House of R - 'Yellowjackets' Episodes 5-6 Deep Dive

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Murders, DAT tapes, and flashbacks, oh my! Mal and Jo return to discuss and dive deep into Episodes 5 and 6 of the third season of 'Yellowjackets.' They break down the past and the present to see what is going on with Shauna, what will the Misty and Walter investigation bring, as well as finally witnessing a major death! Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Video Supervision: John Richter Social: Jomi Adeniran Addition Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Restrictions apply. See terms at Fandul.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash herms. As baby, it's House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. That's Mallory Rubin and we're here today to talk to you about not one but two episodes of Yellow Jackets. We're catching up. It's five and six. Safe to say some major developments out in the wilderness. How are you doing Mallory Rubin? I'm doing great. I took an oath and vacation days at work just like Misty. I am here. Citizen Detective Cap on. Ready to crack the case. Earlier today you just like casually. flip my bike over. That's right. In a menacing fashion.

I told John and Steve and Arjuna that I needed to run some wires for the Wi-Fi, you know, really clear the space. Yeah, yeah, listen. Walter Spack. Are you thrilled? Delighted. Also, shout out to my people at St. Patrick's Day. Shout out to the Irish out there. And we were here to celebrate not with corn beef and cabbage, but with a little Ben on the Barbie.

Spoilers for the yellow jackets. Yeah. Coach Ben has finally met his end. and it is on a dinner plate. So before we get into that, quick programming reminders, okay? Mallory and I are covering both Daredevil

and Yellow Jackets on a weekly basis. We're recording this on a Monday. Yellow Jackets will now be recorded on Mondays for the rest of the season is the plan until we change it again. But for right now, Yellow Jackets Monday, so if you're like, where's TikTok, where's the Yellow Jackets episode,

they will drop on Mondays for the most part going forward. We're also doing, of course, Daredevil later in the week, our deep eyes on Daredevil. This week, however, Molly Rubin is going to be out of office. So I have assembled a group of people to talk about superhero stories and what we want from them.

It's sort of what we're doing this week on The Old House of Bar. The Midnight Boys, Poo-Poo! We'll have a more standard sort of instant reaction to Daredevil episode 4 on that feed. And then next week, the Ring Reverse feed is just bumping with like there's a mint edition, there's a button mashers, all sorts of stuff. So Mallory Rubin. Yes. How can folks keep track of all? all the things we've got going on on our various feeds.

Simple. Follow the pod. Okay. Follow House of R. Follow the Ringervorverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys Pew Pugh on Spotify. You can also watch on the Ringerverse YouTube channel. So subscribe to that as well. While you're at it, you're at your computer, your phones in your hand. Follow the Ringervverse on the social media platform. If you're choosing whatever that might be these days.

And then send us an email. The inbox is open. Hobbits and Dragons at Gmail. email.com. Send us your Yellowjackets thoughts. Send us your daredevil thoughts. It's not too early to send us your last of us thoughts, your Andor thoughts. Those are just, they're mere weeks away at this point. I just rewatched like four episodes of Andor season one last week. Yiped. So excited. I can't wait. So excited. Can't wait. Episode five is titled, Did Ty Do That? Written by Sarah Al-Thompson and Elise Brown,

directed by Jeffrey Byrd. And episode six is titled Thanksgiving, parentheses, Canada. Written by My pals, Libby Hill and Emily St. James, and directed by Pete Chapman. I want to talk about did I do that really quickly? Were you a Family Matters watcher? Oh, my God. Yeah. Absolutely. Every week.

Yeah. When you see it written out like this, do you hear it said, did Ty do that? Long before, yes, long before we knew that there would be a Steve-R-Wall and Stefan-R-Cal actual bit of commentary inside of the episode. So, wonderful stuff. So for the Zygote's who are listening to this podcast, who did not watch Failure Matters, and I know you exist. And you got a little Steve Urkel conversation between Van and Ty inside of this episode. Did I do that was, of course, Steve Urkel's catchphrase. Did Ty do that is like maybe one of the best titles of television I've ever seen in my life?

Great stuff. Great stuff. We're going to do like, we're not going to do because we're doing two episodes today. Yes. We're not going sort of beat by beat. We're doing some bigger picture buckets of like character check-ins and stuff. like that. We are going to do our usual unreliable narrator slash hallucinator slash dreamer counter. I think I have a very incomplete list, so you let me know what I missed. I've got Akela and her

her gas fume dreams. Dark tie question mark. Lottie as ever. Mr. Matthews. Yes, very sad. Very sad. We also got... Could be van. We don't know if what's happening with the phone and the box is truly supernatural or... cancer stuff. Something going on the van. You know, Travis, how much of the mushroom tea plus the proximity to the gas? Really honestly, I think everyone at this point is either actually channeling some sort of alter ego, absorbing some sort of noxious fume or engaging in a collective fever dream that makes. us unable to trust their experience in full. If it were me, I simply would not go into the cave

with gas. That's just like, that's where I draw the line. Yeah. Eat a friend, maybe, if needs must, but go into a cave with noxious gas, like gives you creepy dreams. It's a no for me. Also, we should know it on the mushroom front, on the beautiful Ben's spread that they were all enjoying, there were clearly mushrooms on the plate. Let me tell you something. Yeah. That looked great. It looked delicious. We should all be so lucky, honestly. The like, The Misson ploss of it, the like, yeah, like the greens and all sorts of. Yeah, all the extraments. And just the fish looked frankly impeccably prepared.

Oh, yeah. Really, Ben, wasted that. Speaking of, what's on the menu, a.k.a. would you rather eat? Mm-hmm. Some lottie pops? Yep, charming. Mm-hmm. Misty's chocolate rougola, the cheeses. I honestly love a chocolate rugala. I pretty routinely get chocolate rugla.

However, I am accepting zero. No trees from Misty. Commestibles from Misty Quigley. canonically established the fentanyl injector and injector in Crandies and other things. Cigarettes, candies. It's a no for me. Jeff's Jolly Hitcher snacks. You know, as...

As often is the case I'm confronting that the character I'm most similar to on Yellow Jackets is, in fact, Jeff. This is just my like basically afternoon snack habit. Lots of bags of Cheetos. I thought this looked great. Would you, you know, let's pause here and say, would you accept a an orange cracker, cracker peanut butter snack from Shana. I thought Shana was appropriately ashamed. Banished from snack or table.

To know what she would have selected from the vending machine. Tye's room service order, which is, among other things. Filet Mignon, two main lobsters. Yeah. Burgers. Drawn butter and all. Rare. You know, it sounded great, honestly.

Two main luster. There's a lot going on in that hotel suite, really living in the luxury. Look great. Lottie's Chinese take. Lally's poorly reviewed no vegetarian options Chinese takeout? It's a no for me. A 2.5 is an absolute hard, easy pass. What if Lisa's delivering and you have a chance to sort of resolve some long simmering tensions and guilt?

I'm content to just hand her $50,000 without consuming the food. Okay, great. Ben's last supper, which, as you mentioned, fish, greens. Yep, looked wonderful. Before his other last suppers, which were worse and worse and worse. Last one at least, on the menu today, we have Ben himself. I'm going to pass. That's a no for Ben.

I'm going to pass. Of all those options, though, what are we most drawn to? Probably the Cheetos, if I'm being honest. Simple mind, simple pleasures. What can I say? Okay, big picture check-in. Like I said, we're going to do all the present-day stuff, then we're going to go into the past and talk about all the past stuff, and we're going to do it in sort of character

buckets, kind of like how we usually do, but a little bit more focused. Big picture check-in. This is a very divisive season. in the fandom is what I've been noting. There are some people who are like, Yellow Jackets is as good as it ever was, or a lot of people seem to really, really like episode six. So they're sort of like, we're back baby sort of thing is a vibe.

And so as we hit the halfway mark, how are you, Mallory, feeling about the season? And did these two episodes change your mind one way or another? I really enjoyed the start of the season, as I think we both did. Four was my least favorite. And five, I started to wonder if we were, Yeah. A bit. But the end of six, and also I would say six more broadly as just not just because of the

arrival of new characters. The others are here as we have long suspected as we've tracked lost clues across every single episode. Ben's death, like it just feels like a moment of transition inside of the show. So I'm eager to see where the rest of the season goes and I have a high-ish level of hope that the rest of the season will be very active. I would say that I am not vibing with the past timeline this season nearly as much as I have in prior seasons, whereas I think the present day has returned to form a little bit this season compared to last year. So those have flipped for me in season three compared to season two. Overall, I remain like very eager to see where this goes and hopeful that a lot of interesting things will happen, but also slightly

trepidacious that maybe too many things will happen and that we are accelerating, especially again in the past where it feels like simultaneously very, like too much time is passing for how little has happened and characters are in a place that I don't totally understand for all of them. So yeah, it's been a little bit of a mixed bag, but I would say it's mixed positive for me heading into the rest of the season. How about you? I know it's just going to sound like I'm saying this because my friends wrote the episode, but I really do think six was like the strongest the season has been. Yeah, six was fun.

