The Wilderness Chose For The Yellowjackets And The Results Are Frighteningly Feral

This article contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" season 2 episode 8.

After the cliffhanger bloodbath that was last week's episode, "It Chooses" picks up with Mari and Misty holding up Lottie over a bowl so she can pee. Unfortunately, Lottie's pissing blood, likely because Shauna kicked her square in the kidneys a few times. The girls have brought her up to the attic to try and heal, but Mari's making snarky jokes and Misty has had enough of it. Mari takes the piss bowl downstairs, but drops it on the floor and starts crying. I think she's finally cracking from the severity of the situation. Through her pain, Lottie is having visions that resemble ones she'll have again as an adult. Things are getting bad for our Yellowjackets.

Adding to the list of People Having a Bad Time™, Akilah is playing with the baby mouse she's been mothering the last few episodes and telling him how she's going to get him all sorts of pet mouse toys when they're out of the wilderness. There's just one problem with her theory ... the mouse is dead. Taissa catches Akilah playing with her little friend and has to break the news to her that she's playing with a mouse corpse. It's impossible to know whether or not the mouse has been dead the whole time or if it died sometime during her care and her brain chose to protect her by refusing to let her live in reality.

Akilah swears to Taissa that she didn't know it was dead, but once she holds it in front of her face, there's no denying it. Akilah starts panicking and delivers an understandable "What the f***?" before the credits roll.

What new horrors await us this week?

The cops show up with a warrant to search the Sadecki home as Shauna is officially a suspect, and Officer 'Stache looks way too smug for my liking. Callie records him tearing apart her room, taunting him, but he's clearly unmoved. She openly admits she'll weaponize her teenage white girl tears in front of a jury, but he says once they hear that Shauna is a liar, they'll realize "the psychopath apple doesn't fall far from the f***ed up, man-eating tree." I hate him, but he gets credit for that sick burn.

Kevyn finds it odd that Jeff didn't kick out Shauna after learning about the affair, totally trying to make Jeff feel like a bad husband or "less of a man" for wanting to work on their marriage. Jerk. Officer 'Stache decides to show Jeff the crime scene photos of Adam's severed body parts. They look clean enough to be surgical, something the cops imply could be reflective of "survival skills." Whoever killed Adam knew to remove his head, feet, and hands, as well as his tattoos which were likely removed with a cheese grater (You're not alone, "Evil Dead Rise!"). The photos are too much for Jeff to handle, and he kicks the pair out.

Later that night, Jeff and Callie have an all-timer daddy/daughter speech. Callie is afraid that she's "seriously f***ed up" just like her mom, but Jeff explains that what Shauna endured in the wilderness is more than either of them could imagine. He tells her about the baby Shauna lost, and it's the first Callie is hearing of it. She's immediately overwhelmed with emotion, but Jeff tells her not to carry her mom's trauma. Aw, good advice, Dad!

The women are all still flying high after their glorious reconnection and dance party on Lottie's compound, but Shauna's back from her own cliffhanger reveal from last week. Since the cops found Adam's remains, they're all in danger as accomplices. Taissa tries to play it cool around Van, but she immediately calls her out on lying. Van takes matters into her own hands by throwing Shauna's car keys into the woods, demanding answers. Not only does Shauna come clean to Van and Lottie about what happened to Adam, but she has to tell Misty, Natalie, and Taissa that Jeff knows about what happened since he's the one who called her.

Lottie has them all talk it out in the Sharing Shack, and all the secrets come out. Misty killed Jessica Roberts, Misty and Walter faked being the FBI to interrogate Randy about Natalie, Taissa is the one who hired Jessica Roberts to investigate them, and Jeff was actually the blackmailer so Adam died for no real reason.

