‘Yellowjackets' Season 3 Finale Recap: The Wilderness Is Hungry
We've made it back to the beginning of 'Yellowjackets.'
The season finale gives us the extended version of the moment that hooked us from the pilot: A dark haired girl running through the snow as she is chased by a group of mask-wearing teens. She falls into a stake-filled pit and dies.
Now we know for sure who the deceased is: It's Mari, as many long suspected. After the survivors decide it is time for another hunt to appease the angry Wilderness, Mari draws the Queen of Hearts. Tai and Van's attempts to make the newcomer Hannah the target are thwarted by a vindictive Shauna. Mari is the victim of Shauna's meddling.
While some suit up and join the chase without compunction, for others it's painful to watch, as it is for the viewer. Mari is their close friend and teammate. Gen even tries to distract Tai in order to buy Mari some time. But the conclusion is predictable because we've seen it before. Mari dies, her fingers twitching as she bleeds out.
Still, this familiar sequence is paired with something completely new, a cliffhanger that reshapes what a fourth season might look like. While Shauna is distracted, Natalie and Hannah outwit her. Hannah disguises herself as Nat, while Nat takes the almost-repaired satellite phone to the highest peak she can find and dials. At first, no one responds. But eventually, as Aerosmith's 'Livin' on the Edge' cues on the soundtrack, she hears a voice. 'I can hear you,' it says.
Now there's a real chance of rescue.
Natalie's moment of heroism, however, contrasts sharply with Shauna's absolute descent into madness in both timelines. Teen Shauna is drunk on her own power, and it's hard to know whether she truly believes in the Wilderness or is just out for blood to prove her dominance. Her cruellest moment comes when she demands to have Mari's hair to affix like a medal to her robes. (She never really liked Mari anyway.)
In the present, we get a glimpse into this mentality. Adult Shauna is done trying to bury the past or make apologies for it. It's a bit of self acceptance that comes in the wake of this week's other big revelation: Callie is Lottie's killer, meaning that Shauna is not only a murderer but also the mother of a murderer. (I did not see this one coming at all.)
Misty clocks that Callie is the culprit after seeing a photo of Callie on the cloned version of Lottie's phone that Walter stole. But when Callie tells Misty the full story, she is more sympathetic than not.
Lottie essentially lured Callie, stealing Hannah's tape from Callie's bedroom. In the basement of her father's apartment, Lottie then tries to convince Callie that she is a child of the Wilderness, a child whose mother fears her. 'She can't love you because she's jealous,' Lottie says. 'You're just like her, but more.'
Hearing this, Callie pushes Lottie. The action is rooted in anger but also fear. She doesn't want to be like her mom. And she really doesn't like the sound of Lottie confirming her worst fear: that Shauna can't feel any true motherly affection.
But after Misty outs her, Callie does something extremely unlike her mother. She goes to her father and confesses everything. And Jeff and Callie, to protect themselves, abandon their house and disconnect their phones, leaving Shauna alone.
It's a move that, in a way, frees Shauna to embrace her true self. Home alone, Shauna finds the note that Melissa wrote to her and had sent with the tape. It had fallen under the fridge; Callie had never seen it. And, it turns out, Melissa wasn't lying. The letter really was about forgiveness and letting go of the past. It triggers something in Shauna. She rips it up and flashes back to all of her recent misdeeds, crying over the kitchen sink. (Credit to Melanie Lynskey for making us feel anything for her at this point.)
But those tears are not for her daughter or husband. And so, wearing a sick Throwing Muses shirt, she sits down to compose her own manifesto. The intended audience is not clear, but the sentiment is. She realizes why for so many years she buried what happened in the wilderness. It wasn't because of guilt or trauma. 'I think we can't or won't remember it clearly because we recognize deep down that we were having so much fun,' she narrates.
In the woods she wasn't a wife or a mother. She was a warrior and a queen, clad in her perverse battle armor.
That is true, but Shauna is also rewriting history to fit her own narrative. Shauna's story has been one of self-delusion. This is just a different kind than the one that blinded her previously. Because, yes, while she has had moments of basking in her supposed strength in the wilderness, she has also had a pretty miserable time out there.
Let's not forget the beginning of the season, when all the other teens seemed to be having a relatively nice time and she was hiding in her hut sulking. Shauna is happy only when Shauna is blatantly disregarding the desires of others.