I think it was like really fun and really harrowing. Like everything with Nat. Oh my God. So if Thatcher's performance, Ben's end, like all of that stuff was like, I'm not just talking about like a rump roast. You know what I mean? Like it was like, it was like really funny, really emotional, really exciting. Obviously there's just like baked in plot mechanics of the story that are going to make it that way. But I really think that I do think that Emily, I was like worried because I was like, what if I don't like this episode of Emily?

Emily and Libby are pals of mine. Like, what am I going to say? Shana is a huge problem for me this season and remains so. Shana in the past. Now, I don't know. And Shana in the present a little bit too, but I don't know if Shana in the past if we're going to see something that I more clearly recognize now that she's scrambled her way to the top of the power chain.

Obviously, they comment on that. You're right. She is better, you know, like all this. or stuff. But like, this Shauna, who started the season journaling angrily, is bitter, is spiteful, is like constantly

sneering, constantly has this like sour look on her face. Yeah. In a way that like, I want to support because I understand why the events of season two, the trauma of season two, would put someone in extremely dark mindset, an extremely dark place.

There's just something falling flat with the characterization of Shana. And I don't understand why anyone would, they're trying to sell me a story of like power. Yeah. And even though it's Lottie who confers power on her by putting her in charge and that's, you know, follow the real power sort of thing. I don't understand why anyone would follow Shana in her current iteration or she's just nasty, unpleasant and angry all the time. I love an angry woman, but like this is just a lot, you know? Yeah, I think the question of whether at a certain point, especially right now, confronting the fact that they are about to have to spend yet another winter there,

you would start to gravitate toward that hard edge in your fear, like, would almost seek out that rigidity and that like complete unflinching, no holds barred, no room for negotiation. I'm going to whip everybody to like follow me in full. But I think then that needs to be a little bit more active text and we should feel some of the ripples and fissures in the group a little bit more, which maybe will come because, of course, we know from prior episodes that Shawna wasn't the only one who was in a like, how could it not have been me headspace?

So it was Ty? So how is Ty going to respond to that and will those ruptures? I don't understand why Ty isn't the clear candidate here because she is taking the same positions as Shauna in terms of like Benberg down the cabin, so we should get rid of me. been without, I don't know, personally insulting all the people around her all the time. Do you know? Yeah.

Okay. So let's get, we're going to do the breakdown. We're going to start with modern day. We're going to start with Ty and Van. And what is going on with them? Crucially, and this is sort of like, I think confirmed question mark. I guess if you put a question around candy, you can't say confirmed, potentially confirmed in this episode, that we are dealing with Dark Tie in this episode.

And then the question is for how long. Here are the indications that we are, right? that Sammy, who has always been the dark tie detector, is like, uh-uh, I'm taking Steve, I'm going home, I want nothing to do with you, you're not my mom, right? How did we not kick off the pod? Talking about Steve? Yeah. With apologies to Coach Scott, like the real big thing that happened in these two episodes

that's sweet puppy Steve confirmed alive and thriving in Sammy's Carithenka. Yeah, yeah. Simone has got it on lock. Okay. So Sammy snips out Dark Tie. Yeah. We get the phone call in episode six from real tie, question mark, trap somewhere, maybe. Then there's the sleep talking scene at the close of episode six when it seems like real time surfaces and says,

Van, please, you got to help me, right? And then we've got all the flashbacks after the did I do that plot line of trying to awaken Dark Tie in Ty in the past. So the question then we have to confront is twofold. One, have we been dealing with Dark Tie all season? Right. Since mid-season two? Like, how long has Dark Tie been driving the car here? And then my follow question is, what's interesting about that?

It's not just like, oh, my God, it was Dark Tie this whole time. What then is that telling us inside of the story that is interesting to us about these two characters? Because I would say Ty and Van, of all the present-day stories, Ty and Van has been floundering a little bit inside of this. season. So what does this tell you? So to that last point, first, actually, that makes me want to go back to the Shawna opening note for a second because I think the other thing on the Shawna in the past front is just like, it's hard. We've been talking about this the whole time we've covered Yellow Jackets. When do we understand in full how the character in the past is the

same person as the character in the future? A lot of things still have to happen in the wilderness and then there's a lot of time after. But based on how Shauna is behaving in the past, it's difficult for us to understand, I think, the longer she's like that, how Ty would just, like, go in season one and, like, sit in Callie's bed with her and catch up on life, right?

Right, or why Nat would want to see her. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I think, part of what makes it hard to just, like, embrace... I mean, there are things like, like, Travis and Nat who haven't spoken all season until this episode, but we know after, you know, have this like very on again, off again, but like very close

relationship. So there's like, yeah, as you say, a lot of social moving and shaking. Right. That needs to happen. Yes. And that's why, you know, rumor has it. I don't know. I don't think it's been confirmed from anywhere that season four is the final season.

And if that's the case and winter is coming, it's October, right? Like, yeah. And if the final season is just like what happened that winter and the rescue, that's interesting to me to see how we slide all these pieces. But yeah, I think for something like, to your point, something like young Shauna, feel like we're zagging a bit too hard to ever zig back. Exactly.

Like to ever get back to that point. Whereas I think perhaps one of the reasons that the modern day Thai van storyline isn't humming as much as because it's actually like, it's so similar that then the fact that it's not as compelling makes us less interested in it. Like young Thai and young van have this. irrepressible electric chemistry together, and they're often off on their own. And so like the fact,

yeah, they are. Well, the two of them and then a very robust tree trunk. And like, so the, you know, the fact that it's also often just the two of them and the present storyline, but it's just not, you don't have that same spark of that same electricity. It's like impossible not to compare. But the thing that that did do in this episode is you're noting, I felt that too is like it was impossible not to think, okay, so we're with dark tie, we're with the other one in the present because we were so actively seeking to summon that presence in the past. And what that did was not only put dark tie top of mind for us, but remind us the sleepwalking, following no eyes, etc. Like the exact trigger, sex, the triggers or the sequencing that tended to in the past lead

to one of those episodes. So I guess to your question of like how long, I don't know, I feel Like it's something that if we rewatch the season, maybe we'd be able to identify. But because no eyes was invoked again in this episode, it makes me think of like the ice cream episode and that whole quest. And like also- Or like seeing him in the alley after they dine and dash. Yeah. And I mean, that's the beginning of the season ultimately.

And then that's when like this idea of like offering up these sacrifices for the wilderness became such an active pursuit for Thai. And like, you know, also in the ice cream parlor, that's when. they see the coyote with the rabbit in its mouth and like we know what it wants, right? It wants more. And then there was the sweet, poor little rabbit and the attempt to sacrifice that life to not only summon dark tie, but the magic of the wilderness. So those, all of those things felt very closely linked in this episode. For me, there does seem to be a connection between this like pleasure seeking tie.

Yeah. And the other one, right? And so like, not that like original flavor tie wasn't living very well when we met her. season one. But this idea of like, where should we eat? What should we eat this like hunger? Yeah. This consumption angle, this luxury. Right. Let's, let's pamper ourselves. We've been through a lot. Let's treat ourselves. We deserve this sort of thing. Or this is how I'm coping with the cancer diagnosis, not as dead. All these other things are just too. My family's falling apart. My political campaign has fallen apart. Like, you know, all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. And I think it's like the

seeking of the pleasure, but also the, there's like a kind of severance, like quality to this, right? Like, you'll do the thing that I don't want to have to deal with. I, I, Ty, don't want to pull the trigger with Ben standing there five feet away for me. They said five feet. It looks like a little more. That's fine. It did. I was like, is that five feet? I'll get the other version of me to do this. And so everything they're doing in the present, it is very kind of like gluttonous and indulgent, but also there is this act. pursuit of a horrible thing, which is like, let's offer up blood so that you are okay. And those two things being entwined, the hideous and the pleasure that you find in it, I mean, the fact that- That's a thesis of the other jokes. Yeah. And the fact that by the time we get to the cannibalistic feast at the end of episode six, it's utterly routine. Like, sure, they put on some of their finery. Yeah, but they're just all sitting there having their little nauseous. It's like we talked about feeling like we were heading toward a moment where they ate a person, not because they

had to, but because they wanted to. Right. And they did. But we thought there was just normal. We thought there would be like at least a conversation about it. And they were just sort of like, it was just assumed. It's like, well, Ben's dead. And so someone has to dress him and then we'll eat him later.

