‘Yellowjackets’ Episode 9 Recap And Review: ‘Doomcoming’

Yellowjackets is a crazy good show that does two things very well.

First, it soaks everything in an implacable sense of dread and menace. Second, it keeps its mysteries on a slow boil.

“Something’s coming,” the girls keep saying in ‘Doomcoming’, the show’s ninth episode, as they unwittingly trip on hallucinogenic mushrooms that teen Misty (Samantha Hanratty) had gathered.

Something wicked this way comes.

Teen Lottie (Courtney Eaton) is the seer of the group, and her prophecies have so far almost always come true. Her unease when they first reached the cabin is gone, and her meekness has been replaced by . . . something else. “We won’t be hungry long,” she chortles as the drugs work their magic.

Lottie is emerging as not merely the group’s crazy prophet, but potentially their leader, a mystical voice of savagery that will guide them into a new era of ritual and brutality. As the survivors’ humanity is stripped away, strip by bloody strip, and something more bestial emerges, Lottie seems poised to take charge.

Then again, the girl who falls into a pit of spikes in the very first episode’s flashback scenes look an awfully lot like Lottie, too, so who knows. She could be the antlered queen of the Yellowjackets, or meat on the platter.

The Cabin In The Woods

The title of the episode is drawn from the survivors’ first party. But instead of calling it a homecoming dance, they call it a doomcoming dance. This is fittingly creepy, though nobody knows just how twisted and ugly things will get once the party finds its stride, with fermented berry juice just the beginning of the debauch.

Misty is to blame, at least in part. She’s gathered psychedelic mushrooms to make tea with, presumably to give to Ben (Steven Krueger) as some kind of love potion, though it’s possible she intended to share her concoction with whoever wanted some.

But the shrooms are added to the evening’s broth instead, which almost everyone partakes in save for teen Jackie (Ella Purnell). This does not bode well for Jackie. Nor does her pursuit of teen Travis (Kevin Alves) which Lottie bizarrely takes issue with later in the night.

While Doomcoming starts as a larger affair, smaller duos break out piece by piece. Annoyed by Jackie’s advances toward Travis, teen Nat (Sophie Thatcher) tells coach Ben that she has some real booze stored away.

Teen Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and teen Van (Liv Hewson) head off for some heavy petting (during which the most shocking moment comes when Van removes her mask and we see . . . a radically restored face).

And Jackie lures Travis away to the cabin and into the attic where they both lose their virginity together. Travis is reluctant at first. He thinks he’s in love with Nat. But Jackie has an answer for everything. Love is a lie. Who says your first has to be with someone you love anyways? Oh, and by the way, Shauna and Jeff were screwing before we got here so . . .

Whether it’s the drugs or just horny teenage urges, Travis succumbs to Jackie’s seduction and the two do the deed. After, Travis starts mumbling about how they’re not really there. Not really real. Jackie, who didn’t eat anything, is confused.

She’s more confused still when the pack of wild girls shows up howling and cackling like animals. This is when Lottie shoves Jackie into the pantry and locks her there. “You took something that doesn’t belong to you,” she tells Jackie. Then they pile onto Travis, ripping his clothes off, kissing his mouth and his body, biting him.

Pulling at his flesh.

Hungrily.

At first he enjoys it, but what starts as a drug-induced orgy turns sinister in the blink of an eye. Frightened, he shakes off their clutching hands and runs outside. When Shauna looks out the window she doesn’t see a boy running away. She sees a deer.

“Catch the stag!” Lottie cries, and the pack races after him into the night, howling and screeching. Along the way, teen Javi (Luciano Leroux) tries to flag down Shauna. She turns to him, eyes like black holes and teeth like fangs, and growls “RUN.”

He runs.

The pack catches Travis and ties him up. Lottie stuffs a pinecone into his mouth (ouch) and tells Shauna, “You know what to do.”

Shauna approaches with her knife and when she looks at Travis, she sees a man’s body but the head of a stag. She puts the knife up to his throat, then hesitates, looking back at Lottie who says, “It wants us to.”

Brief note: These are some seriously strong mushrooms. So strong that I, once again, believe their effects are not simply the drug, but the thing that inhabits this forest itself, trickling into their consciousness. Lottie is the most vulnerable to its presence and control, most in tune with its voice. But they’ve all become mentally porous now, susceptible to the evil, to the wild bloodlust of the pack.

Meanwhile, Nat and Ben are having a more traditional mushroom experience, laying back and enjoying nature, looking up at the stars and laughing. “Love is everything!” Ben gushes, like it’s the most mind-blowing thought he’s ever had (and trust me, at this moment it very much is; revelatory in ways you just can’t understand unless you’re tripping).

He tells her to go find Travis and tell her how she feels, and off she goes. Enter Misty, stage right. “I heard what you said,” she says breathlessly. “Every word!” And she clutches at him, going in for the kiss.

He throws her from him angrily. “I don’t love you, Misty!” he shouts. “I love my boyfriend, Paul! I’m gay! Did you hear that, father? I’m gay! Did you hear that mother?” It’s a moment of real joy and rebellion for him, and it’s sad that he’s having it out here in the middle of nowhere and that it could very easily lead to his demise by way of psychopathic teenager.

