‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 Premiere Recap – Episode 1

It’s official: with a crucial one Gulp in his Season 2 premiere (now streaming on Showtime, ahead of his cable network debut on Sunday), Yellow jackets will be the cannibalism drama we all knew was destined to be.

But who takes the first nibble from dear, late Jackie? And how are our survivors doing in the present? Read on for the highlights of Friends, Romans, Countrymen.

JACKIE IS BACK! (SOMEHOW) | In the plane crash timeline, Winter is full grown, and Natalie and Travis pull together as best they can before preparing to trek into the snowy wilderness to search for Javi. Lottie stops them before they go outside and spends some time anointing her palms, pricking her finger, and then letting her drink from the cup into which she mixes her blood. When Nat grumbles that it’s not like the “Wiccan cops” are any use to them, Lottie replies, “Well, you always come back alive, don’t you?” Touché. After they leave, she puts her finger on the fogged up window and draws one of those stick figure things we’ve seen so many times on this show.

Meanwhile, in the two months since Jackie froze to death, Shauna has started hanging out in the shed where her best friend’s body is kept. The expectant mother imagines that Jackie is alive and they have long conversations; The other girls don’t know exactly what’s going on with Shauna, but they find the whole situation strange. (You are not wrong.)

During one of those interludes at the cabin, Jackie Frost asks how things started between Shauna and Jeff. So we learn that they kissed after a party while Jackie and Jeff were taking a break; Jackie Frost points out that the reason for the hiatus was that Jeff was losing patience because she didn’t want to have sex with him, and she reminds Shauna that she knew that too. When Jackie Frost suspects Shauna made the first move, Shauna gets angry and shoves her friend, causing the corpse to fall over… and one of her ears to snap off. Shauna puts it in her pocket. When Shauna returns to the cabin, she announces that food is running very low and she has had to cut rations.

WHERE IS JAVI? | On their hike, Natalie and Travis see a frozen carcass and Travis freaks out and sobs thinking they found Javi’s body. But it’s just a dead fox and Natalie decides it’s time to call it quits. Back in the dressing room, she gives Coach Scott the sketch she made of the area they covered; he adds it to a rudimentary, ever-expanding map of their surroundings.

The reality is that Javi would be next to impossible to survive on his own in the cold conditions, and when Natalie gently broaches the subject while she and Travis sit in front of the fireplace, he goes into a gasping, choking panic attack that only subsides when Lottie lays her hand on his chest and gently commands him to breathe. As soon as she touches him, he has visions, including the glowing altar from the season finale; At the same time, he recovers and finds that he has an erection. “Your brother is alive. I know he is,” Lottie tells him as he struggles to pull a blanket over his lap.

Natalie pulls her aside and tugs at her for giving him false hope, but Lottie replies that she was just saying what she felt. “I want you to say less, Lottie,” Nat warns. “Much less.”

FUCKING WONDERFUL | Van and Taissa are still together and very much in love, but Tai is troubled by her uncontrollable habit of hurting her friend in her sleep. Van assures her that she can handle it, but the bruising on her body is quite significant. Tai asks her to lock her up at night, but Van flatly refuses.

One evening, Tai turns over in bed and starts kissing Van, who is sleeping. But what seems like foreplay at sexy times in the middle of sleep gets weird when Van (who we learn is still asleep too) bites her lady’s lip hard. Van’s scream wakes Tai, who immediately tries to break up with her to protect her. “I’m not afraid of you, Tai. I’ll never be afraid of you,” Van says quietly, claiming that the night’s activity “isn’t you. It’s just something that happens to you – happens to you us.” Then she does something cute and gross: She dips a finger in the blood from her bitten lip and writes, “Me [heart] u” on Tai’s forearm. It’s the first time she says it, and Tai says it back, then they engage in a totally conscious (and hopefully less injury-prone) smooching session.