You know what I mean? And that's just like when the pens are brimming with livestock. Yeah. And there's no need whatsoever. I also have to say I find, and this is not a knock on Lauren Ambrosa, an actor I really enjoy. I am finding the distance between adult van and and teen van so wide in terms of like the Lauren Ambrose version of van is so fearful, so passive. And I understand again, like a cancer diagnosis or a million other things that could have happened that could have beat

her down. But I would really like to see at least like flashes up. She still like, you know, gets off wry little one-liners every now and then. But I would like, young, Teen Van is such a firecracker that I don't feel, I feel the least amount of connection between those two characters. Yeah. On the phone call front. Yes. Is there any possible non-supernatural explanation for the phone call scene in episode six where an unplugged phone in a box with a bunch of other equipment, including a thing that can play a dat tape, rings, and then Van answers and it's Tye's voice on the other line, even though ties in the other room. Right. Right.

If it's not like some sort of like, I'm losing grip on reality because of the advancing cancer. Yeah. Is this the most overtly, there is no possible explanation for it, supernatural moment in the show? Yeah. I mean, not just the fact that the phone rings, it's unplugged, it's in a box, and then she hears Ty, but the fact that it seems to be another version of like a premonition, right? Or just because the language is slightly distilled. from what we hear when Ty pops up in bed later. But the sentiment is the same. It's this like, I am trapped inside of myself and I need you to help me. So is that Tye's consciousness from this other like plane actually reaching out to Vann in a supernatural form? Is it Vann in whatever version of

the cave gas or something else from the mushroom tea from the past having a premonition or a vision of this thing that she will then experience directly in the future? I think either of those seems possible. But yeah, it did feel like the show kind of saying, no, yeah, this is like a ghost story. Like there's just something happening here and we'll continue to offer up an alternate explanation because the characters engaging with that debate

that there's always another possibility remains interesting for them on a human level. But the show, I think, has done a lot this season to tell us that it is a supernatural story. It's so funny. I really thought it was going in the opposite, direction in terms of like plausible deniability for a bunch of stuff that we were seeing. But this is this is a wild moment.

Okay. My guy, what? My guy Walter. I'm thrilled for you. Are you ready? I'm just glad you didn't have to wait too much longer. We knew he'd be back, but we didn't know how long it would take for him to return. And he's here in a little outfit.

A little matching outfit. He's gotten multiple outfits. I mean, he has his driving gloves before we get to the other flight of glasses. The giga guy is that? What did you make of his, you know, he's like driving a muscle car hysterical? I loved that. What did you think of the little, you know, hula skirt cat on his dash? I mean, just any commentary on Walter's cars?

It seemed right to me. It all seemed great. Great stuff. Like you and a Jeff scene, this is me with the Walter scene. We love only the men on the show. No, that's not true. But, okay, so Missy and Walter. It's just, it comes up a lot.

Mystery and Walter and Shauna. on the case. Did we have to contort the plot and beliefability slightly to rope Shauna into these shenanigans? Yes. Worth it? Yes. Worth it, Bob, as they say on billions?

100% worth it. Quick question for you. Who is worse at their job? The various morticians in lab techs Misty manipulates into doing her bidding or Mr. Matthews caregiver Nora, who just occasionally people is like, Mr. Matthews, you're confused

and then continues to let these people traips around the penthouse. Yeah, that was tough. Nora. Nora was, I got from Nora the vibe that you got from the Jol's in the beginning of the season. Like, what is up with Nora?

Is she a plant? Is she spying? Like, especially because we get some lines from Mr. Matthews about, you know, like, already at the station. And it's like, what web is this family still embroiled in, like connected to or independent of whatever is going on, was going on with Wadi.

So I have my eye on Nora. You can't be that bad at your job, can you? I mean, I don't know. Nora is one to keep an eye on. Already at the station feels like... Like blaring sirens, right? A big thing for us maybe to look at either this season or next season. Whatever, if we get, however much information we get about what happened when they came back,

the cover up. Yes. It does force us to, you know, confront, as of course did Jeff basically outright invoking this, the loss of hot Kevin Tan, which we just haven't spent enough time this season. You know who Jeff feels about police now? Kevin? Oh, Jeff. Where do you think Nerd Whisperer Misty came from? Because when we first met her in season one, she couldn't get a single date. And now there's legions of nerds like drooling to do her bidding. Okay, so I had kind of like, I really kind of bumped on this. Yeah, me too. I had like two responses to it. There was a part of me

that really liked it because like Misty is still, you know, she's walking around. So we have Misty morning in both timelines right now. Yeah. Right? She has lost people close to her. She's carrying a lot of weight. Do you think she's going to start wearing Ben's leatherman jacket? I hope not because it is just coded in all sorts of

vomit and blood and other bodily fluency. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess they could wash it, but I'd prefer she not. But yeah, like, you know, Misty, one of our first encounters with Misty is that she has to basically like blackmail and bribe this dude to like

like go into her house at the beginning of season one. So the fact that everybody in this stretch now is like really viking with Misty and intimacy, it gives me, especially because Misty has become the like I'm keeping Walter at arm's length person, this enjoyable and kind of interesting, oh, you want what you can't have. Like you wanted coach Scott and for various reasons that was never going to happen. What do you mean he was her first boyfriend and amputation? It's just like a kind of line that you would only get on yellow jackets for, That's where I was like, are we back?

That was great. But, you know, Missy now walking around, like in this cloak of grief with Nat's leather jacket, I do like the idea that she's like absorbed some of that cool, like, I can conquer the world and not give a shit energy. But I was like, wait, was this always here? She just wasn't into these guys or is this just a radical change? It was a little confusing. I'm one hand, but on the other hand, like, weren't we shown when she first put on the jacket and went to the bar and made the biggest ass of herself that we've ever seen that she can't

just like put on this thing. Maybe this is the difference between having all the shots of rail whiskey and not having all the shots of real whiskey on the jacket front. I would have mourned and really lamented it if I had not mentioned that Van was was rocking the Carhart jacket in the present timeline in the stretch. And I did you and Nick Nelson feel same right? Exactly. I really enjoyed that. I love it. I will shout out this one line that made me last. among many, which is she's a sister to me in all the ways that matter, like, legally? Very good. Really good.

Very good. Okay. And then Sean and Walter have this conversation that must have made you feel so good about yourself. Yeah. Right? Because Shauna accuses Walter of having done a murder just to delight and entice and make Misty's toes curl. Yeah. And this was your theory.

Yes. from like episode two or so, you were like, is Walter going to do a murder or something crazy in order to, you know, win Misty back to his side? Yeah. Does this feel less likely now that Shauna has named it? Oh, okay. Yeah, I was like glad to have it acknowledged. But first of all, I just think Shauna is, you know, all the way back from our early days of

Shana murdering Adam Martin when she didn't need to. Shana is somebody who is often swept up in paranoia or following clues to the wrong place and then makes the wrong read and a bad decision as a result. So the fact that she thinks it's Walter makes me less likely to believe that it's him. But also, he just, this was my moment with Walter akin to what we had in season two

where we're doubting, suspicious, wondering, and then you're kind of like, no, there's a pureness there. Now, I do think Walter... Is it when he gifted her trash? It was. Be it a limo? be a limo driver? Hot, honestly.

Great stuff. But, you know, Shana, obviously later she'll concede, like, no, I don't actually think Misty is the one doing this. But earlier, when Shauna says,

if anyone had a reason to be mad at Lottie, it's Misty, because of Nat's death. Shawna saw Lottie put the heart necklace on Cali and then let out, even compared to the bird screeches

we hear in the past timeline, the loudest, most feral scream we have ever heard. And dumped a delicious meal on the ground. I know. Green beans almond dean on the ground? Are you kidding me? What a waste. The only reason I don't think Shauna did the murder, otherwise she'd be like a top suspect for me is that she's like leading the charge here and she's such a POV character

that like, I don't think she split that much with reality that she has. A theory that I liked that was floating around is that Callie did it and Sean was covering up for her. But Shauna seems to really be trying to dig into, like, who actually did this. Right. Okay. So he looks genuinely crushed when my guy Walter looks genuinely crushed as Missy continues to give him the brush off. And on the one hand, I love Walter so much.

And I really do think he'd be a great fit for her. But the longer she doesn't want him, the weirder I feel rooting for him. Yeah. At some point, he's got to, like, take the hint to move on. So I'm just sort of like, okay, no means no, my guy, but please find someone else to lavish all this attention and murder on. When he gave her the bags of trash and she literally seemed to just like walk down the nearest alley in order to sort through it, my favorite thing about that is the fact that she had her iconic pink gloves on, which means she carries sets of them with her always at the ready. It's both winning and worrying all at once, the Misty Quigley story.

