Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 2 recap: Shauna’s past comes back to haunt her (twice)

The horrors of the wilderness don’t just fade with the changing seasons in Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 2, the title of which should give you a hint of what to expect: ‘Dislocation’. 

It’s felt like an age since that Season 2 ending, but the wait is finally over. In the ‘90s, the Yellowjackets are still stuck in the forest. It’s summer, but old grudges and new dangers are never far away. 

In the present, Natalie’s death has left scars that no amount of shots can numb, as we saw in the aftermath of her funeral in Season 3 Episode 1. 

They’re still feeling the effects in the second episode, while Shauna gets not one but two unexpected visitors… Warning: spoilers ahead!

Dislocation and trepidation

Showtime

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 2 kicks off in the ‘90s with Mari (Alexa Barajas) still trapped in the pit. 

She’s got a dislocated knee, and coach Ben (Steven Krueger) tells her she needs to pop it back into place before he can get her out (he does only have one leg, remember). It’s as gruesome as you’d expect. 

Meanwhile, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), still grieving her son’s death, decides to pull his body from the trio of graves made by the girls and buries him in a secret spot in the forest.

Back at camp, the girls are worried about Mari’s disappearance and the primal wilderness sounds they heard the night before. 

The girls decide to launch a search party for Mari, and most of them are game… except for Shauna, who says, “F*ck Mari.” Their feud isn’t dying down anytime soon. 

Lottie (Courtney Eaton) convinces Travis (Kevin Alves) to hang back, suggesting he takes another dose of shrooms to explore whatever force it is that’s behind those sounds. “This thing you’re tapping into is so much bigger than any one of us,” she says. 

Lottie is back, baby

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In the present day, adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) tries to bring some semblance of normalcy back into her household, but it doesn’t last long. Lottie (Simone Kessell) shows up after her stint in the psychiatric ward. 

Shauna tries to get rid of her, but Lottie explains she lost everything the night of the hunt in Season 2, including her cult… sorry, community. 

Callie (Sarah Desjardins) walks in on them and, although you’d think she would want nothing to do with that night at the commune, she convinces her parents to let Lottie stay the night.

As for the rest of the gang, Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose) are back together, having had sex the night before. What they don’t realize is that their dine and dash stunt led to the death of their waiter. 

It shouldn’t be too long until they find out, though. When they start making out, Van accidentally cuts her foot on a glass. Tai makes a deal with her: if Van goes to the doctors, she’ll go to the restaurant and pay the bill. 

Misty’s (Christina Ricci) also feeling the effects of last night, having drank way too much and gotten into a fight at a bar. As Walter (Elijah Wood) is fussing over her, she gets a call from Shauna asking her to come over at 6pm. 

He tries to talk her out of it, saying her friends only ask her to hang out when they need something from her and that they are “conspicuously absent when you need them,” but Misty brushes him off. 

Coach Ben’s confession

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In the past, Nat (Sophie Thatcher) and Misty (Sammi Hanratty) have teamed up to look for Mari. When Misty starts asking about Ben and whether she thinks it was him who burned down the cabin, Nat dodges her questions.

Later on, Nat spots one of Ben’s homemade squirrel traps and tries to cover it up. You might be wondering why she is throwing the Yellowjackets off his scent. Well, when they return to camp, Misty pulls Shauna aside and says she thinks Nat knows where coach Ben is.

Meanwhile, Mari’s relieved after fixing her knee, but now she’s stuck in the pit. The rumors that Ben’s a sociopath have clearly gotten to her head, as she tries to win him over, saying, “I never believed you were the one who burned down the cabin.”

But when Ben walks over, he’s confused. “What are you talking about? The cabin burned down?” he asks. 

“Seriously? It burned for weeks! You’re saying you didn’t even smell it?” she replies, to which he says, “Honestly I’ve been staying as far away from all of you as humanly possible.” Which is fair enough after all the cannibalism that went down in Season 2. 

The question remains: if he didn’t burn down their cabin, who did?

Sleepover time!

Showtime

In the current timeline, Misty shows up at Shauna’s. Turns out, Walter was bang on the money. Shauna’s heading out with Jeff (Warren Kole) for a work dinner, and she wants Misty to essentially babysit and ensure Lottie doesn’t get into Callie’s head.

Later that night, Lottie pops into Callie’s room. Callie has the mystery tape from Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 1, but she hides it before she can see. Misty soon intercepts and distracts Lottie. 

When the adults are alone, they start talking about Natalie’s death. Misty still blames herself, saying, “I literally put a syringe full of Fentanyl into her chest.” But Lottie replies, “You didn’t do it on purpose. We were honoring it, offering it what it wanted, and just like always it chose.”

Callie walks in on them and suggests they all hang out, sleepover style. And that means getting drunk. 

As for Taissa, she heads to the restaurant to pay the bill. While waiting for the manager, she sees a shrine to the dead waiter. She asks what happened, to which the staff member explains that he had a heart attack mid-shift. 

