was inside. She eventually was released, but the incident scared her. Are the unsettling moments linked? Is Shauna paranoid? At the moment, we don't know.
UPDATE: Season 3, Episode 7 indicates that maybe the daughter of Hannah, one of the trio who encountered the girls in the woods, is behind what's happening to Shauna.
UPDATE: In the next episode, Mel observes that Shauna is mentally ill and imagining that there's someone out to get her when, in reality, coincidence and benign occurrences are all that's happened.
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