You cannot deny, however, that Misty on the case, citizen detective Misty, is the most compelling version of Misty that we get. This is a very only murders in the building sort of thing, especially as we're at the penhouse, calling Sean an idiot, Walter a fuck face, messing with Lisa's bike. I took an oath on vacation days, the line you cited. And the fact that she always has those gloves on her, it just like, it thrills me.

How did you feel about, let's move into like the, who killed Lottie theory, she seems to have died in the basement of this, of her father's very fancy apartment building. Right. Which still seems to be the place from her vision. Like, do you agree those? The concrete steps.

Yes, definitely. The candles are both the basement of her father's building and what she saw in her vision. Definitely. And so that means that when she had that vision in season one, she was dreaming of home, essentially. A home. but decked in probably more candles than it was at the time.

But that's a vision of home, which is like what Achilla says she's been having is visions of home. And so like when we first saw it, we were like, what is this mysterious building? And is this going to be an underground hatch we find somewhere on the island? And it's just the basement of her father's apartment building. How do you feel about that reveal? I liked it because, you know, in that moment that you're citing where Akila is trying to, in many sequences, is trying to wrap her mind around what she's seeing and what it might mean,

but ultimately is reduced to just sort of like listing the things that she'd seen. And Lottie with this longing and also this confidence that it means something, that it has to mean, something that it always has and always will says, like, home. And Ty is like, yeah, but all those things that's home from before. Like, you know, maybe this is just Akela and her vision or Lottie in this prior state,

their mind searching for that comfort and that belonging and that sense of a place that gave them that before. But of course, we have a lot of canonical evidence that Lottie's, as Travis helpfully recounts in this stretch of episodes, like when Lottie would say a thing, then a bear would show up or birds would fall from the sky, right? She saw a fiery halo around Laura Lee and then the bumblebee blew up. So, you know, and obviously we have even before the plane crash,

like the flashback to young Lottie in the car and the premonition of the accident at the intersection. So, you know, I still, to me, this still feels like Lottie having foreseen her death or foreseen that this would be a place that she needed to return. And then like, does that mean that she went there thinking something else would happen and died as a result?

It's like another version of this idea of Ben is the bridge home. Everybody is so mad at Nat because she took away. the bridge. We don't know yet what is going to happen, what the characters will be calling the burders slash the others. But like, they think Nat has chopped that bridge down. Oh, no. He's still the bridge. What if what brought the burders? Because they're eating Ben, Nackles Ben, they're screaming out. That brings this other group of people. It's just a longer bridge than we thought. Yeah. Got to tie some more ropes around the bridge. It's just a much more complicated bridge. The other thing on the apartment building, there was just this idea that she had been there four

weeks as Cliff at the front desk establishes. So, you know, Shaw and, like, reason wondering, well, why did she show up at my house and pretend she had nowhere to go if she had this place right here where she could go at any time? But also, what was she doing there and why? Yeah, on the one hand, yes. And on the other hand. Or what was she doing at the Sedeke home and why? Seeking Callie. Well, seeking Callie, but I also kind of believe Walter on this like friendship idea. Maybe. Okay. In terms of like the crumbs that we were going on in terms of the who killed Lottie mystery. Yes. We had the withdrawal of money from the bank. Yes. And we had her practicing an apology to someone. Yes.

All of that can be wrapped into the Lisa storyline, right? The I've wronged you, I'm sorry. Here's a bunch of money. There's 50K and cash is a tip for the shitty food. It seems to be what has happened with Lisa. But Lisa implicates tie. Correct. So tie is implicated, dark tie, like the other one at the wheel, possibly.

Walter is discussed above. Jeff, as the Redditors have noticed, has scratches on his hand, which could be from the cat. Yeah. Could be from Lottie, who has DNA under her fingernails. The Callie theory, did Callie do it? But, like, Callie really seems genuinely distressed when she overhears from her mom that Lottie is dead. Yeah.

Did Hillary Swank do it? Yeah. Did the birders do it? So on Jeff front, I will say, like, I do not think. A murder murder. A murder. When the prince was a muddard. I don't think it would make sense for Jeff to do this.

Obviously, not intentionally. Especially he's on his karma journey. Exactly. He's seeking the karma points. I thought the way that Jeff responded to Shauna revealing that Lottie had died was so weird. It was so weird. Like, I don't know how to wrap my mind around it unless Jeff did, like, see Lottie and something bad happened. Which I don't think would, I don't think it's that and that that would make sense.

but I'm like they want us to think that or wonder, I guess, because he's like, what? His just response. His response is bizarre. The scratches on his hand. It's bizarre. And it would be interesting if like this whole time we're like, Jeff is the normal one and Shauna's the bonkers one. And he's like, guess what I will also defend my family? You know what I mean?

He does insist many times in this stretch that he will do whatever is necessary to keep Kelly safe. Worrying. Is Jeff top of your list right now? No, I don't think so. I just thought that was so odd the way he responded, but I guess because of the tape, it feels like this is tying into the burders.

A birder murder. A birder murder. It certainly seemed like, obviously they cut off the tape before we hear the end of it. But despite Callie's recording from her phone showing 43 minutes, I'm like, that wasn't enough time to get through the whole dad tape. Okay. But I guess Shauna took some time

walking to the parking lot out of the Jolly Hitcher Hotel. Also, I'm sorry, Sadeckies, can we find a better hiding place? But also, follow up, did the Jolly Hitcher get, like, a major remodel? I thought the Jolly Hitcher was like a drive-in motel. Well, the Jolly Hitchers were the Jol's. They're doing their hipster boutique revamp, but that shouldn't have happened yet

unless Jeff just definitively didn't get the business. This just like, seems like, are there multiple Jolly Hitchers? Maybe it's a different wing of the Jolly Hitcher. This is where, like, Jeff and Bianca, their long shark meetings. This is where Shonna and Adam had their martini and their affair, like all the conversation with the Jol's, we got to hide out somewhere else.

And then, of course, Van and Ty just like, Shaw knows this is a secret room at the jolly hitcher with multiple other people in their hotel room. Anyway, you know, I think the fact that we hear what sounds, like somebody saying testing, testing, right, getting ready to record this, and then what sounds like the group singing, shrieking cry at the end of episode six,

makes me think that it is someone in that bird or group who has begun to record them, is going to have evidence of what I assume will be. This is like the, we've talked a lot about like, okay, the opening sequence of the show is like they're eating people. How do you go down from there? And the difference between we needed to do it to survive versus people came into our camp and then we killed them. We murdered them to protect ourselves and to make sure that they didn't X, Y, and Z. Like, they saw Ben's head.

that's a leveling up of the horror, certainly. And so if somebody has evidence about that out is a leveling up. Sure was. Sure was. Yeah. No, yeah. If they killed a birder. Yeah.

Or all the burters. All the burters. Except that they knew about. It seems like there were three burders. Right. Two that we know who are new cast members. Yeah. Nelson Franklin, who's an actor I love whenever he shows up as Edwin, and Ashley Sutton,

someone who I'm less familiar with as Hannah. and it should be noted. I think that we can add Hannah to the like pit girl possibility situation. She is like small of stature with an abundance of brown hair. So like we don't know if the burders are going to be murdered right away. If it's a prolonged murder murder murder, I don't know. But if this is murder vengeance, that would be interesting. Okay, let's talk about that tape.

I just have to say very, very quickly, weren't you the one with all those porn viruses? Something Shana said to Misty. Actually, I love when Missy came up with a concrete wall thing and then Shana knocked on the wall and she's like, oh. Also, I love it. Shana was like, I'm the new sheriff. She's like, it's citizen detective. Idiot. I mean, it's great.

It's great stuff. Yeah, that was really fun. Okay. We already covered a lot about the tape. but here's a huge thing they said. They're listening to the tape. Yeah. And presumably it's the end of episode six.

So there's a lot of people there. Yeah. Yes. The only people who know about this are either us or dead. Yeah. So that sounds to me like everyone in that scene who we have not seen in present day, they think is dead. Right. Whether or not the person's actually dead.

Yes. We don't know. Like, so the bird, not just a bird or murder, but like all the other girls that are out there and perhaps like various rabbits and deer as well. Right. I just hope more than our remains okay. Is this a tough beat for the Hillary Swank is Melissa Melissa is a live theory or how do you feel about it? So I don't know that it is and I guess I think that's a pretty damning thing for the show. Like, I, this actually had me thinking back to basically everything that has come before and whether, like, this is one of the downsides of, like, to use a Georgia R. Martinism being a gardener, you know, versus having your story set in advance.

