The questions that “Yellowjackets” is asking its character are ones that the series’ original pitch document outlined as the story’s driving themes:
“What are we capable of when our darkest urges are given not only a voice, but also a stage on which to use it? WHO, exactly, are we once the mask is removed? And can you ever really go back once you’ve seen what’s underneath?”
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The refrain of the series’ opening theme is “No Return, No Reason.” Remember, too, in the pilot, when the Yellowjackets were literally wearing animal masks during their Pit Girl hunt and feast because they’d gone feral? In the Wilderness, those masks became their true faces, and the human faces they wear in the present are just another layer of masks.
The past and present tie together even better this episode because Melissa is starting to become more than Shauna’s arm candy. Melissa wants to go home; Kodiak did shoot her through the shoulder with a crossbow bolt back in “Croak,” which must have reminded her how painful and dangerous the Wilderness can be.
The episode’s title rings harder because “A Normal Boring Life” is what Shauna winds up living, or at least a facsimile of it. She was miserable at the start of season 1. Remember when she killed and cooked a rabbit from her yard, in a sign her butcher self still lived inside her? It took her murdering someone for her and Jeff (Warren Kole) to reignite their marriage. Based on what we’ve seen, Melissa is the only Yellowjacket who has truly found a normal life, and it’s what she’s fighting to protect. Her being absent until now doesn’t undermine the show’s credibility like I feared it would; it shows once more that the Yellowjackets are cursed.
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Shauna, though is determined that Melissa hasn’t changed. At the end of the episode, Shauna bites off a chunk of Melissa’s own arm and force-feeds it to her. Shauna is still very much the girl who went wild and ate her best friend, and she wants Melissa to know she can never not be a cannibal either.
“Yellowjackets” season 3 had a slow start, but episode 6, “Thanksgiving (Canada),” was one of the show’s best episodes and a shot in the arm that “Croak” and “A Normal Boring Life” have followed through on. Hopefully, this season can stick the landing better than the Yellowjackets’ flight could!
“Yellowjackets” is streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime, with new episodes premiering on Fridays.
