All the Fan Theories to Know After 'Yellowjackets' Season 2, Episode 4

It's finally Yellowjackets season. The hit Showtime series returned for its second season this weekend, checking back in with the survivors of a 1996 plane crash across two timelines: months after the crash as the girls face their first winter in the woods, and twenty-five years later as the now-adults live with the trauma of their unspeakable past. As the mystery-filled series airs over the next few months, we'll be following all of the most compelling plot theories week by week. Read on for the biggest fan theories following the season 2's second episode, "Edible Complex."

Coach Ben will be the Yellowjackets' next "special meal."

Welp, the cannibalism has officially landed. After Shauna took the first step towards the series' premiere flash-forward by gulping down Jackie's ear, the rest of the cabin (minus Coach Ben) graduated from (presumed) future to current people eaters last week, after a failed funeral pyre and some snowfall results in a slow-roasted Jackie. The shots of the teens chowing down on their former teammate, not to mention her freshly-cooked form, is now seared into all of our memories. (Welcome to my nightmares.)

The group is getting closer and closer to devolving into the dynamic we saw in the first-ever episode, where presumably Antler Queen Lottie leads the group in eating their members one by one. It's also the biggest group bonding moment we've seen since the Doomcoming hunt, with Ben choosing to just go hungry and turning his back on the feast. His sanity has been slowly slipping since then, as he hallucinates about his boyfriend Paul and gets into snippy fights with Mari (Alexa Barajas), so though he's still around as of episode 4, he's still Most Likely to Become the Next Team Meal.

Mari will be the Pit Girl.

Now that the non-surviving (we assume) Yellowjackets are getting more screen time in season 2, we can start investigating who will end up being the poor victim of the series premiere's pit trap. As of episode 2, the most-likely victim is Mari, who has the same dark long hair as the Pit Girl in the flash-forward. She's also been mean repeatedly mean to Misty in the past two episodes, which could explain why Misty had looked so happy to chow down, as u/Top_Marionberry1663 notes.

While Mari's "Pit Girl" identity seems pretty solid, there's also room for Mari theories about the mysterious dripping sound, which she hears but no one else can. She has kept noting it for the past couple of episodes, and it isn't clear whether she has cabin fever or it's something more sinister. The dripping could just be the beginning of Mari's hallucinations, but multiple Redditors pointed out in this thread that episode 3's score includes a dripping sound during a scene when Tai's in her sleepwalking state. Odds are more clues will pop up throughout the season.

The Lottie supporters and the skeptics will form two separate groups.

In episode 4, Lottie's "powers" are put to the test in a hunting contest against Natalie, with top-Lottie-supporter Mari assuring that our Antler Queen didn't even need a gun to find them food. Lottie makes it to her tree altar and offers a blood sacrifice, after which she has an intense hallucination where finds the plane that exploded with Laura Lee inside, enters a tunnel through a hatch underneath, and is transported to a mall food court populated by the team including Laura Lee. After the vision Laura Lee tells her she needs to go back, the real Lottie is rescued by Mari and Akilah (Nia Sondaya), who find her at the plane site.

The real turning point about the state of the group happens courtesy of Tai and Van, who have been investigating why Tai's sleepwalking path makes the shape of the wilderness symbol. When they visit the last spot on the path, they find a mossy tree with melted snow around its base (in a different location from the one Natalie and Travis found), followed by a still-alive Javi!!! Something serious has happened to him, judging by his thousand-yard stare, but Lottie was right about him being alive.

With this new impossible proof of Lottie's "power," it's clear she'll soon rise up as the leader of the group. However, it's possible that the team members who don't agree with Lottie's rituals will break away and form their own group, that either tries to take Lottie down or just tries not to become her supporters' latest meal. As of the end of episode 4, we have Mari, Misty, Van, and Travis firmly on Team Lottie, with Natalie, Shauna, Coach Ben, and Tai sitting on Team Logic. However, now that Tai has been forced to actually deal with her weird sleepwalking connection to the wilderness spirit, Van may be able to bring her over to the side of the believers.

Javi was hiding in underground tunnels.

All of those fan theorists were right: Javi's still alive! The kid somehow survived two months alone in the wilderness following the group's mushroom-fueled Doomcoming, with Tai and Van finding him in episode 4. Lottie was right all along, and now Travis knows that Natalie had faked finding Javi's bloody clothes to Travis would stop torturing himself looking for him. That's going to drive a big wedge between Travis and Natalie, and maybe Travis will end up getting with Lottie, but the more important, non-love-triangle question: How the hell is this kid still alive???

