Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 1 recap: Natalie’s dead, long live the Antler Queen
ShowtimeWinter might be over, but tensions are high in Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 1, ‘It Girl’ – in the past and in the present.
Cast your mind back to Season 2, and you’ll remember things got real dark. Shauna’s baby died, the girls ate Javi after the wilderness “chose” him, and their only shelter got burned to the ground.
In the present, things weren’t much cheerier. There were multiple deaths, the biggest unfolding at Lottie’s commune, where Misty accidentally shot Natalie up with a deadly dose of opioids.
Yellowjackets Season 3’s long-awaited premiere takes us to the fallout of these events. In the past, Nat is the new leader, but in the present, she’s gone for good. Warning: spoilers ahead!
Pit girl 2.0
ShowtimeYellowjackets Season 3 Episode 1 opens with what appears to be a truly disturbing scene, one that seemingly confirms a long-running theory about the “pit girl” from Season 1: it’s Mari (Alexa Barajas).
She runs through the forest as her fellow Yellowjackets teammates’ primal calls echo in the background. Mari stops for a moment and hides behind a tree.
Only once the coast is clear does she continue to run, but Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) jumps out of nowhere and rugby tackles her. Now, don’t fret – this isn’t actually the pit girl scene. Turns out, they’re just playing a friendly game of tag.
Well, mostly friendly – Shauna does bite Mari’s hand in the process. And they’re playing with a bone… human or animal is yet to be determined.
All of the gang emerge, including Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown), Nat (Sophie Thatcher), Van (Liv Hewson), and Misty (Sammi Hanratty). They all seem in good spirits, not least because of the fact it’s now summer.
We also catch a glimpse at the new Yellowjackets Season 3 characters Gen (Vanessa Prasad), Robin (Anisa Harris), and Britt (Silvana Estifanos), who are joining in the wilderness version of tag.
Sun is shining at camp Yellowjackets (except for Shauna)
ShowtimeNext up, we head to the Yellowjackets’ new home, reflecting the short time jump confirmed for Season 3. After their house was burned down in Season 2, the girls built themselves a series of wooden huts and teepees, with a communal area at the center.
It’s a picturesque scene: Van and Taissa are happily together, Travis (Kevin Alves) is playing a game with the others, and Gen’s back from a successful hunt.
But the fragility of it is palpable. Not only does it beg the question of how they’ll survive when winter returns, but the camera cuts to the graves of Jackie, Javi, and Shauna’s son, reminding us of the horrors of the recent past.
It doesn’t take long for the tension to rise. Misty blows a horn and the team gather around to attend Van’s “first annual summer summer solstice festival.”
A majority of them are in good spirits, including Lottie (Courtney Eaton), who watches on as Van gives a rather meta speech.
“Previously, on The Yellowjackets,” Van says to cackles of laughter. She tells their story in a fantastical manner, describing them as “sheroes” while praising their survival and courage.
She also calls coach Ben (Steven Krueger) a “homicidal monster” after he seemingly burned down the cabin, which appears to upset Travis. She also congratulates their “unlikely new leader,” Nat.
One person who definitely isn’t in a celebratory mood is Shauna. She’s staying in her hut to write angrily in her diary, understandably traumatized by her best friend Jackie (Ella Purnell) and her newborn’s deaths.
“How’s this story for you? Once upon a time, a bunch of girls got stranded in the wilderness and they went completely f*cking nuts,” she writes.
“They worshipped evil spirits and they hunted their friends and they feasted on their flesh and they f*cking liked it. So they told themselves stupid fairytales and pretended they were brave and strong…
“The reality was that even if rescue came, they can never go home again because of what they’ve done.” That’s one way of putting it.
RIP Natalie
ShowtimeWe then cut to the present-day timeline. Callie (Sarah Desjardins) and adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) have a strained conversation and we find out it’s the day of adult Natalie’s (Juliette Lewis) funeral.
Things aren’t much better at Misty’s (Christina Ricci) house. Walter (Elijah Wood) comes in to remind her of the memorial, and it’s the first time in Yellowjackets that she’s not her usual upbeat (if a little maniacal) self.
On his way out, Walter leaves a key by her bed. He did some digging and found out Natalie had a storage unit, wanting to ensure she didn’t leave anything “incriminating” behind. Misty says she’ll “take care of it.”
At the funeral, Natalie’s mom says a few lackluster words while Shauna, Jeff (Warren Kole), Taissa (Tawny Cypress), and Van (Lauren Ambrose) watch on in dismay.
The Yellowjackets trio then get together over shots at the wake, and Shauna has an existential crisis, wondering what others would say about her if she died.
After noticing Misty’s not there, they make a joke about her listening in, but Shauna appears to get distracted by something at the bar. Van and Taissa ask if she’s good and she snaps out of it, but we don’t find out what it was that bothered her.
Meanwhile, Misty opens up Natalie’s storage locker and starts organizing her belongings. She’s clearly struggling with the death of her best friend.
Coach Ben hits the jackpot
ShowtimeBack in the ‘90s, the team prepare for their summer solstice dinner party, gathering meat and berry wine to feast on. But Shauna’s having none of it, especially when it comes to Mari – the pair’s feud isn’t going to end anytime soon.
“Can’t believe we didn’t eat that b*tch first,” Shauna says under her breath. Melissa (Jenna Burgess) agrees and calls Mari “dumb,” leading them to form an alliance.
We also learn more about their new order under the leadership of Nat, who calls a meeting with Taissa, Van, and Gen to discuss how the hunting’s going. Van makes a quip about coach Ben, but Nat tells them there’s no way he’s still alive.
Except she’s wrong. The next scene shows him out in the woods foraging and setting up booby traps to try and capture a squirrel to eat.
