So If Coach Ben Didn’t Burn Down the Cabin in ‘Yellowjackets,’ Who Did? We Have a Theory

Every episode of Yellowjackets brings its own addition to the mystery and tragedy that follows the ill-fated soccer team. Season finales have thus far taken up quite a few notches, and Season 2 is no exception. In the adult timeline, Natalie (Juliette Lewis) dies, and the cabin they use for shelter in the teen timeline burns down. Season 3’s premiere sees the coming of spring, but the nearly fatal cabin fire is still on everyone’s minds.

The season opens with Van (Liv Hewson) recounting the story so far with a tongue-in-cheek, “Previously, on THE Yellowjackets.” Van serves as a mouthpiece for the remaining survivors, with an overwhelming consensus that Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) was responsible for setting the fire. Ben disappears the same night as the cabin goes up in flames, and for viewers at home, he looks awfully menacing as he gathers buckets, rope, and matches, then glares regretfully into the cabin. The Yellowjackets are divided. Some are hungry for justice or revenge, while others just want to forget about it and move on. It comes to a head when they find Coach Ben and drag him back to camp. Season 3, Episode 4 of Yellowjackets, “12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis,” makes it clear that it didn’t matter if Coach Ben burned down the cabin or not. The real wounds of betrayal stem from his abandonment of the girls, and that has likely sealed his fate.

Still, it seems unlikely that Ben, who knew the trial wasn’t going to go his way and was just speaking his piece, wouldn’t have fessed up if he had done it. So, who did? While Occam’s Razor would say Man Holding Matches Probably Did It, Occam did not get down like the Wilderness. Now that Ben has spoken for himself, the reddest flags (and this series is full of them), do not point to Ben at all. In fact, they point pretty hard to another Yellowjacket: Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) — or rather, Other Tai.

Arson Isn’t a Reach for Other Tai on ‘Yellowjackets’

Early in Yellowjackets, Taissa Turner (Tawny Cypress) is outwardly the most successful and stable of the survivors. She’s relatively well off, runs (successfully) for New Jersey State Senate, and is in a stable marriage with a son, Sammy. In her teen years, she’s level-headed, ambitious, and a person you can count on. But in both timelines, it’s soon clear that Taissa has little control over herself or her circumstances, thanks to the one-two punch of the Man with No Eyes, a creepy figure that has followed her since childhood, and sleepwalking episodes that lead her to mysterious symbols etched into trees, up the trees themselves, and into unsavory activities on a scale of eating dirt to beheading a dog for an altar to the Wilderness.

On the night the cabin fire breaks out, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is up late journaling when she hears and smells the flames. She goes downstairs to wake everyone up. A half-asleep Nat quickly runs to the front door and finds it stuck. When Shauna runs to check the back door, Taissa is already there. Van appears from somewhere, kicking at the front door, and Taissa joins her with an ax. The possibility of Other Tai setting the fire can’t be ignored. Other Tai climbed a tree the night she was meant to keep watch, which led to Van nearly dying. Other Tai took over when the group ate Jackie’s body, leaving Tai horrified to find out she had eaten Jackie’s face. It’s likely that Other Tai took over – or otherwise influenced – when Taissa did not step down from the Senate race as she had promised her wife but instead doubled down. This, paired with the adult timeline seeing Taissa become increasingly willing to make sacrifices to the Wilderness to keep Van’s cancer away and taking Other Tai side quests to throw a book of matches into an offrenda, makes it beyond feasible that Taissa is responsible for the cabin arson.

During the cabin fire, as everyone else rushes to safety, Van tells Tai to go ahead without her. She insists. Van bends down just as the camera pulls back to show a wide shot of Tai making it out. Van runs out significantly later for the circumstances. Close-ups linger over the eyes of most of our central characters. Natalie, Lottie, Shauna, Tai, and Travis are all depicted in various stages of horror and duress — but Van is not.

Van Is Marked by Fire and Complicity in ‘Yellowjackets’

Knowing the threat that Other Tai’s sleepwalking episodes are to the others, Taissa tethers herself to Van each night. Van’s behavior during Coach Ben’s trial – the continued insistence that he lit the fire – could be motivated by a need to cover for Taissa or to cover where she failed or even willingly enabled Other Tai. After Ben’s vulnerable speech and heart-wrenching apology to Shauna for abandoning her during labor, Taissa looks pained when Van raises her hand to vote for his guilt but follows suit.

The question of Taissa’s tether and Van’s intense interest in punishing Coach Ben aren’t Van’s only red flags, nor are they her only red flags that echo Taissa’s misdeeds. In Season 1, Sammy, Taissa’s son, does many drawings of “The Bad One” or “The Tree Lady.” While it’s still unclear if he was strictly seeing Other Tai or something more supernatural, in one drawing, there is a redheaded figure. It’s not likely Sammy has a concept of Van (Lauren Ambrose) on his own. Van’s second near-death experience was being attacked by wolves, and in the present day, Taissa has seen wolves several times. Once, it led her to the graffitied “Spill” in front of her home. Another wolf appeared to lead her away at the fundraising gala. More recently, Taissa and Van travel to an abandoned ice cream parlor after the man with no eyes appears in an ad for it on one of Van’s old VHS recordings. Taissa sees a coyote (close enough) with a rabbit in its mouth. When Taissa asks it what it wants, Van replies, “We know what it wants. It wants more.”

Van has stronger ties to fire than any other Yellowjacket so far. In the initial crash, Shauna almost dies trying to free Van from a stuck seat belt on the burning plane. After the wolf attack leads Taissa, Akilah, and Misty to believe that Van is dead, they place her on a pyre, and the resulting burns wake her. The theme of fire has returned even stronger for Van in Season 3. When Tai whisks her away to a fancy restaurant in Season 3, Episode 1, “It Girl,” she says, “I’m sorry, don’t you wanna take a flamethrower to this place?” In Episode 3, “Them’s the Breaks,” her cave vision ends in flame, too. She finds herself in a version of the cabin the survivors never experienced. She takes a seat in the rocking chair before the fireplace. The rocking chair transforms into her seat from the plane and multiple arms – some in the flannel associated with the man from the cabin, some in the Yellowjackets letter jacket – pin her down. One even covers her mouth as the fire flickering in the fireplace reflects in Van’s eyes.

Regardless of who struck the match that burned down the cabin, it’s clear that both Taissa and Van are connected to the fire in some greater way. In Season 2, Van pushes Taissa to let Other Tai take over, which eventually leads Van to a series of mysterious symbols carved throughout the woods, mapping the symbol over the landscape at large. Other Tai and her connection to the Wilderness have always been aided and defined by Van. It’s easy to miss in the tragedy of the Season 2 finale, but Lottie sees this. After the failed hunt at Lottie’s commune — partially facilitated by Van, who convinces Taissa that they should call off having Lottie committed before the hunt can start — Lottie says, “Van, I saw it in your eyes just then. And Tai — Tai, it brought you to her, so she would bring you here to us.”