The query leans into the show's theme of searching for explanations of the unexplainable. Tai and Lottie could have tapped into some wilderness spirits in 1996, or they could be dealing with the extreme effects of mental illness, stress, and trauma in both the past and present-day timelines (more on that below). Javi could have had supernatural help surviving the past few months, but there is a very strong, more world-ly theory from Misty's favorite site.

A significant Reddit theory from u/murderousbitch postulates that Javi has been living in a series of underground bunkers for the past two months. The theory connects back to Lottie's altar (which the Redditor calls the Summer Stump), explaining that there could be a bunker underneath the stump that's generating enough heat to melt the snow, and guessing Javi could have found the bunker either right before or while running away. This would also connect to the bunker imagery throughout season 1, including a vision that Lottie had of herself in what appeared to be an underground cement hallway when she was baptized in season 1. If this theory was true, not only would Travis finally catch a break (the kid's been through a lot), but Lottie being right about Javi's survival could be another step towards the bulk of the team becoming the Antler Queen's disciples.

Lottie is having blackouts like Taissa, and she killed Travis during one.

The season 2 premiere finally introduces viewers to adult Lottie, after showing what happened to the Antler Queen after the survivors were rescued in 1998. After she arrived back in New Jersey, Lottie was sent to a hospital in Switzerland and underwent electroshock therapy after previously taking medication for schizophrenia before the team was stranded. Twenty-five years later, Lottie is now a spiritual leader of a benign-seeming intentional community, the one that kidnapped Natalie at the end of season 1.

By the end of episode 2, two things are clear: Lottie's still connected to the spirit in the woods, and she's probably hiding something about Travis's death. When she explains Travis's attempt to "get as close to death as possible" to commune with the wilderness spirit, large parts of the details don't add up, including her falling asleep after she talks him through a breakdown. Why would Travis leave his banking info and the note for Natalie (which Lottie uses to comfort her former teammate) if he didn't mean to die? How were the candles arranged in the same symbol from the woods, unless he used the crane once to see from overhead and then it suddenly doesn't work? There's too many gaps and too much history to trust Lottie as a reliable narrator.

The season has also raised several huge questions about whether Lottie is really aligned against the spirit at this point. Why has she dedicated her life to being the head of an "intentional community" similar to the one in the woods? Why is she holding on to the wilderness imagery 25 years later (see the animal mask ceremony, the symbol necklaces her group wears, and the antlers posted atop her cabin)? In episode 4, we see her visit her psychiatrist and explain that she wants her resumed hallucinations to stop. The way that she speaks about her "visions" offers a clue; she admits that her visions caused pain and suffering when she had them "as a kid," and that she doesn't need that anymore because she’s truly helping people. It's possible that she wants to hold on to the parts of her Antler Queen persona that allow her to help her cult, but it's unlikely that she can just separate those elements from the dangerous side of the wilderness spirit.

Hear me out: Lottie has spent at least the past ten years (as long as she's been seeing her psychiatrist) subduing her connection to the spirit. What if that has made her disassociate in a similar way to Taissa? When she reconnected with Travis and had the vision of Laura Lee during his death, that could have been the moment where the spirit took over and killed him. Then, when she comes to, Lottie doesn't remember the murder but covers it up and takes his money so she can continue to take care of her cult. Travis and Tai were the two people with the most connection to the spirit (a.k.a. weird, unexplained hallucinations) in the woods and they had dealt with hallucinations in adulthood. Maybe after so long holding them off, they finally took Lottie over.

Shauna and Jeff will be arrested for Adam's murder.

It's clear that Shauna's storyline this season will focus on the state of her family after her affair with Adam. She and Jeff spend the premiere trying to cover loose ends from the murder, which leads them to Adam's art studio and multiple intimate portraits he painted of Shauna. After they destroy the paintings, Jeff's chill demeanor finally breaks in private, in a pointed display that it will definitely take a while for the couple to rebuild trust in their marriage.