Shauna is trying not to be seen as a bad guy despite being very much in the wrong (some things never change), claiming she didn't want to tell them about Jeff because she was afraid they'd kill him, or that Taissa would do something while she sleepwalked. That's the final straw for Tai, who loses it on Shauna and calls her out for using them and putting them all at risk Shauna gets close to tears before she stops herself and accepts the truth; she didn't tell them because she knew if the tables were turned, she'd kill any of their spouses to keep their secrets in a heartbeat. She's right. And the whole group knows they'd have done the same.

Despite the beauty of their spontaneous dance party, trauma is clearly manifesting in weird ways for all of them, and no amount of alcohol or dancing in the snow is going to fix that. "It's time we finally f***ing talk about it," Natalie says, but Lottie stomps it out. This isn't something therapy can fix. Lottie says that something guided them all to the compound for this reunion, refusing to see it as a coincidence. I'm not exactly Lottie's biggest fan, but in this instance, I think she's right. She tells them that this "force" has been guiding her for quite some time and that it's too powerful to ignore. "And now we have to give it what it wants," she says, and they all know what that means, even if they don't want to.

They try to use logic and reasoning, but as much as they want to fight it, they start to believe Lottie when she says, "The only way to get ourselves out of this is to give ourselves fully to it." She fills cups for each of them, one containing, as Misty (of course) points out, the same death elixir used by Heaven's Gate. Lottie breaks down the signs of how broken and screwed up they all are, and points out that ritualistic sacrifice helped them survive then and it can help them survive now ... if they give it what it wants. This reveal works in tandem with the timeline of their 19 months in the wilderness, where it's shown that cannibalism wasn't performed just out of necessity.

Taissa might not be sleepwalking, but she's starting to see the Other Her in reflections and hallucinations. Van knows she's hiding something, but Taissa isn't one for easily coming clean, so we'll probably see this come to a head next week. Luckily, Van has also found one of Jackie's leather belts, which maybe the girls could eat for protein? Look, things are rough out here. If belt soup keeps them alive, then belt soup for dinner it shall be.

Meanwhile, everyone is acting like a royal b-word to Shauna, which, while understandable, feels like playing with fire. Y'all saw her turn Lottie's face into ground chuck and you're still going to talk smack? Bold move, but don't come crying when you're turned into a shish kabob.

Natalie and Coach Ben are still having their buddy-buddy talks, debating the ethics of Lottie's possible death. Nat is fully aware that Lottie has a massive influence over some of the girls, but her practicality has her convinced that Lottie's passing might be a good thing for them. Coach Ben thinks it'd be a good thing if she's in that much pain, but he's trying to kid himself into thinking the factions aren't as obvious as we know them to be. Nat lets it slip that she caught Javi bowing down to a symbol tree, which sends Coach Ben on a small hunt. He digs through Javi's drawings trying to figure out which tree he was worshipping. Is this where he spent all those months hiding?

Mari is hearing the incessant dripping again, but Taissa sits up in a stupor, claiming she can also hear it. It's not obvious if this is Taissa or The Bad One, but either way, Mari looks at the wall and imagines it bleeding. She's screaming her head off in terror, but no one else can see what she can see. Is she attuned or has she totally lost it the way some of the others have from hunger?

Misty has Coach Ben on suicide watch, but he promises he's only using a blade to rig his crutches to be more snow-bound. At this point, I believe him. Travis sees Natalie making a pair of hand warmers for Javi and decides to bury the hatchet, finally recognizing what Natalie was trying to do for him by faking Javi's death. He tells her she's a good person. Time heals all wounds, after all.

Lottie is in really, really bad shape following the fight, and tells Misty that they better not waste her body if she dies. Misty tells the group, but they refuse to accept it. "The wilderness won't let her die," Mari says. Knowing that Lottie makes it to adulthood, it's starting to feel like the girls are going to make some sort of weird sacrifice to keep Lottie alive, or at least, believe they have to. "We have to find some way to stay alive," Taissa says, "But it can't be her." Ah, there we go. Like clockwork!

