What Did Walter's Morse Code Message To Misty Mean In Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 7?

This post contains spoilers for the seventh episode of "Yellowjackets" season 2.

After last week's "Yellowjackets" tore our hearts out and stomped on them, the latest episode provides a bit of respite for our world-weary survivors — at least in the present day. While '90s Shauna (Sophie Nelisse) was busy giving Lottie (Courtney Eaton) a pummelling, the older versions of all our favorite characters were trying to find some clarity on Lottie's (Simone Kessell) compound. For Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), that meant caring for a goat, while Taissa (Tawny Cypress) painted a wall and Van (Lauren Ambrose) went on a bender.

No one had quite as much fun as Misty (Christina Ricci), though; after spending most of the episode avoiding the sensory deprivation tank she was assigned to lay in, she finally faced the darkness, and the darkness turned out to have a lot of the old razzle-dazzle. In the show's most delightfully surreal sequence to date, Misty watched the human embodiment of her bird Caligula (John Cameron Mitchell) perform a song and dance, then shared a nearly-wordless phone call with her new pal Walter (Elijah Wood).

During the phone call, Walter sent Misty a Morse code message, and for the first time in this show's history, the coded message was kind of cute instead of deeply unsettling. There's no sinister French whispering to be found here, nor any weird carved symbol. Instead, Walter inputs a series of beeps and tones on his orange corded telephone that travel through the air and surround Misty in a pink, glowing heart. In Morse code, he's spelling out a simple message: "I LOVE YOU."

Let's all take a minute to appreciate how sweet that is before we dig into how it might relate to miserable times ahead for our characters, shall we? It's become increasingly clear this season that, despite her erratic behavior and trouble showing her care in appropriate ways, Misty really does long for human connection. She's worried about getting in too deep with Walter because she's lost people before in ways that she sees as her own fault, like when Kristen (Nuha Jes Izman) fell off a cliff after their truth session went sideways. As kooky as this moment is, it's one of several unorthodox yet sweet scenes between Misty and Walter this season, and it's fun to see her feeling so loved for once.

That being said, the scene is also clearly a product of Misty's imagination. Caligula tells her not to feel bad for killing people ("You are not a murderer, Misty, you're a closer," Mitchell says approvingly through his bird beak), and the whole sequence positions her as the audience-of-one for a special show. Misty's mind is fulfilling her own needs in a creative way, imagining that she can be absolved of her misdeeds, be the center of attention, and bask in a simple, pure sort of love. It's a far cry from Walter's real-life crush confession, when he tells her she reminds him of his murderous grandma.

Misty's dream sequence is "Yellowjackets" at its most offbeat and irreverent, but like all of the show's trippiest sequences, from Lottie's Alice In Wonderland dinner party to the Greco-Roman feast scene, it also contains some potentially important subtext. Namely, based on the narrative rules the previous dream sequences follow, it seems likely that Misty knows Morse code. Those rules, by the way, seem to be that whatever happens in characters' heads draws from their own experiences, as co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco hinted to Vulture in March 2023, the Greek feast came in part because writers assumed the girls would've studied Ancient Greece in school. 

Of course, there are exceptions to this, like when Taissa sees the Man With No Eyes and has no clue who he is, but often the team's hallucinations draw on their own limited pool of knowledge. So if Misty knows Morse code in the present day, does that mean she knew it in the wilderness, too? I wouldn't put it past her, and if so, that's a skill that might just get the girls rescued if they ever find means to communicate with the outside world. This love confession could double as a nifty little bit of foreshadowing.

Whether you see Misty's sensory deprivation-fueled daydream as an especially jovial clue to the show's future or take it at face value, one thing is clear: this scene was ridiculously cute, bizarre, and goofy, just like the two lovebirds at its center.

New episodes of "Yellowjackets" stream Fridays in the Showtime app, and air Sundays on Showtime.