Like, every moment we've been with them in the present, we've thought those were the only people who were left, you know. And like, like, the Lottie reveal, we were like, oh, Lottie Vann here. Yeah. So I'm kind of like, I don't know. How many more can come out of the woodwork? find a way to like introduce new characters even though there was never a prior accounting in any of the conversations they were having with each other for like should we check in with that person?

Yeah. Which is like, what does Vand know about this? Kind of. Yeah. That's a, that's not great. It's not great. Honestly. But because that is the established pattern at this point, it doesn't, it actually

makes me think that it's entirely possible. They could say, hey, no one else made it out of the wilderness. Everyone is definitely, definitely dead. They could look at the camera and say that. And then the next episode, Hillary Swang, shows up, she's like, hey, it's me. by my backwards baseball cap you can tell that I'm Melissa. Yeah, and they just need then

another version of when they were all like, oh, we really thought that Lottie was like abroad at her institution still so we didn't bother to mention her. Everyone knows about this is either dead or in another continent. Exactly. Melissa's in Canada, so she doesn't count.

Their calendar. All right. Team Sedecki check in. We've already covered a lot of this, but I was particularly struck by Jeff was begging Shana for truth and some trust. She was like, okay. Terrible. And then seconds later

is pulling this low blood sugar woozy gambit on him. And I was just like, there was no air between her saying, okay. And then later, I was actually really weirded out by later when she comes back to Callie and she's like, we need to have one of our mother-daughter talks. Not only like her threatening Callie, go now join your father before I do something I regret.

That was chilling to me. But the way that Jeff just left the room, she comes back, she's like, we did one of our mother-daughter talks, and Jeff just left the room with no... I didn't understand that. That was bizarre to me. Yeah, that actually just felt like something he wouldn't do because he's been so insistent that she share with him and open up,

and he would be like, I just think Jeff's response there is, I want to hear this too. Yeah. And he would stay. And certainly if he left to humor her, he would then listen, not just turn on the TV, which is what he does. So that was quite odd. Yeah, I thought the blood sugar fake out was honestly,

deeply nefarious and fucked up. And then, yeah, I thought her, the threat against Cali was like, you just have these moments with Shauna. And this has been there since the beginning where like, I don't think that Shauna would harm her daughter. But you wonder what Shauna is capable of pretty routinely. Yes.

And we should be. Yeah. And like the fact that then the parts of Shauna that other people judge and that she used to fear, that's like again in these two episodes, active text right back in the past Mel and Shauna talk about that. Like, you hate yourself. Yeah.

You were a secret. Jackie belittled you and you just let her. I like that you're embracing those parts of yourself. Exactly. And then like, you know, if we think in the present to something like Shauna and Jeff going to Adams' art studio and fucking against the turpentine, like, the fractured skull wolf paintings of her. And that was where she said, like, you know, I used to, she was talking about, like, the, like, a sexual desire, but just this, like, thing inside of her and fearing it. And now she's like, I like, I like who I am. And I remember when we talked about that at the time, and I still feel this way, like, I think that's something that we celebrate about Shawna. Totally. And so the fact that the show is moving in and out of like, okay, we want Shauna to embrace that these, like, these parts of her that other people maybe would, like, ridicule or judge. She is able to embrace and, like, if she can move from. forward with Jeff or whatever the case may be if other people can see that and accept that,

maybe they have the occasional nightmare about her having turkey carve her hands. Sure, you know, the subconscious will do what it will. Yeah. He's still like, I have decided that I will live my life with you. Then that's, like, beautiful. But what is, the show never lets us forget that there is actually something lurking inside of Shawna that we are meant to fear and question. But there needs to be a line and it feels like Callie was always a line and preferably,

hopefully Jeff is also in that circle with her, that like her darkness and the threat that is Shana, because Shana is a threat, is there in defense of what's hers and what's hers is Callie and Jeff. So what I do like about adult Shana and Mali Milinski is so good in this role. But when comparing to some of the flatter depictions

of the darkness inside of Shana in the past, calibrating it with these other moments. So the scene with Mr. Matthews, where Mr. Matthews is hallucinating and thinking that Shauna is younger Lottie, and they're just going to go see a Scorsese movie together, right? But like they have this- In order the Chinese food. And orders and Chinese food. They have this really beautiful conversation.

Sean is giving him a gift in that moment. She's playing along. She's giving him a gift as someone who is also a parent now. Yeah. And she says this really beautiful. beautiful thing. Sometimes it's hard to show the love the way we want to. Like that was a really beautiful scene and that's a really beautiful moment with a Shawna that we can then accept her darker stuff too because it's all in the mix of a very

complex character. If it's all dark, violent, sneering nastiness all the time from young Shawna then like where's the actual human inside of that character? Yeah. Yeah, I liked to in that stretch just the moment, like the look on Shauna's face when she went into Lottie's room, which is like a bit of a time capsule. Yeah. It reminded me so much of her going into Jackie's room during that still iconic meal with Jackie's parents. And like obviously we get some interesting stuff there.

Like she's flashing to many different young Lottie sequences, including the shot of Lottie with like blood smeared on her face. Ooh, very interesting. But just that emotion of, you know, not just the tie with like Jackie and Lottie and what was before, but then it makes us think of like the opening note of the season where everybody is engaging in the Sultas Festival and Shauna's scrawling in her journal, right? Like the reality wasn't even if rescue came. And they can never go home again. Yeah. And then she's confronted with like what it looked like when they did,

but also the fact that it was this arrested development, right? The rooms didn't change. Jackie was dead. Lottie was in institutions and all over the world. But like, pulling that Shana back into that moment before the crash is just always so interesting for her character. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity.

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Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99-7-9 or visit Zepbibbiz. Bound.lily.com. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty, limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake.

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As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch willing. to protected secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dunton Ranch starring Colehauser, Kelly Riley. Annette Benning and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. Let's go into the past. We already mentioned the timeline, but I just want to like, you know, reaffirm.

Thanksgiving, parentheses, Canada means we're in October. We get the, during the Ben Hunger Strike montage, where we hear eat, eat, eat from Nat, It could be any number of weeks that he was in that pen. Right. Because Mari has that line about how he'd been hiding at least a week's worth of food that was rotting. But all that does is tell us it's definitely more time than that before the food started rotting and smelling and drawing all the flies. And a reminder that they were rescued the following January. So we've got a lot of meat to get through between October and January. Yeah. I feel they've skipped too much time in the past.

I don't like how quickly we got back to like the brink of cold and we're thatching roofs on our two good shelters to prepare for the... I think if they felt like they had all the time in the world, but if they have gotten the tip from Showtime that they only have four seasons to do this... Then they got to get to the good stuff. They got to go. Thankfully, they still have time in the present for more cut-ins to repo divorces, which honestly is consistently great. The best day of your life is the day you buy a boat and the day you sell a boat. Fantastic stuff. Okay, we've already talked through my Shana issues, but genuinely, Marie, that's great.

Shana, get in the pit, is how I feel about Shana right there. Mari saying you want to burn him at the steak, like an old-timey witch. It's just fantastic. While we're still in the Shana beat, though, we do need to mention, okay, she's got a new girlfriend in Melissa. Yeah. Lottie has put her in charge of the camp. and here are some wonderful things we hear from Van. She does seem better, we've already mentioned,

but do you think Mel has to wear Jackie's clothes when they make out? Yeah, I mean. Do you think she makes her call her shipment? Shipman. That was very funny. Oh, God. The Achilles Heelies' Heel Slice. What are we in a fucking Saw movie?

Now, I don't watch those movies, but I do know that at some point somebody's Achilles' tendons are snipped so that they just flop over and can't escape. This was horrifying. This was so cruel. Yeah. Because he's got one leg. He's got one leg. No, I can't go.

What is it that, like, ruined Ben's career? The knee. The knee injury. Yeah. Like, just, like, completely kneecapping him from whatever. Like, Shauna and Melissa going out, Shauna making Melissa do it when Melissa didn't want to. Yeah.

Shana coming out, not being like you don't have to look so happy about it. Shana's like you don't have to act like a fucking saint. When she made Melissa do it, like... It's all very dark. Get in the pit. Shana. And then this is my last, this is my last like...

Because again, the fandom seems very divided on it. Some people are like, yes, go off our angry dark queen. And they love this mode of Shana. And some people are like, I don't recognize this character. or how we got here or how I can connect this to the Shana, the teen I knew from previous seasons

or the adult Shana, as you mentioned, that we know now. Yeah, I think what you said a few minutes ago about how like when Shana does terrible things in the present timeline, it's because whether it's true

or it's because what she tells herself to justify her behavior, she's doing it to protect her family. We need the equivalent of that in the past and it can't just be actual survival. Right. Right. So like,

as we watched her friendship with Jackie crumble, losing that was part of what drove Shana to a certain place. Then, of course, the baby. And now I don't think, I think the Mell development has been really interesting, but we've barely seen them, like, interact. So it's not like we can be invested in that relationship. And we don't actually see Shana.

