This story accommodates spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Showtime’s Yellowjackets.
Back when she was only a member of the championship high-school soccer crew referred to as the Yellowjackets, Natalie (performed by Sophie Thatcher) was a large midfielder, based on followers who studied the few scenes of the women in motion. The place comes with little glory. Wide midfielders don’t usually rating the objectives themselves; they’re tasked with attacking from the wings and offering assists. They’re quietly highly effective, in different phrases—usually ignored, but integral to a squad’s success.
Off the pitch and all through a lot of the Showtime drama Yellowjackets’ run, Natalie has carried out a equally underappreciated function. In 1996, after the crew’s airplane crashes within the Canadian wilderness, she turns into a hunter, solely to disappoint her associates when the brutal winter leaves her empty-handed day after day. As an grownup, Natalie (performed by Juliette Lewis) makes an attempt to unmask a blackmailer threatening her and her fellow survivors, solely to be kidnapped by Lottie (Simone Kessell), one other former Yellowjacket. Again and once more, Natalie has been a vital catalyst: In the previous, she made clear to her teammates how powerful the chilly can be to endure, and within the current, her disappearance reunited the opposite girls. Yet within the second-season finale, Yellowjackets killed her off. During a melodramatically staged, near-farcical scene, Misty (Christina Ricci) by accident injects Natalie with a syringe stuffed with poison after Natalie tries to cease her from hurting Lisa (Nicole Maines), a lady with whom Natalie had bonded at Lottie’s cultlike compound. As a approach to cowl up the circumstances of her passing, Natalie’s demise is deemed an “accidental overdose”—a merciless punch line, given Natalie’s historical past of substance abuse.
Yellowjackets thrives on twisty plotting and gnarly motion, however shedding Natalie feels deeply misguided. She was the wild card, an unpredictable character who might interact with all sides of the present’s ongoing debates—over whether or not the women’ barbarism was pushed by pure instincts or supernatural forces, and whether or not the ladies can ever heal from their trauma. As a youngster, she ate human flesh to outlive, however she additionally pushed again towards the affect Lottie (performed as a youngster by Courtney Eaton) held over the opposite Yellowjackets. As an grownup, she confronted her demons—relatively than suppressing them, as the opposite girls did—by chasing clues to the homicide of her ex and fellow survivor, Travis (Andres Soto). Natalie might not have at all times been straightforward to root for, however she was in some ways the ensemble’s conscience, somebody keen to behave when others wouldn’t, somebody posing the questions others feared. Even earlier than the crash, she’d been known as a “burnout” by her teammates. By the time the wilderness took them, she had nothing to lose. Watching her, in each timelines, meant watching somebody uncover who they may very well be: not only a burnout or an addict, however a real teammate, fiercely making an attempt to save lots of as a lot of her squad as she might and in search of nothing in return.
The present isn’t utterly performed together with her; Lottie crowns the youthful Natalie within the finale because the group’s new chief, claiming that the wilderness spared her life and took their coach’s youthful son Javi’s as an alternative for a cause. The improvement, although, feels rushed. Natalie has barely begun mourning the demise of Javi (Luciano Leroux), and the present glosses over her sophisticated romance together with his brother, Travis (performed up to now timeline by Kevin Alves). Worse, these occasions really feel divorced from the present’s astute examination of teenage dynamics. The demise of Jackie (Ella Purnell) final season resulted from the top of a finest friendship, a standard expertise for a lot of high-school ladies; Javi’s demise, in the meantime, comes off as contrived, an accident that has nothing to do with the women’ present relationships. Teenage Natalie’s new function—and the adoration she subsequently receives—appears, consequently, like a twist made for the sake of getting a twist.
The twistier the ’90s section of Yellowjackets turned, the extra tedious the present-day plot appeared. Although that was true for most of the characters in Season 2, Natalie’s story suffered probably the most. Adult Natalie’s misadventures at Lottie’s “wellness retreat” paled as compared with Teenage Natalie’s trials within the wild, which included faking Javi’s demise earlier within the season to guard Travis, looking for meals for all the ravenous group, being hunted by her personal teammates. Every time the present returned to Natalie within the current day, I felt myself shedding curiosity, although in concept, Natalie’s ultimate moments redeem her. She places herself at risk to save lots of Lisa, as an alternative of stepping apart as she had performed when Javi fell via the ice. But the conditions are nowhere close to the identical—Lisa had been threatening the ladies, whereas Javi had been helpless—and Natalie has solely burdened Misty (Christina Ricci) with contemporary guilt. Misty had already by accident induced the demise of 1 finest pal; now she’ll should deal with realizing she was deadly for an additional.
By the ultimate stretch of Season 2, the present—so riveting and ingenious within the arcs it has constructed for characters reminiscent of Misty—appeared to do not know what to do with Natalie. She roamed the compound week after week, befriending folks clad in lavender, passively drifting from room to room. But passive was by no means Natalie’s MO. She was a personality who understood that the stakes solely grew greater after the women escaped the woods. As an grownup, she was nonetheless making an attempt to reply the identical questions she had as a youngster: Whom might she belief? What might she do to be higher understood? Yellowjackets might have interrogated Natalie’s jagged path to therapeutic after her time within the wilderness, observing how an individual explores her beliefs and learns to stay a fuller life. Instead, it squandered her potential and did the worst factor anybody might do to a necessary teammate: It forgot about her.