In a previous TV Insider interview, Lisco said that he would rather explore how "that murder and the realization of all her secrets affects [Jeff and Shauna's] marriage," rather than turning Shauna's present-day storyline into a detective mystery. The conflict also affects their daughter Callie, who discovered a bit of Adam's license among the family grill's ashes at the end of the premiere. In episode 2, her dismay over her parents being potential murderers leads her straight into the arms of Detective Kevyn's new partner Matt Saracusa. Eventually Callie learns the truth, with her mom straight up admitting to the murder in episode 4, but by then the detective has already tricked the teen into confessing that Shauna was cheating on Jeff.

Callie may have already landed Shauna at the top of the suspect list, and Shauna's recent reckless behavior—the chop shop standoff in episode 3 should earn Melanie Lynskey an Emmy nom—shows that the Yellowjacket is embracing her dangerous side as season 2 goes on. That's gonna end really poorly for either her or the cops.

Misty will kill Walter (played by Elijah Wood) for learning the truth about Adam.

Though he doesn't appear on screen, we do meet Elijah Wood's character in the season premiere, via voiceover. New addition Walter shows up when Misty browses the citizen detective subreddit early in the episode. (His username is "PuttingtheSickinForensics.") Walter is investigating the case of Adam's disappearance, and he's on the right track, after looking through the deceased's credit card history and seeing that Adam had a secret girlfriend. Misty quickly downvotes his correct assumption, which is a very impulsive move for the woman who kidnapped and killed a private investigator last season. He'll be able to see that Misty, a.k.a. "AfricanGrey" didn't like his theory.

That downvote comes back to haunt Misty in episode 2, when Walter shows up at her job under the ruse that he's looking for a nursing home for his mom. The light stalking and the invisible ink note are very much a true crime fan's way of flirting, as is a faux FBI interrogation in lieu of a first date. However, while Walter is fascinated with Misty's investigation skills enough to slap a confused Randy around, he can't let go of Adam's case and Misty's inexplicable downvotes.

Misty conjures up an explanation about discouraging Walter's investigation because Adam's mother wouldn't want the world to know about her son's addiction and probable suicide (so many lies that Walter could easily research). She quickly gets distracted from her lie cause of Walter's admittedly-sweet "bored Moriarty looking for his Sherlock" line, but it doesn't seem like Walter will let this go. We'll see if this friendship ends in love or death (it'll likely be death).

The man with no eyes wants to kill Taissa, and she'll need to reunite with Van to get rid of him.

Coming into season 2, the big question regarding Taissa was whether she was conscious or in a trance when she set up the dog-sacrifice altar that assumedly helped her win the state senate election. (Her creepy smile upon learning of her victory didn't bode well.) In the premiere, we finally see her reaction to the altar; she seems shocked when she finds it, before she picks up the newly acquired family dog and promises that the previous dog sacrifice was a mistake. It's a confusing scene, but the wilderness timeline gives a bit more clarity, as we see that Tai's extreme sleepwalking has progressed to the point that Van ties their arms together as they sleep.

In season 1, Tai was haunted by a figure that fans have dubbed the "man with no eyes," after her grandmother's story in Episode 3. The spirit was seen in the season's opening credits, he showed up several times around Taissa's house in the present-day timeline, and her son Sammy was having visions of eyeless figures and drawing them. I believe the theory that Taissa's sleepwalking is an effect of her being possessed by the spirit all the way back in 1996, and that it's coming back up in this immense time of stress and all the trauma of the past rising back up. This is really a storyline that can go anywhere, but since we know that adult Van appears sometime this season, there's a good chance that Tai will need to meet up with her to start healing from whatever's going on.

Also, that healing really needs to start sooner rather than later, because Tai's trance state becomes much more malevolent in both the past and present in episode 2, leading her to almost walk over a cliff in the woods, and building an hours-long delusion about Sammy that ends with Tai and Simone getting into a car crash. Even after the crash, trance-Tai draws the wilderness symbol onto Simone's hand, as we see via flashback that Tai had been drawn to the symbols carved on trees while entranced. By the end of episode 3, Tai comes face-to-face with her entranced self in the mirror, as it mouths "Go to her," and makes a gesture recalling the creepy ritual-sacrifice masks from the series premiere. With that, Tai "borrows" her campaign manager's car to go to directly to "her," a.k.a. the person who helped her manage her trance state in the past. Episode 4 ends with Tai arriving in Oberlin, Ohio, to reunite with Van!