It's a trait that Tai and Misty recognize as they meet at a diner and form an alliance against her. Tai blames Shauna for Van's and Natalie's deaths. She isn't wrong.
Shauna, in many ways, began 'Yellowjackets' as the audience surrogate. If Jackie was the pristine queen bee, she was the relatable character — the regular person thrown into this mess. Quietly, all along, however, the show has been revealing her to be the Big Bad. Her monstrosity was not made by some mystical forces. It was in her all along. The Wilderness just helped it emerge.
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"Sometimes intimacy coordinators can feel too intrusive in a way [where I want to say], 'Let me have freedom and let me do my thing,'" Newman explains. "[Lizzy] made everybody feel comfortable, free, loose. We went into all those scenes, really knowing what we were doing, but we also felt that we could improvise a little bit within them. So it wasn't too constricted." When it came time to film with Box, Talbot had at least 15 sex toys lined up for them to choose from. "Branton, God bless him. I love him so much, he's such a team player,' Newman laughs. "We roll up [to set] that day... I said to Branton, 'All right, baby, you choose. This is your call.'" That confidence extended naturally to Akerman, who Newman says was one of the first people she reached out to once they got a start date for filming. She wanted to talk with the Billions alum about their characters' dynamic, which ranges from friends to lovers. Newman credits her costar for being "so open.' "I love that woman. She is a wild, feet planted on the ground, tremendous actress who is game for anything," she says. "Obviously, she's gorgeous, but she's incredibly intelligent, a very deep actress, very interested in script analysis, very interested in how to make the best show we possibly can.' Bringing that level of commitment wasn't just about acting — it was also about relying on each other offscreen to navigate the rigors of filming. "I cannot express enough the bond that we all had on this set,' Newman says. That is especially true of her friendship with Lowes. 'We flew back and forth between Charlotte, where we filmed the [show], and L.A. 26 times to see our children together. We are sisters forever now,' she says. 'Sharing this wild adventure with one of my closest friends — and seeing the show's success with Katie — is one of the joys of my life.' Solve the daily Crossword
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It's part soapy drama, part erotic thriller and a whole lot of fun. Don't take it too seriously. When The Hunting Wives star Jaime Ray Newman was on a small ferry outside of Vancouver Island last week, she learned firsthand just how much buzz the sexy drama has created. Newman, who plays fiery, red-haired Texan Callie, overheard a group of friends debating what to binge-watch next. When one of them mentioned The Hunting Wives, two women on the boat who weren't part of the group interjected: "Oh my God, we just finished that. Have you seen it yet?" "All of a sudden, the whole boat started talking about the damn Hunting Wives," Newman tells Yahoo. She had changed her hair since the show came out, so she wasn't immediately recognizable. But when a producer she was with pointed her out to the group, they started to freak out. "All of a sudden, I was Julia Roberts on the boat. Everyone wanted selfies." It's a clear sign of how The Hunting Wives is the show of the moment. Last week, it pulled in over 2 billion minutes viewed on Netflix, according to data analytics platform Luminate. That was more than double its debut week numbers, an impressive accomplishment for a show licensed for only U.S. streaming. It remains in Netflix's Top 10. Based on May Cobb's bestselling novel, the series follows Sophie (Brittany Snow), who moves with her family from Boston to Texas. As she settles into the small town, Sophie becomes dangerously entangled with a socialite named Margo (Malin Akerman), spiraling into obsession, seduction and murder. Politics, guns and a touch of campy dialogue are thrown in too. Beyond the premise, what's so resonant about this raunchy series? The shock factor From steamy scenes to unexpected plot twists, The Hunting Wives pushes the envelope. That's especially true with how the series explores sex. There's the unconventional marital arrangement between Margo and her husband, Jed Banks — a debauched oil tycoon played by Dermot Mulroney — which allows them both to sleep with other women. And they both do … a lot. Akerman's character ultimately shares intimate moments with both Snow's and Newman's. There's also a storyline of her sleeping with the son of her best friend, a barely legal teen. Aside from 2021's Sex/Life, this might be the most risqué original series Netflix has ever released. Up until just two months ago, The Hunting Wives was actually slated to premiere on Starz. As Snow told Glamour, the cast filmed the series believing it would land with a smaller audience and potentially become a 'cult classic.' But Netflix changed the equation — and with a much bigger streaming audience comes a lot more opinions. As for the nudity, yes, it's meant to be provocative. 