Like, that was why I was really excited about the idea of Shana and Misty being in cahoots. And then we just kind of zipped right past that. So I think, and that, again, that gets back to, like, is the allegiance coming from anything other than fear or need in terms of the other people aligning around her? So, yeah, I think we need to, like, we need a relationship that we're invested in with Shauna in the past. Because, like, when Ty and Van do things that we don't like, we sort of were like, well, they did it for each other, you know? Yeah. Thinking back to, like, something like Ty going to the prayer circles last season, which she was so. actively opposed to and it didn't feel like

a character changed because she engaged in it. Or, yeah. Or when like it comes from like, Misty has done some fucked up shit. Yeah. Crystal transponder, all sorts of shit, right? And the thing about Misty is that it comes from such a human place of vulnerability.

Yeah. That I feel like I can access. Yeah. And I would like to feel like I can access that for Shawna, even though I know you just enumerated it. all the traumas that she's been through. Yeah. So it actually shouldn't be that hard for me to understand the vulnerable fear and sadness that is driving this anger train.

Right. You know what I mean? But I just don't feel like the show is giving that to me. Yeah, when Misty is poisoning, Ben, there's not a single moment where we're like, that was the right thing and a cool thing to do. But you never have a moment where you failed to understand why Misty did it or believe that she's.

she would have done that, to continue to have that proximity to him, for him to rely on her and need her the way that she had wanted to be needed. Yeah, we're just missing a little bit of that with Shawna. I will say, and this is my last get in the pit, Shana. The base hypocrisy from Shawna, when she gets what she wants power and she immediately says, Shana does not believe in the wilderness capital W at all. No. And she says, we are still a team. When people die out here, we honor them, we'll give the wilderness what it wants. She is play acting into the Lottie religion in order to hang on to her crown, her antler crown. This is also, I think, a performance note where, like, there are plenty of moments in the present where Shana is play acting in order to manipulate people, but it's like very apparent.

It didn't really come off that way there. And I think in general that performance has been wonderful, young Shana. But in that moment, like, there was actually. actually a ferocity to the zealotry that, like, made me think that Chana believed that, which is, like, not the case. Because she's been chosen now. I just, it was just an odd performance note. Anything else you want to say?

We kind of cover the Van and Ty stuff. The only thing I will say is I think because you mentioned- I was very sad about the bunny. That was harrowing. It was tough. You mentioned Van and Ty as a unit. And what we like to track are the ways in which they are on different pages, even though they're so often on the same page.

So in terms of belief, you mentioned, like, you know, Van is a believer and Ty is not or whatever the case may be. Or Ty really is a sporadic believer when, you know, when she needs to be. Yeah. But this moment they share where Van is anxious about winter is cooling and Ty's like, we're ready. We've got food, furs, and fun huts. We're going to be fine. And Van seems not very sure that that's the case. Yeah.

And that's, you know, that just feels like. like trouble for the future, right? Yeah, I'm kind of wondering if like Ty does decide to challenge Shauna's rule? Like, will Van support that? Or will Van choose Shauna and the unity that the group seems to have formed in the way? I think ultimately Shauna's leadership, like the first test is going to be what to do with these burgers. It's very new.

Yeah, it's very new. First 100 days. First 100 days, do we do a burner? It's clear. It's a stump speech. What's her policy? I think it's clear. It's going to be, you know, we should burn everybody alive, kill them and eat them. But like, is Ty going to want to do that? Is Van going to want to do that? Young Van has been one of the more aggressive and violent characters because she is driven by belief and the idea that the wilderness is like justifying their actions. Part of what I haven't loved about the passage of time in the past is that it feels like too many months for this degree of harmony. So I am, yes, they had like a trial and everything. It's not like it's been perfect. But I am eager, actually, for some very active tension and challenges.

And like, does that mean we break off into different groups? I mean, one of the things about them going to get Ben, you know, after the like say nothing-esque feeding tube sequence, which was also very disturbing, was that they put on the masks that we see. I mean, this is like, we're as close as we've been to the kidding out from the opening of the show. I love that you mentioned say nothing, which was also in my notes,

and this was the second say nothing reference of the week because there was definitely a say nothing moment on severance with Chris Walken's characters' storyline. Say nothing. A tremendous show that not enough people watched. Really good.

You should watch it. Really good. Yeah, you mentioned the mask. Let's skip over the mask and talk about them. So we see from the opening Pit Girl Feast scene, we see, we had seen pieces of clothing, but this is the first time we see like the bunny mask and all that sort of stuff like that. The beautiful Reddit detectives have been like tracking what's going on. But what has been clear from the start, we've been trying to track clothing.

And then we watch them swap clothing, swap heart necklaces, all this sort of stuff like that. can't be, you can't clearly track things. But in terms of like a dehumanizing line crossing, yeah. I think tracking over five and six, I'm actually glad we're doing these two episodes together because tracking the face covering between the two is really interesting because of the end of five when it looks like Ty is going to have to shoot Ben and he's like, fucky, you have to look at my face. You can't cover my face. And Jen's like, you don't get to actually call those shots. And then inside this episode, when they go in with the masks, either to, when they force-feed him, horrifying. Very.

Either to distance themselves from what they're doing or because it reeks in there. But like the bunny mask is like decorative. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's so creepy. Yeah. And then the covering of Ben's face to carve him up. When that has to carve him up. But then the displaying of his head during the feast.

Yeah. Moving in and out of that like one, one veil of separations. Yeah. Fascinating. I was really on my Lord of the Flies shit inside of this episode. Because the way the Lord of the Flies, you know, to skip forward to the birders, like the way that the Lord of the Flies and spoilers for Lord of the Flies is that when the fully feral boys are trying to literally smoke one of the boys out and have, like, lit the forest on fire and or do that, that fire is what finally alerts. And so, like, one of the boys is on the beach and, like, looks up and there's, like, a,

you know, an officer there. And it's like, civilization has arrived. Right. So, like, the birders show up and it's like, the scientists have arrived.

Science is here. Yeah. You guys are in like feral mysticism land and the scientists are here. Right. I feeling very vindicated that there are scientists. Yeah.

Yeah. All of the, like, supply drops. Yes. I have questions about the noises in the forest, like all this sort of stuff. But here's the line from Lord of the Flies,

among some other ones that took out to me, but in terms of the masks, this quote, they understood only too well the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought. This idea of like we can be our truest, freest, most feral, savage, snarling selves when we, and we've seen the girls experiment with this. And I love that it started with the doom coming with the sort of pageantry of that. Right. This idea of like what do these costumes, whether it's at the court trial,

what the antler queen brings like all the sort of stuff like that like what are these various guises and coverings and things we put on our face how do they free us into the full expression of our hunger and our anger and all this other stuff like that

I think that it's really that's a really interesting mind for the show to explore yeah I totally agree and I love like to the question of is it because it smells in there it's like that could be their excuse Sure. Right? But that's not why they're doing it.

Are they putting the furs back on? Yeah. Because it's getting cold at night? Sure. But not really. Like maybe that's literally, that is a life-sustaining benefit of cloaking themselves

in the fur of the animals that they have chosen to put on hold for a night while they eat a person. But they're doing it because this is what the ritual demands. And when they put those on, they start to scream into the night in a way that then summons

a reminder of how far removed they are from anything actually, despite what they've rebuilt, resembling a society. I'm excited to see what happens in the next episode. Like, this is the most excited I've been for a yellow jackets in a while because they have to look around. Yeah, they have. What are they seeing when they look at us? Especially when you cut, like, we come off the heels of Ben's trial, which bothered us for a number of different reasons, but this idea of like play-acting civilization. Yes.

under the reign of Antler Queen Natalie is interesting to me. I have two other Lord of the Flies quotes that I pulled. There's this one where they're throwing rocks at a boy. And there's this quote where it says, yet there was a space around Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, and to which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school

and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruin. So, like, this idea of, like, we'll have a trial. Right. Like, there's still a semblance of law.

There's still a semblance of decorum. Right. And Shauna, when they're like, we'll have another trial. And Sean's like, fuck a trial. We don't do trials. Right.

That's not what we do here. She's guilty. Yeah, we don't dress up. The other one, this is the key lord. I mean, I'd be shocked if we haven't already said this on an earlier podcast,

but it's always worth revisiting. In terms of like this idea of a beast on the island and Lord of the Flies that is inducing them to do things or not, this is the quote, maybe there is a beast. What I mean is maybe it's only us. Right. Right. Maybe there is a wilderness for the capital W. Maybe there is like haunting screams coming from the forest or maybe it's just us. Yes.