Lottie's pain is only getting worse, so the survivors decide to perform a little ritual of their own. Using the skull from Shauna's pregnancy, they all put personal items on top of it and light a candle before Van reveals the Queen of Hearts card with her eyes carved out, the same one from Lottie's visions as an adult. She puts it back in the deck and they all pull at random. Oh, good. It's random sacrifice time! They all draw cards with the same intensity as the blood test in "The Thing," Natalie draws the Queen. We know she's making it to adulthood, so the tension is even higher trying to figure out how she's going to make it out of this.

In a ceremonial gesture, Shauna puts Jackie's BFF necklace on Natalie, which tells me that the Pit Girl we saw in the pilot wearing the necklace will eventually become one of the targets of this card drawing. Shauna tries to slit Natalie's throat in the cabin, but she can't bring herself to do it after Natalie forces her to look her in the eyes while she does it. The cabin is growing almost untamed in anticipation, but Travis spears Shauna to the floor and punches Mari and Van, giving Natalie time to run for her life.

The girls sprint out of the cabin while a few stay back holding Travis at knife-point, and it is some straight-up "Lord of the Flies" s***. They're howling like animals, sprinting in the snow like beasts, and Natalie is in panic mode. The needle drop of "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" by Smashing Pumpkins is a nice touch. While the girls are out hunting, Coach Ben tracks down Javi's tree, and it defies all logic. The inside seemingly goes on forever, like a tunnel, and inside is a small sanctuary filled with the bones of smaller critters. Guess we know where Javi was hiding all this time!

Hunger has completely destroyed any sense of humanity, and the girls chase Natalie down with feral fury. They're literally chomping at the bit. Javi catches up with her and offers her a safe place by bringing her to the tree. It's the first he's spoken to her since the return, and that is enough for her to trust him. The two make a break for it, but the other girls are hot on the chase. At one point, Natalie trips and falls. Oh no. They're running on the snow-covered ice. Remember how Natalie found a moose there but they couldn't get it out of the water and therefore didn't have any food to eat? Well, uh, I think the wilderness is working in mysterious ways.

The weight and pressure of the girls chasing after Natalie is too much for the ice to handle, and it starts to crack beneath Javi's feet. He falls into the water and immediately starts waving for help. They could save him, easily, just like they did to Natalie after she tried to save the moose, but they don't. Natalie holds his hand and tries to bring him above water, but Misty pulls her away from him. "If you save him, the others will get you," she screams. They all look on as Javi drowns, some of them in horror, some of them in pride. "The wilderness chose," Van declares, before the camera cuts back to Lottie in the cabin, appearing as if her recovery has finally begun. I guess we can answer last week's question of "Does a hunt that has no violence feed anyone?"

It's as if the wilderness kept Javi alive just to kill him later for food. Damn.

After the police tear apart the Sadecki home, Jeff has a nightmare where Shauna slices him open with electric carving knives that have replaced her hands. It understandably scares the crap out of him, especially when Shauna says "These are a part of me," implying that Jeff is realizing that the woman he married might be far more dangerous than he realized. It's a fantastic scene that perfectly balances horror with absurd comedy and also had me doing "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" call-out of "It slices, it dices, it circumcises!" at my screen.

• Also not mentioned is the quick scene of Walter doing a puzzle while listening to "Not While I'm Around" from "Sweeney Todd" where he sees the news that Adam's body has been found. He immediately emails the Wiskayok police department saying he has information but doesn't say what information. Later he's shown gathering things to leave while "Phantom of the Opera" plays. What are you up to, Walter?!
• What does it say about me that I could totally stomach the cannibalism, but watching Akilah contemplate eating the dried-up mouse carcass made me audibly gag?
• I'm kind of secretly hoping that Coach Ben just hides out in the tree for the rest of the season and then we see him 25 years later looking like the mountain version of Robin Williams returning home in "Jumanji." Not because it makes any damn sense, but because it would be hilarious.

Until next week, "Yellowjackets" hive. Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!