The Fate Of Shauna's Baby In Yellowjackets Season 2 Is Key For Her Character Development
This post contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" and discusses potentially triggering content.
By their very nature, most survival thrillers are predicated on the suspense of whether characters will prevail against the forces of nature and ultimately live through their current scenario in the wild. Showtime's "Yellowjackets" is uniquely structured in this respect, since it toggles between teen and adult versions of the same characters in the past and present. It's never in question if central characters like Shauna, Taissa, Misty, Sophie, and now, Lottie and Van, will survive past youth. Instead, the viewer is left speculating about how they did so and what exactly they lived through in order to become the dysfunctional adults they are in the present.
In the case of teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), ever since the audience learned that she was pregnant, the mystery of what happened to her baby had also hung over "Yellowjackets." As of season 2, episode 6, that mystery has now been solved, and it turns out there are worse realities than cannibalism or even hallucinations of one's dead best friend. Shauna experienced both of those in "Yellowjackets," and in fact, her conversations with the frozen corpse of Jackie (Ella Purnell) in-between bites of ear were an early indication that the visions Shauna saw of her baby were not real.
We now know that the baby was stillborn, a tragic outcome that "Yellowjackets" co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco sees as key to Shauna's character development, and also the most fitting outcome given the story so far. Speaking to Time, Lisco said, "If the baby were to be born and then [the Yellowjackets] were to use it for survival, it would be very, very hard to swallow. Not just because it's difficult to accept, but because it didn't feel like the right Shauna story to tell."
'Shauna can't allow herself to fully love the child that she has in the present'
Understanding what she went through with the loss of her first child in the Canadian wilderness helps explain the adult Shauna's relationship with her teen daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) later on. It lends depth to why Shauna chooses — consciously or subconsciously — to distance herself emotionally from Callie.
"Shauna can't allow herself to fully love the child that she has in the present," Jonathan Lisco continued. "It made a lot more sense that what has prevented her from getting close to and embracing the maternal relationship with Callie is the trauma she went through."
That trauma has seen Shauna acting out in other ways, including but not limited to having an affair with Adam (Peter Gadiot) and murdering him in "Yellowjackets" season 1. Needless to say, this has affected Shauna's family, putting her husband, Jeff (Warren Kole), and Callie in the crosshairs of the police and leaving Jeff to channel his own negative emotions through Papa Roach.
Even in less dire circumstances, before her soccer team's fateful plane crash, teen Shauna had a dark side that manifested itself in ways destructive to her and others. Back in civilization, Jeff was her best friend's boyfriend, and Shauna got pregnant with him behind Jackie's back. Now, Shauna's ongoing struggle with forestalling the doom and gloom around those in her orbit involves processing the grief of a stillborn child as well. It's something unthinkable yet beyond her control, and the ability to convey such heavy emotions is just one reason why Sophie Nélisse and Melanie Lynskey continue to prove themselves one of the best dual casting decisions in all of "Yellowjackets."
New episodes of "Yellowjackets" stream on Showtime every Friday and air on television every Sunday.