Tai looks concerned and does a runner for the second time in 24 hours. Later, she heads to a nearby sermon, where she finds a religious shrine. 

In an almost ritualistic manner, she takes a packet of matches she swiped from the restaurant earlier and burns it in a candle. You can take the woman out of the wilderness…

Travis has a bad trip

Showtime

We cut to the past, where Tai and Van are looking for Mari. All of a sudden, they hear Travis screaming and run over to find him freaking out while high on shrooms, with Lottie by his side.

“They’re coming. I don’t want to see them,” he screams. “One, two, three, eyes on me… no, no, no, no, it’s trying to get inside of me.”

Tai and Van try to separate them but Lottie keeps goading him. She tells him not to be afraid but he screams at her to leave him alone, eventually tackling her to the floor and putting his hands around her throat.  

Thankfully, Tai and Van are on hand to pull Travis and Lottie away from each other. 

Once they’ve both calmed down, Akilah (Nia Sondaya) comes over to Travis and gives him Mortimer, their pet duck, to comfort him. 

Lottie comes over and says she doesn’t care about him trying to hurt her. “You’re connecting with it. That’s what’s important,” she says. 

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Travis tells her that “it” doesn’t want him anymore, claiming it wants Akilah. “That’s why the animals trust her,” he explains. However, it seems like he’s lying just to get Lottie off his back. 

Meanwhile, Ben is helping Mari get out of the pit using a rope. He pulls her out, tackles her, binds her hands, and blindfolds her, explaining that he can’t trust any of the Yellowjackets at this stage.

He’s worried she’ll go back to the camp and tell them where he is. Then, well, you all saw what happened to Jackie (Ella Purnell) and Javi (Luciano Leroux), right?

When we catch up with them that evening, Ben’s taken Mari to his hideout. She’s terrified, but he wins her over with a cup of hot chocolate from the survivor pack he found in the forest. 

She relishes it, but her joy soon turns to concern when Ben takes himself off to the corner and starts having an argument with… himself. “That’s enough, stop!” he says, seemingly to no one. 

Shauna loses it

Showtime

In the present day, everything turns into a bit of a sh*tshow. Shauna is trying her best to play dutiful wife for Jeff’s business dinner. He’s hoping to land a deal with a pair of hotel realtors to supply furniture for their establishments. 

The problem is they’re massive douchebags. Shauna manages to bite her tongue, and takes herself to the bathroom to try and check in with Misty. 

But something strange happens. You see, in Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 1, an anonymous woman left a tape for Shauna outside her house (the tape Callie secretly pocketed). 

And it seems they have returned. While Shauna’s in the bathroom, a mystery person walks in, lingers outside her cubicle, then turns the light off on the way out. 

When Shauna turns the light back on, there’s no one there, but whoever it was left their phone. Shauna hands it to a staff member and goes back to the table, at which point she hears one of the realtors suggest that Jeff’s business might not be the right fit for them. 

Shauna finally lets rip, telling him, “You painful little boner. Do you really think that I give a sh*t what you think of me? You absolutely do not exist, you f*cking nothing. You do not deserve his furniture.”

Although she’s defending Jeff, he’s angry at her for burning that bridge. He just wishes she’d think about him for once. 

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Back at their house, Misty, Callie, and Lottie are playing truth or dare. Ultimately, Callie wants to know what they did out in the wilderness, but Misty’s trying to keep it schtum. 

So do you know what Callie does? She spikes Misty’s drink with drowsy cough syrup, causing her to pass out. When Shauna and Jeff get home, they’re baffled to find Misty out of it, while Lottie and Callie are watching trash TV like they’re besties. 

Later on, Misty arrives home even more wasted than she was the night before. Once again she gets a stern talking to from Walter. He insists that he just cares about her, but she’s had enough – she breaks up with him and kicks him out of the house. 

Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 2 ends with a call and a kiss

Showtime

In the final sequence, we cut back and forth between the two timelines. In the ‘90s, Shauna heads to her baby’s secret grave, only to find fresh flowers there.

Suddenly, Melissa (Jenna Burgess) emerges, who she recently formed an alliance with. Melissa tries to explain that she followed her that morning just to check if she was okay. 

She tells Shauna that she respects her resilience, but Shauna loses it and corners Melissa. “No one has any right to my baby. He’s my baby,” she says.

“Everyone’s afraid of you, you know,” says Melissa. “I’m not.” Shauna holds her knife against Melissa’s throat, scowling, “If you tell anyone about this I will f*cking kill you.” But in an unexpected turn of events, Melissa kisses her – and Shauna kisses her right back. 

Showtime

In the present day, adult Shauna heads to her room alone and calls the restaurant, asking if anyone came by to pick up the phone she handed in. Much to her surprise, someone did, and Shauna asks what they looked like. 

Given this is cut between the scene of her and Melissa kissing, we can assume the woman who’s been following her is adult Melissa, especially as in the previous episode, the person who dropped off the tape had blonde hair. 

But for now this is just speculation. 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.