Being our true unfettered selves. Confronting Beelzebub. Inside. The evil inside. I loved even too, like, a fun thing in this stretch was like when Shawna gets back to the jolly hitcher and sees that Jeff and Callie are playing cards. And you remember that something is routine to everyday life as a deck of playing cards has become the death card. And like then, you know, this king of hearts, right? Like the suicide king, the sword into the head and like looking in anything that would have been a tie to humanity to the humanity to the.

the life before to some social norm or like aspect of youthful folly. And it's like, no, that'll be how we decide who dies. That'll be how we decide who pulls the trigger. Do you think when they got back to civilization, they enjoyed the film, the 1997 film Suicide Kings starring Christopher Walken? I'm sure Van did. It was an avid movie enthusiast. I'm sure she has it at her at her shop. Anything you want to say about the gas. We've already talked about Akila's dreams a bit, the bridge. The bare question mark. the girl's sort of flitting in and out of existence in the camp. That's very odd.

Question mark. The girls flitting in and out of existence, what I can say is just sort of like, it felt very like, and then there were none to me. It just sort of like, these are all girls that will die in the next few months. Yeah. You know? The bear, I'm not at all short. Yeah. I don't have a terrible time with it, but I don't have.

Just an interesting animation style. I just simply would not go into a cave with those gases. Yeah. It was interesting because like the Oracle of Delphi invoking that, it's fun to get simultaneously, like, in a show we're covering a trip to Greek mythology corner and a trip to nerd culture spin on Greek mythology corner and to think about like Percy Jackson and the Oracle of Delphi being deployed in a show we've very recently covered.

But yeah, just this idea of like, yeah, sure, we're just huffin toxic gas in a cave system tying ropes around ourselves to make sure we can be pulled out of the abyss in time. When we hear your body fall. Yeah, we'll come get you. We'll come get you. But what we're going to tell ourselves is we are like the great

prophets of old and temples will be built to honor us. And then Ladi like seeking. I mean, this was what we this was what we talked about last potter, yeah, two pods ago after they found Ben like Lottie and her interest

in Akela because that is like a one degree away from, one degree of separation from this connection to the wilderness. And she does want Akela to go. And she does want to kill it to have these visions. And she does want to see what they can learn and how she can then use it to help guide the group. But that really the thing Lottie wanted was like,

wait, show me where the gas is. So I can try to reestablish my connection to this thing. We have a scene of Lottie pleading with the wilderness. Began. Speak to me again. Speak to me again. So that was really interesting. But also what I love about this in terms of like this religion they're establishing here in the wilderness.

And in terms of like the razor thin edge between civilization and madness that that is existing inside of this story is like for someone like Lottie who has a history of mental health issues and or possibly clairvoyance. But like how almost whimsical and fragile something like this is. By whimsy, I mean not like the fun quirky way, but just sort of like on a wint, like Travis being like, I'm tired of drinking mushroom tea. Yeah. Pointing to Akela, Lottie focusing all of her attention on Akela and then whatever the fuck it is that Akela sees when she huffs gas, dictating the life and death of a person. Yeah. That is a critique of prophets and religion if I ever heard one. And they're just sort of like, it's all based on what?

Right. You know? And they took that character and in the present day before she was pushed down stairs and killed and made her a cult leader, right? Yeah. And when, you know, a character like Lisa is freed of that cult

has the clarity to say like, this person ruined my life, right? Like that's that judgment of Lottie has always been, I think, very unyielding. I'm interested in Travis in this Akela Lottie, Travis triumvirate because he seemed to me in these two episodes so racked with guilt.

And I was curious if you thought that was because he was like, this was true. I saw this thing and it happened and I said it and now look where it's leading. Or if you're, if you think that like he lied which is what we thought at the time and if that still feels like Oh, I definitely think he just lied. Same. And he's just like, I don't want to deal with this.

So I'm going to say she's closer because she's right. But then he feels so guilty that he's like, I'm going to go with you guys to the cave. I'm going to make sure anything bad happens to a key. just because I'm the one who like sort of put Lottie's attention on her. Yeah. And so like then I'm wondering when he is going to, because he has a few moments in these episodes where he's close. Yeah, he does.

And it seems like he's developing. He and Akila have a connection, right? Like she says to him, you're the only one I trust, which of course, if he fed her up as bait, which it seems like he did, would make him feel terrible. But also it does seem, and maybe it's just because he now feels a compulsion to protect her from the thing that he incited. But I was like, is there like a little crush here? Like what? There was a certain. I mean, it seems like everything is going to be terrible for everyone.

But there was a little bit of a feeling developing, it seemed. Who is Travis going to fuck next in the woods? Is that your question? Well, you know, unless the birders have another young person in the mix, we're light on. We're light on dudes. We're light on dick out there now. It's true.

Ben and Nat with the side of Travis. To your point, like this, okay, all the stuff with Natalie and Ben actually has always worked for me. Yeah. And was absolutely, I thought, incredible in this final episode. It's not my needle, my needle drop pick. But when Be There by Low starts playing and Nat decides what she's going to do and Travis tries to stop her because he knows that if she does this, it could mean her death as well. They will blame her. And then he protects her anyway and that old, like, connection between the two of them that they haven't literally have not spoken.

I'm missing that as well. I, like, really miss them. And so, like, this little connection between them, this, her Sophie Thatcher, Scream Queen extraordinaire, walking out of this pen with, like, so much dark, dark blood on her and then, like, smearing it on her face. Yeah. And then her just, her just. her just devastation, shell-shocked reaction, and then knowing, and this is where, like, I really wish Juliette Lewis was still on the show. But, like, but anyway, but nonetheless, knowing that of all the, all the people who came back to

Shauna's Diary's point did not really come back. Right. But Nat and Travis, perhaps, most of all, given their, like, cycle of substance abuse and stuff like that. That you can track, like, especially if we only have one more season of events, like, you could track this thing that Nat does here. Oh, yeah. To her lifelong, just, like, shattered self.

Yeah. And not, I mean, she had a bunch of shit before she went into wilderness that was, like, haunting her, obviously, like, but this seems to have just been, like, soul crushing. Definitely. To her. I thought it was interesting. I mean, first of all, when she and Ben, when we're cutting day after day after day, meal after meal after meal, and he's imploring her. She's imploring him to eat and he's imploring her to just free him from this torment. Yeah. But like, you know, you take me down to the stream. I could have an accident or you could, you know, the gun. And she's like, what am I going to do? Like, say, I tripped and the gun went off, which of course, like, she wasn't the one who tripped. Her dad was. But that literally was what happened. So it takes us back to that horrific trauma from her past and brings that to the foreground again for us. But, like, I thought it was really interesting and obviously, like, I think deliberate that Nat could smother Ben with a pillow and hide the fact that she had done it.

But she doesn't do that. She stabs him and then she comes out with the bloody knife and, as you said, the blood all over her because she believed that it was right. She wasn't trying to hide from the group that she had done it because she believed genuinely. She was moved to action because she felt she had to. Yeah. Like, and certainly, yeah. Yeah, the fact that that was like a, you know, she knows, I mean, the beginning of the season, we were tracking the lies and obfuscating and not telling them that she had seen these traps and that she, even about the prior interaction with Ben. Yeah.

And so the group was poised to pounce. Like, even as not something this drastic, the group was ready to tear that down. And so she knows, she knows, not just because Travis tells her, but because every single thing that has happened leading to this moment makes the outcome certain that they will turn on her. And she does it anyway because she believes that it's the right thing to free him from this pain. I thought, too, just from Ben's perspective, like, the way that, because he, you know, he hears, like, come home to me, Ben from an Eboo's Paul. And, like, you know, thinking back to all of the Paul visions and this, like, imagining of a road not taken in a different life that he could have led. And, like, thinking back to last season in episode seven when we saw Paul answer the phone in the cabin and said, like, he isn't ready. and now Paul being the one who like welcomes him home

and like who did he tell about Paul first, Matt? And just like the tying together of these people. You know, for character like Ben who talked about how his family, it was interesting actually in this stretch when he was talking to Akila to like hear him say something really like positive about his mother as like fostering kittens and this nurturing presence because he's obviously said elsewhere that like he didn't get a lot from his family. You know, and it was like so gut-wrenching to hear him.

say like out in the real world I'll hardly be remembered at all. I mean, that was just so sad and like confronting how would he be remembered here and then, oh, what's even worse than being remembered here is the guy who tried to burn down your cabin not being remembered at all, like not having made an impression

and leaving people behind who thought about him. It was just very sad. Stephen Kruger has been giving a bunch of interviews as one does when one exits. Oh, by the way, are you aware of their like cast tradition where they throw little funerals for each cast Remember when they die and they all dress up in black? And then like, so for Stephen Krueger, who plays Ben for his funeral,

they had like a big poster of him made that just said like, fuck those kids on it. And they put a little halo on him and they all dress up in black and had a cake and it's very cute. And they did one for Jackie and for hobby and like all this sort of stuff like that. And Lorley. But I, Stephen Kruger, a couple things. Number one, he talked about how they kind of knew this was coming for Ben sort of from the start. art, obviously. And so knowing that, he said that he put on a bunch of weight in the first season.