What will happen to Shauna's baby?

The Yellowjackets season 2 premiere serves mostly as a reminder of all the mysteries the show has to untangle, and there's several threads that still don't have enough evidence for one fan theory to stand above the rest. One major question remaining is what happens to the baby that Shauna is carrying in 1996, which hasn't even been mentioned in the present-day timeline so far. As of the premiere, Shauna is still pregnant in the wilderness timeline, and has even been having stress dreams where the baby comes out as a chicken, ready to eat.

First off, don't worry, they're not going to eat the baby. Both Tawny Cypress, who plays adult Taissa, and young Shauna actress Sophie Nélisse have confirmed as much in recent interviews with Entertainment Weekly and ABC Audio, respectively. The show's writers have debunked some fan theories regarding the kids' identity during the hiatus. Lyle and Nickerson have confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that Adam, the young artist whom Shauna had an affair with and later murdered, was completely unrelated to the 1996 timeline. He was not adult Javi, nor was he the baby that teen Shauna was carrying. Instead Lyle told the outlet that "the question of what happens to her baby is something we have presented and a question we will eventually answer."

Even though the show can get pretty demented, there's a good chance that the baby will meet a more natural end, with Shauna experiencing some form of pregnancy loss or the infant dying before the group gets rescued. Then again, this is Yellowjackets. Just because baby eating is off the table, that doesn't mean baby sacrifice or something just as gruesome could happen.

Maybe there are wilderness spirits; maybe it's poisoning.

While there have been many hints that something supernatural is happening in Yellowjackets—most recently the POV shot of an unknown spirit pushing the snow onto Jackie's incinerator-turned-oven—there is the chance that the mysteries of the show are less sensational. Several Redditors (including u/boreleafclover) have written on the theory that the Yellowjackets are actually camping out in an extremely mineral rich area. Redditor u/justaguyinqueens speculates the ground specifically has cinnabar in it, aka "oxidized mercury that is used in a number of industrial processes."

So after all this speculation, low-grade mercury poisoning could be responsible for causing some of their hallucinations and strange behavior. u/justaguyinqueens also notes that "cinnabar crystals are a bright red," and the Yellowjackets previously found a "river of blood" that they attributed to Lottie's visions. The poisoning theories even have offshoots explaining some of the team's strange behavior. Taissa's hallucinations as an adult could be the long-term effects from eating dirt laced with mercury during her wilderness stress sleepwalking. u/haveone-onme argues Tai "might be eating dirt because her body is craving nutrients and minerals." In this case, the no-eyed man of Tai's nightmares as a kid could be a recurring waking nightmare brought on by the poisoning and mental trauma.

Another non-supernatural theory which could ties both the mineral poisoning and the Javi's-somewhere-underground postulations together was actually posted during season 1, when u/boreleafclover (who also credited u/bo174 and u/eshmeem) suggested that show's stick-figure symbol is actually a map to a hidden mining shaft. They wrote that "the circle is a sun, the lines and triangles are overlapping mountains, [and] the hook is the actual mining shaft." They also suggest that the dead guy in the attic was the mine's owner.

This week, a thoughtful post from u/theflyingwhisker tied those three thoughts together in one of the strongest not-spirits-but-poisoning theories so far: They found that the show's symbol looks derived from Alchemy charts from the 17th and 18th century, which assigned symbols to certain minerals. An underground mine could have been harvesting cinnabar or another material, with gas and other matter rising up from the surface to poison the water supply and the animals who drink from it (hence why Natalie and Travis can't find any fame). The warmth from the mine could also be heating the Summer Stump. Not only that, the man in the attic could have died from poisoning and "put the symbol in front of him as a warning."

I think this very plausible scientific theory is the perfect foil to the show's supernatural tones. I've been a solid ghost/possession theorizer since the season 1 finale, but after reading u/theflyingwhisker's post, my brain has gone into a spiral. If what happened to the girls was really scientific instead of supernatural, would that raise or lower the stakes of everything they're about to do (or did, considering from the present timeline)? How would they move forward if the source of their years-long struggle was a rare but ultimately natural phenomenon? What would it mean for the show's examination of the ways people react to trauma and its long-lasting effects?

You Might Also Like

• 4 Investment-Worthy Skincare Finds From Sephora

• The 17 Best Retinol Creams Worth Adding to Your Skin Care Routine