LEND ME YOUR EAR | The next time Nat and Travis go exploring, she is surprised to find a tree where the snow has been cleared from the base. (Side note: at least I have think is she surprised by that? If I missed something here, shout it out in the comments.) Elsewhere, when “Cornflake Girl” is pumping on the soundtrack (HELL YEAH TORI AMOS), Shauna bites Jackie’s ear like it’s a 99-cent whopper.

Lottie, right after that | Before we jump to the present, a quick moment for what we learn about the aftermath of the girls’ rescue in 1998. After her return, Lottie did not speak. Her parents took her to a doctor who eventually strapped her down, injected her with drugs, and put her on electroconvulsive therapy; As the current was administered, she had visions of herself walking down a dark, candlelit hallway. Eventually, she begins to speak again and uses her soothing touch to help another patient.

LOOSE ENDS | These days, Misty is worried they missed something when they disposed of Adam’s body, and she’s not emboldened when a fellow citizen detective says on her message board he’s seen Adam’s credit card statement and claims the dead man has a girlfriend, number one well informed.

And there’s probably pretty good cause for concern: even though Shauna has told Misty that she’s gotten rid of all the evidence, she still keeps Adam’s driver’s license, keys, etc. in her safe. Noticing that one of the keys is spattered with pain, she calls Jeff in a bit of a panic: “He had an art studio.” So they go there together and find many of Shauna’s paintings there; many show her in seductive poses and Jeff is amazed. “The thought of you with someone else always scared me,” she says softly. “But it also… turned me on.” She admits that she used to think that feeling was wrong, but now “I like being who I am.”

Whatever else Jeff is, he’s also VERY willing to dip his brush in their watercolors. So he bends her over a table and they get down to it. Afterward, they realize that there are too many pieces to take out of the studio unnoticed, so they squirt turpentine on the paintings to obscure her face.

At home, they burn Adam’s license and other personal belongings in the grill, accidentally setting fire to a nearby tree. But by the end of the episode, her daughter Callie – seething with resentment over her mother’s affair – finds a still-intact corner of Adam’s license in the ashes of the grill. Oops.

ATTENTION, STEVE! | Tai goes to an animal shelter and hardly thinks about adopting a dog who happens to be named Steve. She takes him to Sam’s school and excitedly introduces the puppy to her son when Simone runs over and freaks out, telling Tai to stay away from her kid. “I found the thing in the basement,” she says with a horrified face. “You are not well.” She orders Tai to step out of the office and get help or she will never see Sam again.

At home, Tai sees blood near the crawl space in the basement and finds the altar with Biscuit’s heart and Sam’s creepy doll. She starts to cry. When Steve comes to see what’s going on, she hugs him. “That was a mistake. I’ll do better with you,” she sobs. (Ha!)

LOTTI, NOW | Misty questions the clerk at the motel where Natalie was staying and when he’s reluctant to divulge any information, she surpasses him and he relents. He reveals that Nat left in the middle of the night and paid cash. Dissatisfied, Misty breaks into her friend’s room and weeps…until she realizes the door appears to have been forced open. Also? There’s a surveillance camera outside.

In another location, Natalie is chained to a bed in a room with bars on the windows. A woman comes in with food on a tray; she wears a pendant with one of Lottie’s symbols from the forest. Natalie convinces her captor to release one of her handcuffs so she can eat. When the woman returns to clear the plates, Nat stabs her with the fork and escapes.

It is night and a short distance away Natalie sees people singing around a fire. After all, they hunt her down. She eludes them long enough to run through a forest and come to a group of people wearing white robes and animal masks.

They strip a man and put him in a ditch, then shovel all the earth on him. That’s when Lottie (played by Obi Wan Kenobi‘s Simone Kessell) herself appears in flowing white robes, causing Nat to grab a giant piece of wood and lunge at her with force. But Lottie only takes a deep breath with her eyes closed and it doesn’t bother her at all. “I have a message for you,” she says to her former teammate. “From Travis.”

Now it’s your turn. How did you like the premiere? Rate it via the poll below, then post your thoughts in the comments!