Moments later, he stumbles upon something far more valuable: buried in the forest is a massive military storage container filled with high-protein dried food, bear spray, and other survival necessities. In other words, he hit the jackpot.
Callie goes full Carrie
ShowtimeIn the present day, a group of high school girls are sharing rumors they heard about the Yellowjackets survivors, saying they “smeared guts all over themselves” and had a “drugged-out orgy.”
Little do they realize Callie is listening in on the whole thing. Later, she orders a mystery bag of “food”, which we later find out is animal blood and guts. Callie throws it over the girls while her friend films the whole thing.
Shauna, who’s still acting like a teenager in the present, sneaks into Callie’s room to steal one of her spliffs. While smoking it, she gets a call from the school principal notifying her about her daughter’s activities and that Callie’s been suspended.
Shauna tries to downplay it to Jeff, but he brings her right back down to earth. “Six weeks ago our daughter saw your friends wearing animal masks, chasing you through the woods with knives,” he says.
“She shot one of them – who’s in the loony bin now – and then she watched Natalie die. And we told her that I’m the blackmailer and you’re a murderer.”
Despite his best efforts, Shauna’s too preoccupied with her chips. “Did you smoke some chronic?” he asks, to which she reminds him that “nobody calls it chronic anymore.”
ShowtimeClearly, Jeff is just worried about the impact all of this is having on their daughter. Later on in Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 1, Shauna tries to check in with Callie while home schooling her, making sure she doesn’t have any “dark thoughts.”
But Callie points out that she only did what she did because “Chloe and her dumbass friends were talking sh*t behind my back.”
Shauna’s concern transforms into amusement when Callie shows her a video of the prank, and she asks to watch it again. That’s one messed up way to bond with your daughter, but this is Yellowjackets we’re talking about.
Near the end of the episode, a mystery person (who is either blonde or wearing a wig) leaves a package outside their house addressed to Shauna Shipman (her maiden name).
Callie is the one who finds it, and she opens it up to find a tape inside. Rather than saying anything, she secretly pockets it.
Van and Taissa forever
ShowtimeAs for the rest of the adult Yellowjackets, Van is living with Taissa and both are struggling. Van’s dealing with terminal cancer, while Taissa’s lost her wife Simone (Rukiya Bernard), custody of their son, and her position as state senator elect.
Taissa wants them both to be together, but Van’s still pissed that she broke up with her before heading off to college years prior.
Whatever the case, Taissa wants to make amends, telling Van she’ll pay for a “stupidly expensive” dinner out. However, when they turn up to the fine-dining restaurant, neither of them are feeling it.
They decide to dine and dash, running off to get some cheap pizza instead. The waiter chases after them but they out-run him.
What they don’t realize is the waiter nearly gets run over by a bus, causing him to have a heart attack. Is this the darkness of the wilderness or just an unlucky coincidence?
Taissa and Van are none the wiser. When they finally stop running, they share a passionate kiss. Taissa sees the Man With No Eyes in the background but she chooses to ignore him, continuing to share the intimate moment with Van.
Misty drowns her sorrows
ShowtimePresent-day Misty is unravelling after the death of Natalie. After retrieving her bestie’s leather jacket from the storage locker, she goes to the nearest dive bar and necks seven shots of whiskey in quick succession.
She has a vision of teen Nat telling her not to take sh*t from anyone, leading to a rather awkward, drunken fight with another patron.
Later, she walks home drunk and Walter pulls up beside her. Misty tells him to beat it, but he wants to take her home, wondering why she’s pushing him away.
She says he doesn’t understand and tells him to call her fellow Yellowjackets instead. However, Walter explains that she left her phone at the bar, and the owner started calling all of the people on her saved contacts.
“No one answered until he got to W,” he says, and this realization opens the floodgates. Misty breaks down in tears, saying she misses Natalie so much while blaming herself for what happened.
Walter tells her, “It’s not your fault.” He’s a good (albeit murdery) egg.
Summer solstice and shrooms
ShowtimeBack in the ‘90s, Travis and Lottie are going on a mind-bending exploration of the wilderness by taking shrooms.
During their trip, Lottie opens up about having to take medication back at home, and how this stopped her from tapping into her psychic powers. “Then I got out here and started seeing things again… until I didn’t,” she says.
Perhaps this gift has transferred over to Travis, as he suddenly hears a deafening sound from the surrounding forest. “It’s the trees screaming,” he says. Lottie doesn’t hear it, but Travis ominously warns, “You will.”
When the scene cuts to Ben, he’s retrieved all of the survival supplies from the manmade pit, which he’s now setting up a trap in to hunt animals to eat. But it looks suspiciously like the hole from the infamous pit girl scene.
Back at the girls’ camp, the summer solstice party has begun. The losers of the tag game are serving up venison stew and berry wine to the winners, but tensions reach boiling point when Shauna spits in Mari’s serving.
ShowtimeThey get into a fight, at which point Nat steps in and sentences them to one week house arrest. Mari’s understandably pissed, as it was Shauna who spat in her food, but since she was the only one who saw it, they’re both punished.
When Nat threatens to make it two weeks if they don’t stop, Mari says, “Screw all of you. I’m out of her,” and runs off.
Later, the remaining team set off three floating lanterns for the “three souls” they lost. Shortly after, they hear the same shrieking, rumbling sound Travis heard during his trip. Have they angered the wilderness?
In the final shot of Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 1, we see Ben’s trap has worked. But it’s not an animal he’s captured – it’s Mari who’s stuck in the pit.
Yellowjackets Season 3 Episodes 1-2 are streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime now, with Episode 3 set to drop on February 21. In the meantime, check out our 2025 TV show release calendar and make sure you check out what’s dropping during Dexerto’s We LOVE TV & Movies week.