And then he was like, season two is sort of like my more normal weight. Right. And then this season, like, the cheekbones for misty to comment on. And he also said that it's his understanding that Ben did in fact burn down the cabin. Interesting. That's something he said last season. but like I was like surely in the off season they've changed their mind. Yeah.

But he said his understanding from someone high up in the writing staff or whatever is that Ben did burn down the cabin. And I'm like, I actually don't like that, but okay, you know. I don't think that I would have been inclined to believe that at the end of last season. Right. But when he's like trying to track. And isn't it better that they are punishing him for something he didn't actually do? And then that they continue to make the same mistakes 25 years later when Sean, Kona kills Adam.

Right. Or like Blames Misty for like whatever. Yeah. So I always think it's more interesting actually when they're wrong about this stuff. And like then what do they do? Because they're so sure they're right. I thought the other thing on the Ben front, the like slow-mo animated bear that the Kila saw had like a, you know, the third eye.

So it put me in a Thrones, the three-eyed raven headspace anyway. But, you know, when Ben was just like. begging that to end his life. It gave me such a merey, you know, look to your call and see what life is worth when all the rest is gone energy. Because it's, you know, obviously this is a particular circumstance with Ben and what has happened. But it feels very of a piece with what, with what you were describing earlier about like what is actually like proximate to life and like the essence of life and what is, it just takes maybe half a footstep to be so far. removed from that that it's not recognizable at all. Like, what are they fighting to preserve?

Yeah. At this point. This is life. Like, this is, it's just, just, whew. So I loved that stretch with Nat and Ben, even though I felt like we were marching toward the end, which we were. Great stuff from Stephen Krueger all season. And just like really, really, really good stuff and a great end for a character. Let's go back to the feast and then we're going to wrap it all up. The feast happens, as you mentioned, I mean, Nat has to dress the body. Shauna is consulting her. This is like actually, there's two moments from Shana that seemed actually sort of like human and tender. One is when she walks out of the force feeding scenario pulls the mask off and she looks like a little rattled and haunted

in a way that felt like vulnerable and believable. And then she's like, we'll get better at it. Yeah. And then here and then here with Nat, um, teaching her how to do it and sort of like not only covering the face, but just sort of like the her demeanor is like a bit. I mean, the like sort of smirky sneer of like she's got to do it this shitty job that I've been having to do this whole time. Yeah. But it didn't seem to me that she was like relishing it as like a punishment. I thought that she was and then even she was appalled by that and pulled herself out of it. Like the glee of issuing that edicts and that would have to do that.

And then at the even the beginning when she's like I cover my eyes because it makes it easier for me. but I know what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah. You don't, so, like, you will have to suffer in full. And then just a drop of humanity. Yeah. And in giving that the grace to cover Ben's face. Yeah.

We have some shrooms and we've got some Ben. Ben's head is on. I would love to have heard the conversation about, like, we're going to display Ben's head because it really does seem like a step in a new direction. But they're all sitting around. And as you pointed out, it's like very, it's just like Thursday night at the campfire. Just eating a person. We're just eating in person.

And then Lottie's like, this is not right. This should be a moment of ecstasy and, like, liberation and celebration. And so they do this sing-screaming thing, which then bleeds into the soundtrack. And then hark some birders. We get two burders. We already mentioned the new characters, the new actors. There is a third seemingly shadowy figure that we think looks like...

Tall and thin. It could be Joel McHale. Tall and thin. Lottie was like, big. But we were like, Joel McHale? Finally? Where are these characters? With your new hair?

Where are these people who are cast in this season? Where the fuck is Hillary Swain? Yeah. Like, four six episodes into a 10 episode season, that fucking better be Joel McHale. And we need to see Hillary Swank soon. It's unbelievable. You know, we, when we talked about the dat tape earlier, too, like, part of what triggered Van into immediate action was like, well, who uses dat tape? Caves him.

A birder. So, like, she's like, oh, right. Before we hear what's on the tape. Yeah, yeah. She certainly seems to think it could be those people. She's looking when Ty tries to call out in bed. Van's looking on her phone, like, how long could a dad tape last outside, outdoors? So this, like, an outdoorsy group. Yeah.

Where was that dat tape who retrieved it? The burders. Yeah. Do you think the birders? Travis looks so upset, as he should. but he's just like, oh, fuck. Yeah. The facial expressions were great.

I mean, they go from never thinking they're going to see another person again. You know, the resignation of, yeah, we're going to spend another winter here. We talked at the beginning of the season of like our annual ritual, annual, right? Or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, they don't want to give up, but also they are sort of like, we live here now. And then there they are just people standing in front of them watching them eat another person with a head on a plate. Do you think? I guess that's why the head has to be there

because otherwise they could just be like, Or the rest you can't turn and be like, what the fuck? Yeah. Or they could just be like, this is some caribou. Would you like some secrets in the sauce? Look at all of the animals we keep in our pen. We're eating one of them. Yeah.

Do you think that one of these burders is Javi's friend from before? I hope so. Yeah. So then that's a question is if these people have been here for a while, why did it take this long for an interaction? Why would they be this surprised? Maybe there are more burders out there. Maybe it's like a vast burner network.

But anyway, I definitely think they're related to the supply drop. Yeah. And I'm going to go back to my season-long theory that the noise we're hearing is related to them. Maybe they're trying to call the bird that they want to observe. I think that seems very probable. And then if members of our Yellow Jackets team are moved to murder the birders, which seems, I would say not just likely, but like a lock. Burt or murder imminent? Burn or murder imminent.

What does it mean to cut off, to have members of our group cut off a potential line home? Yeah. Like, how do you recover from that? Well, that surely has to produce a schism inside of the camp. Has to.

So I'm looking forward to that. Okay, cool. Let's just wrap up with Best Needle Drop. And I think, you know, we've already mentioned the... Light on Needle Drops these two episodes. The show has... episode five only had one. Yeah.

The show has, like, trained us to expect seven per episode. They just, like, they just, like, binge on their budget. They're like, oh, uh-oh. Here are the options. And then there's actually a stealth fifth, which is actually mine, which is Misty, humming breakfast at Tiffany's. Yeah, that's a good one. Which is when Lottie's like, we can't, we got to, let's sing, not breakfast at Tiffany's right now.

Okay. Rit of Me by PJ Harvey, fake AF by bleeding fingers, be there by low. and bay nosy when the birders show up at the end of episode six. What's your pick? I didn't have a strong lean this time like I have in the past. Maybe be there. Yeah. I think that was a really good moment.

That was a really, really good moment. Okay. Out there theory corner. Oh, man. Yeah. Did Aquila miss a rescue? Oh, boy. Because she was in the caves. Passed out or otherwise.

Yeah. So she misses the helicopter that comes to pick them up or whatever. Very lost of her. Sure. Yeah. And did she survive somehow, make it back to civilization, and kill Travis and Lonnie, who are the two people who have been killed because she blames them for inducing her into the cave in the first place. Interesting.

I'm intrigued. I'm going to say no. Okay. But I find this interesting, and I like because you just make. mention lost. More broadly, I will say, I am increasingly into the idea that the group we saw make it home. But somebody misses the- Is not the whole group. And, like, who gets left behind?

Are they part of this present day? But no one has said we have to go back yet. We're about to get to the end of season three. Very true. Okay. That was Yellow Jackets. It was. It was.

We will do a deep dive into seven when that podcast. when that pops up next week. I'm excited to watch seven. We've got Daredevil later this week, but not really. But I'm really excited for what we're going to do this week. I will miss you dearly. I will miss you too. I'm so sad to miss the superhero crossover event and team up.

But I will watch with joy from afar if Frank Castle shows up on Daredevil this week. We haven't seen it. We don't know. Yeah. Think of me. Well, I think of you always. I think of you always too. And we will have, we will have Yellow Jacket.

It's slightly later than our Monday pledge next week because of my travel schedule. Correct. And then we will be back on a Monday schedule from there. We hope. Maybe. We think. We intend. A lot of things are happening.

Okay. So, thank you to Stephen Alman. Puppy Steve is alive and our Steve is alive and thriving. John Richter. Yes. Arjuna Rangopal. Joe me at dinner on. Yeah.

And all of you. We'll see you later in the week. Bye.