Because there’s no way Misty let’s this one slide. Some people get used to rejection, or learn from it. Misty? She doubles down. When she realizes how close the pack came to slaughtering Travis, you can almost see a little lightbulb turn on above her head.

Nat rushes off to find Travis and instead hears Jackie calling for help. She rushes into the cabin and let’s her out and the two race off to find the others. They show up just in the nick of time—quite literally. Shauna’s knife has only nicked Travis’s neck, but she’s about to pull the blade across his throat when Nat screams at her to stop.

Travis’s face comes back into view and Shauna pales. But Lottie just laughs. Lottie laughs like someone gone completely mad. The question I have is whether she’ll return to “normal” the next day, or if the thing has clawed its way inside her now.

Travis shakes off Nat when she comes to his side, angrily storming off into the woods, his taciturn self back on full display. Other than the cackling Lottie, the rest of the group seems shaken and confused.

Blackmail And Glitter

Back in the present, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) returns to Adam’s (Peter Gadiot) cool studio apartment and confronts him.

He denies all her accusations, but she’s incensed. At first he thinks she’s joking, thinks it’s a roleplaying thing. Thinks that until she grabs a knife. Here we have Shauna and teen Shauna, knives out, 25 years apart. She seems so meek so much of the time, but there’s a killer waiting just beneath the surface.

Well, not so deep beneath the surface for poor Adam. He insists that he didn’t know who she was when they met, and when she finds a book about her plane crash he tells her that he was just trying to learn more about her because he cares about her.

She won’t listen, and when he tries to grab the knife, she sticks it in his belly. (Word of advice: Don’t try to grab a knife from someone who is very angry or unstable. Back slowly to the door and get the hell away. Call the police. Do not engage).

He crumples to the floor and just like that, dies.

Too bad for Shauna, he was actually just a nice, good looking guy who wanted to have a fun time with her. Too bad for Shauna, basically all of her preconceptions and assumptions about the world and the men in her life are wrong.

She returns to her house and opens the safe, only to find that all her journals are back. When Jeff (Warren Kole) walks into the room, something clicks.

“Honey, do you know where this glitter is from?” she asks. He tries to deny it, but he’s not a great liar. It turns out, he’s the guy behind the entire blackmail operation (though clearly not behind the murder of Travis).

His furniture business has been struggling and he took out a loan from some loan-sharks. To pay them back without his kneecaps getting broken, he concocted the blackmail scheme. He figured Taissa (Tawny Cypress) or Natalie (Juliette Lewis) might have some fluidity they could tap into, and he was right. Unfortunately, it ended up costing a man his life.

Jeff is full of surprises. First, it was defending his wife when Jackie’s parents kept making thinly veiled insults about her in comparison to their dead daughter. Now, it’s not just the blackmail but his reaction to Adam’s death.

It turns out, Jeff wasn’t having an affair. The woman at the hotel was working for the loan sharks. He’s only been hiding the store’s financial problems. When Shauna asks him why, he reminds her of all her own secrets. “When did we become like this?” she asks.

“We’ve always been this,” he tells her. Their entire relationship is built on secrets.

Still, he volunteers to turn himself in for the murder to protect her since it was his fault she suspected her lover of the blackmailing. It’s an awfully nice thing to do for someone who just had an affair and killed a man. But she refuses.

So they come up with yet another lie, this time to tell to Tai and Nat. Adam will be the blackmailer. She’ll offer up her stolen journals as evidence. She’ll enlist their help in disposing the body.

Only, it’s not really their help she needs. Natalie can think of only one person they know who’s equipped for such a task:

Misty (Christina Ricci) requires a bit of buttering up from Nat, an apology or two, but she’s only too happy to help clean up Shauna’s mess.

Down below, in her basement, poor Jessica Roberts (Rekha Sharma) is doing her best to get on Misty’s good side. She’s convinced her to sign a book deal. Convinced her that she’ll be the star, the most beloved of all the Yellowjackets, if she comes out with her story first. She can get her in touch with a ghostwriter in no time.

Misty seems pleased with the idea. But now she’s being welcomed back into the gang. Now she has a purpose again, however twisted. Things aren’t looking good for Jessica.

Just one more episode left of Season 1 and then the long wait for Season 2, and all the gnawing doubt that comes with a second season. Frankly, a part of me wishes they had come up with a complete story that would wrap up in just one season.

A limited series would have ensured that the story wasn’t dragged out, that all the mysteries were solved and that we walked away happy even if we didn’t get more content. The risks of going with a multi-season approach are very real. We’ve seen it happen too many times to count.

A show starts off with a brilliant first outing and then slowly devolves into forced plot-lines, tired twists and a bloated, meandering narrative.

My hope is that they have all the pieces worked out already, and that they just need one or two more seasons to weave it all together into a satisfying conclusion. I’m hopeful that’s the case, but nervous.

Still, Yellowjackets has been excellent so far. Such an intense, mysterious, well-acted show, with so many great characters and creepy, supernatural stuff in both the past and present timelines. The man with no eyes. Tai’s creepy sleepwalking. Everything about Lottie. Misty, as a teenager and a grown adult, is wonderfully nutso. The whole thing is great.

The season finale lands next Sunday. I can’t wait.

What do you think of Yellowjackets so far? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

You can read my review of last week’s episode here. Check out my review of the (controversial!) Dexter: New Blood finale here.

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