Yellowjackets’ Biggest Supernatural Mystery May Have a Boring Explanation (& It Makes Total Sense)

A big question most fans have at the end of every Yellowjackets episode is, “Are the wilderness spirits real?” It’s a similar deal to the goats on Severance. No one knows what in the world is happening, and the show is taking every measure to evade answering questions. That’s all fine for the most part, just as long as Yellowjackets can keep the ambiguity fun and fresh. But has the series already hit its limit when it comes to dragging out its long-winded mystery?

Yellowjackets has dipped its toes further into supernatural territory for Season 3. This is either perfect news for those who want the wilderness to be real, or very bad news for fans enjoying the psychological aspect of the tragedy. Shared visions and strange noises have all pointed to there being a mystical entity or entities controlling the lives of the teenagers pre- and post-rescue. But there are still relatively grounded explanations for some of these phenomenons.

Akilah’s Vision Isn’t the Future, But a Guilty Conscience

In Yellowjackets Season 3, two events have implicated there is something supernatural going on. Since the Season 3 premiere, the teenagers have heard a series of screeching, loud noises coming from an unknown place. The sounds resemble screaming (either human or not), and stop after Nat shoots her gun. Coach Ben’s knowledge of the sounds confirms that they’re not a linked hallucination between the teenagers, but do, in fact, exist.

Probably the most bizarre thing that’s happened in the series thus far was in Season 3, Episode 3, “Them’s the Brakes.” Shauna, Van and Akilah all inhale poisonous gas that makes them hallucinate in the cave. While they all have unique, individual dreams at first, they all combine into one vision where they’re in a class taught by Lottie and attended by Jackie. They all then see the Man With No Eyes, a figure only Tai and her grandmother had seen before. This was hard proof that it isn’t just all in their heads — there is something beyond logical happening in these woods.

Akilah returns to the cave for another vision, and it shifts the mystery back into its ambiguous box. She sees Ben as a giant bridge, connecting two cliffs to cover the gap between the wilderness and society. Lottie takes this as the wilderness literally telling them that Ben is the key to their rescue. But it could realistically be interpreted as Akilah’s guilt for voting to kill him. Akilah couldn’t look him in the eye when he was in the animal pen, and only eventually turned her vote against him when Lottie did. Her vision is her subconscious trying to find any reason to spare his life. Her mind interprets him as a symbol of hope because he’s their own adult figure in their life. At this point, being integral to their rescue is his only purpose among them.

Yellowjackets’ Ambiguity Is Becoming an Evasive Weakness

Given past circumstances, Akilah’s vision may still be written off as a premonition of sorts. Lottie herself has been a subject of question due to her so-called prophetic visions that she’s had since she was a kid. Predicting a car crash as a child isn’t something a schizophrenia diagnosis can easily rationalize, nor is her possible vision of Laura Lee’s plane exploding. But it’s also not impossible to pass these as severe coincidences.

This is where the ambiguity of Yellowjackets lies. Some things can fit under a severe case of psychological trauma, but others can’t. That, in essence, is what’s going wrong with Yellowjackets Season 3. The series itself doesn’t seem sure whether it wants to go the supernatural route or stay psychological. One minute, Yellowjackets wants to completely throw toeing the line between magic and realism out the window by letting characters other than Tai see the Man With No Eyes. Then the next minute, it goes back to what it does best: having a burdened character see a vision rooted in guilt, caused by a natural substance.

If Yellowjackets chooses to go the latter route of shared delusions brought out by untamed female rage, firmly dismissing the clear supernatural elements is going to be a hard case to make. The show used to be in a place where it could make an either/or case. Now that it’s gone so far on one path, trying to keep the story and its cryptic symbols questionable far-fetched. The problem is that Yellowjackets doesn’t seem like it wants to fully commit to the supernatural to play it safe.

Could Ben Actually Be the Key to The Teenagers’ Rescue?

Yellowjackets wants viewers to believe that Akilah’s vision stems from repressed shame. As satisfying as it would be for Ben to step up to be the hero, he doesn’t have a good track record or relationship with the teens to justify this happening. It’s also just too coincidental that Akilah is the one who envisions Ben as their bridge back home, despite not being the wilderness’s chosen prophet, as Travis claimed to get out of his traumatic therapy sessions.

But there is a world where Lottie might be right, and the wilderness is trying to speak for Ben’s honor. He is considered the most psychologically sound out of all the survivors, which isn’t saying much, but it’s something. If there’s anyone who wants to leave the wilderness, it’s him. The others haven’t made an active effort since Tai’s failed mission in Season 1. The wilderness spirits might be trying to tell the teenagers that they shouldn’t give up on Ben just yet. He is still their authority figure. Perhaps their forgiveness of him, and willingness to work with them is their shot at rehabilitation. It’s their way of slowly reintegrating back into society by pursuing compromise and abandoning their feral side.

Yellowjackets still has a ways to go to process its own storytelling choices. The core of the show’s original purpose is still there: to examine how growing, young minds can be easily twisted and exposed when confronted with difficult life-or-death decisions. But Yellowjackets has also been taking big swings, some that are a little too on the impractical side. But for now, that vagueness has saved Ben’s life.