'Nobody who puts this many naked people on TV does it entirely for educational or creative purposes,' Linda Holmes wrote for NPR, while also pointing out how 'everybody seems to be having a transparently great time.' Snow told Glamour she didn't find that nude scenes were 'gratuitously done, where we're showing this shot of a woman's body for no reason.' 'It's all part of the story that needs to be told, specifically because of Margo's coercion and power and making these moves on Sophie, the sex scenes need to happen because Margo uses her sexuality and prowess to make sure that Sophie feels like she's finally being seen,' she said. This show isn't just buzzy because of the sex, although Episode 7's pegging scene might be the most jaw-dropping moment of them all. "Respectfully, the entire meat of the series is its indescribable, inescapable, horniness,' Rolling Stone says. There are plenty of wild antics that make The Hunting Wives an unhinged binge. In one episode, the hunting wives load up for a boar hunt, and after Callie calmly finishes one off, the women celebrate with a boozy brunch of mimosas, gossip and a game of never-have-I-ever that ends with a manslaughter confession. That abruptly ends the party … until two characters embark on an alcohol-and-Xanax rager and invite younger men over for a game of spin the bottle. There's also enough political satire to ruffle both sides of the aisle. Akerman has said her character was inspired by Melania Trump, and an abortion storyline comes with a side of anti-abortion posturing. Critics have called it a 'bonkers, bisexual culture-war soap,' with each episode going further than expected. While all that chaos keeps the entertainment dialed all the way up, it's part of the show's charm. This isn't a prestige drama like Succession or The Crown — it's your new guilty pleasure, dripping in scandal and served with a cold glass of whiskey. Beneath the sex, power plays and whodunit murder mystery, The Hunting Wives knows exactly what it is: a glossy, high-octane escape that doesn't take itself too seriously. Escapism at its finest With its biting one-liners — "she's a coastal elite with a body count" or "open marriages are for liberals" — chaotic Southern style, The Hunting Wives is about having a good time. "There are serious things that we're dealing with, but we come off the [storylines] quickly. We want to entertain," Newman says, crediting showrunner Rebecca Cutter for this no-holds-barred approach. "Oftentimes shows pussyfoot a little bit. They're a little too scared to upset this group, a little scared to upset that demographic. So they end up just playing it so down the middle, and Rebecca has no fear," Newman continues. "She threads that very delicate needle. Every now and then, you get a writer who comes along who just speaks to everyone.' The Hunting Wives certainly speaks to a female audience. The show offers complex, unapologetic characters who break the mold, telling stories that entertain an often-overlooked demographic. Although Sex and the City paved the way in 1998, it's rare to find TV shows centered on female desire and ambition, especially when it comes to portraying women over the age of 40. SATC spin-off And Just Like That... was recently canceled after three seasons, highlighting the challenge of sustaining these narratives. The Hunting Wives rises to the occasion, offering a bold exploration of women navigating power, intimacy and self-discovery without hesitation. 'Why can't women talk about wanting to have sex and be pleased?" Newman asks. 'Most stories are centered around men's pleasure, but finally, we get to be the forefront of these stories. So I think it's about time." This perspective in storytelling is speaking to audiences, especially as women are increasingly demanding their voices and experiences be heard. "Thank God we have writers like Rebecca to clear the way for us. People are so interested,' Newman says. 'You can see that [portraying] women in their 40s garners huge audiences." Will there be a Season 2? There's no official word yet on whether Netflix plans to greenlight a second season, but if the show stays at the top of the charts and the tip of everyone's tongues, it's hard to imagine why the streaming giant wouldn't invest. Newman says the cast and crew all hope it happens. "I cannot express enough the bond that we all had on this set. There was not a bad apple among the bunch. It's very rare to experience that. We all came into the show very seasoned,' she says. 'That is also the benefit of casting women who've been around for a long time. We've all seen good behavior and bad behavior on set." Newman is happy to leave the bad behavior on your TV screens. If that offends you, too bad. "Listen, maybe there are a few people that this angers, but whatever," she says. "Find another show."
