Is Lottie Running a Cult on 'Yellowjackets'? Everything You Need to Know

What's the deal with Lottie's "purple people," and why did they kidnap Nat?

Yellowjackets is finally back for Season 2, and with it comes at least one new adult member of the team: Lottie Matthews. Season 1 ended with the major reveal that Lottie (played as a teen by Courtney Eaton) is still alive in the present day, but the other adult Yellowjackets had never mentioned her. After Natalie (Juliette Lewis) started digging around to find out who killed Travis (Andres Soto), her friend Suzie (Colleen Wheeler) discovered that someone named Lottie seemingly emptied his bank account before his death. Nat, however, never got the message—because some of Lottie’s minions kidnapped her.

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The Season 2 premiere finally gave fans some answers, introducing adult Lottie (played by Simone Kessell) and offering a few glimpses of what she’s doing now. When we first meet her, she’s delivering a lecture about the importance of staying true to yourself in an outdoor amphitheater located next to a scenic pond. It’s all very Silver Lake, except for the fact that all of her attendees are dressed in purple. Is this a new age wellness retreat, or is this a cult? By the end of the episode, all signs point to the latter. Read on for more details about Lottie’s latest religious endeavor.

Where is Lottie's cult located?

This question isn’t answered right away, but it seems probable that Lottie is camped out somewhere in upstate New York or rural New Jersey. The present-day action picks up almost right where season 1 left off, and her followers kidnapped Nat from her New Jersey motel, located somewhere near the suburbs where Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) live. Unless there’s something we don’t know, they took Nat somewhere within driving distance. That said, Lottie potentially has access to a lot of cash for hiring a jet. Her parents were super wealthy — her father provided the private plane that the Yellowjackets were taking to nationals — and she’s drained the bank account of at least one unsuspecting victim, NXIVM-style. So theoretically, this compound could be anywhere.

Why did Lottie kidnap Nat?

Lottie’s motivation for kidnapping her former teammate remains a mystery. Unlike Travis, Nat doesn’t have any money: Taissa paid for her stints in rehab, and she sold her Porsche in season 1 to pay off the blackmailer (who turned out to be Shauna’s husband, Jeff, played by Warren Kole). Nat has also never been a Lottie believer, as evidenced by a flashback that shows teen Nat (Sophie Thatcher) complaining about the ritual Lottie enacts whenever she and Travis (Kevin Alves) go hunting. Perhaps Lottie suspects that Nat knows she had something to do with Travis’s death, but if that’s the case, why keep her alive? When we see Nat locked up in the compound, she’s being treated as well as a captive can be, enjoying regular meals in what could be a minimalist Woodstock Airbnb (save for the shackles). During Nat’s escape attempt, Lottie claims the reason for all this subterfuge is that she has a message from Travis. What message, though? And why was it necessary to kidnap Nat to deliver it?

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Why do Lottie’s followers wear purple?

The dress code at Lottie’s camp isn’t explained right away, but it’s not unusual for members of real religions to wear all one color. Think of Buddhist monks in their orange robes, or Muslim pilgrims dressed in all white. For a cult-ier comparison, remember the Rajneeshees of Netflix’s hit 2018 documentary Wild, Wild Country. Their guru, Rajneesh, required all members of the group to wear oranges, reds, and purples to mimic the colors of the rising and setting sun.

So for Lottie, why purple? The color is commonly associated with royalty and nobility, but it can also represent spirituality, creativity, and magic. In terms of the color spectrum, violet has the shortest wavelength of any color visible to the human eye. This means it has the highest vibration rate, which makes it the most energetic color. For a group focused on discovering a primal self, that can’t be a coincidence.

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What happens inside Lottie cult?

If you ignore the matching outfits, Lottie’s compound at first seems pretty benign. “There’s only one person who can really give you what you’re looking for — you,” she tells her followers. “Right now, there is a version of you that knows exactly who you really are and what you really want. A primal, elemental self, and there is nothing more painful than hiding that self.” What she’s saying doesn’t seem too far off from what you might find in a Brené Brown book. It’s only once night falls that things take a turn for the pagan. There’s a bonfire, animal masks, and a naked guy getting buried alive during a ritual dance in the woods. Her followers also seem prepared to defend her with violence — when Nat runs at her with a stick, Lottie has to call off one of her minions by assuring him that she’s a friend.

How does Lottie’s cult connect to the Yellowjackets’ past?

Whatever’s going on at Lottie’s compound is at least partly related to whatever belief system she was developing in the woods back in 1996. Her followers wear necklaces bearing the symbol we’ve seen carved on the trees in the Canadian Rockies, and there’s a big emphasis on connecting with nature and animals. As a reminder, that symbol wasn’t invented by the Yellowjackets — it was already carved on the floor of the attic in their cabin when they arrived there.