Picture Supply: Paramount Footage
The opening scene of Netflix’s “Yellowjackets” begins with one of the haunting TV sequences in current reminiscence. A dark-haired lady in a nightgown runs via a frozen forest, wanting scared for her life — and for good purpose. As she runs, a pit opens up beneath her toes, and he or she falls in. The following frames present her limbs nailed to the bottom with sticks, after which she’s getting hung up by her toes and flayed whereas a bunch of individuals clad in animal skins look on. Ultimately, after the lady’s stays are positioned in entrance of an antler-clad determine, the group devours her.
The specter of that scene haunts all of “Yellowjackets,” which tells the story of a women’ soccer staff who crash-land in a forest and are pressured to outlive there for 19 months. Interspersing that story with scenes set 25 years later — when the surviving women are struggling adults — the sequence is generally about trauma and its lingering results. By season two, the wilderness has begun to wreak havoc on the staff’s minds, making their descent into ritualistic homicide an increasing number of understandable.
Because the starting of the present, one among viewers’ most urgent questions has involved the identification of the antler-clad chief from the primary scene, whom followers have branded the Antler Queen. Whereas at first the determine’s identification appeared apparent, the Antler Queen could also be a bit extra difficult than she — or it — first gave the impression to be. Forward, this is what we all know.
Is Lottie the Antler Queen?
Lottie (performed by Courtney Eaton as a teen and Simone Kessell as an grownup), who offers with psychological sickness and begins having visions of the forest as quickly as she runs out of her meds, has at all times been the principle contender for the Antler Queen. In a single episode in season one, she’s proven in entrance of some antlers hanging on the wall, which body her face as if she’s sporting them as a headdress. She additionally sees a deer within the imaginative and prescient she has when Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) baptizes her, and items Van (Liv Hewson as a teen and Lauren Ambrose as an grownup) a deer’s bone as a talisman to maintain her protected.
Picture Supply: Paramount Footage
Then, within the ill-fated, psychedelic-distorted get together in season one’s “Doomcoming,” Lottie truly places on some antlers and a scarf that resembles the Antler Queen’s. By season two, younger Lottie has already begun main the stranded Yellowjackets and firm in morning rituals and superstitious rites. She additionally appears to have some sort of skill to speak with what she sees because the spirit of the forest. For all these causes, it is simple to imagine she’s the motive force of the violent acts that the staff commits.
In season two, although, we uncover that Lottie turns into a cult chief (performed by Simone Kessell) as an grownup, and oddly, the mysterious image that the staff sees everywhere in the woods seems to play a crucial function in her group. Grownup Lottie additionally steadily reference an unbiased pressure that existed within the wilderness whereas the ladies had been stranded, and that — mixed with a few of Kessell’s feedback — throws the Antler Queen’s identification into query.
Is the Antler Queen a Spirit or Drive?
Because it seems, Kessell had the identical questions all of us do concerning the Antler Queen’s identification. In an April interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she supplied some perception that manages to make issues even much less clear.
“I remembering saying, ‘What’s the Antler Queen? Is it an emblem, is it a metaphor, is it actual?’ And I keep in mind [the creators] going [no answer],” she stated. “It may be sort of something that we deem it to be,” she continued. “There was a lot about Lottie being the Antler Queen. However actually now, we have distilled it into the truth that the Antler Queen is part of all of us, and he or she actually was one thing that sort of saved these girls going to outlive within the wilderness. That was my interpretation of it. I had so many questions, however I used to be attempting to play it cool.”
There is a honest quantity of proof to again this idea up. All through the second season, grownup Lottie and Natalie (Juliette Lewis) steadily reference a pressure or entity they name “it,” which they each appear to imagine got here again residence with them from the wilderness. This means that the Antler Queen within the present’s very first scene could possibly be a hallucination, or probably an actual entity that exhibits itself to the staff within the type of the shroud-clad being.
Judging by all this, it is protected to say that the Antler Queen isn’t solely an individual. It is also clearly some sort of pressure, vitality, or spirit. This raises one other central query, although: Is the Antler Queen an actual entity that exists independently from the staff’s minds, or is it one thing that exists within the airplane conflict survivors’ minds, conjured up by hunger and worry? That query will most likely by no means be answered definitively, nevertheless it’s one thing to ponder all the identical.
Are There Any Different Contenders For the Antler Queen?
By way of the antler-clad determine within the first scene, if it is not a hallucination, precise spirit, or Lottie, it is doable that “Yellowjackets” may throw in a twist. Shauna (Sophie Nelisse as a teen and Melanie Lynskey as an grownup), who has at all times displayed consolation with blood and violence, has grown more and more erratic, and it is possible that she may change into possessed with sufficient rage to change into the Antler Queen. Nonetheless, she takes main concern with Lottie’s ceremonial actions within the second season, so it is most likely not her. The identical goes for Taissa (Jasmine Savoy Brown as a teen and Tawny Cypress as an grownup), who admittedly does bear hours-long fugue states — although the Antler Queen’s ritual appears to have taken a number of planning, that means Taissa most likely could not have executed it whereas sleepwalking, despite the fact that she appears an increasing number of satisfied that Lottie has some sort of particular energy.
We additionally know that Misty (Samantha Hanratty as a teen and Christina Ricci as an grownup) is risky and attention-hungry sufficient to do one thing like lead blood rites, however we all know she’s positively not the Antler Queen; she’s truly the one particular person within the unique scene who takes her masks off, revealing she’s the face behind that creepy bear costume.
Nat (Sophie Thatcher as a teen and Juliette Lewis as an grownup) has additionally continued to withstand Lottie’s spirituality in her youth, although her looking companion Travis (Kevin Alves as a teen and Andres Soto as an grownup) has proven indicators of infatuation with Lottie, so it isn’t inconceivable that Lottie may have manipulated him or one other one of many teammates into main the sacrifice. Nonetheless, given Lottie’s cult chief tendencies in maturity and her obvious connection to supernatural realms, Lottie nonetheless appears to be the most probably face beneath the Antler Queen’s shroud — although, in fact, she could possibly be being possessed by one thing a lot higher.
Figuring out “Yellowjackets,” something may occur, and given the present’s slow-burning first and second seasons, we would have to attend some time to know something for sure. However no matter who the Antler Queen is, one factor is obvious: what occurred in that forest will not cease tormenting those that survived it.
Episode seven of “Yellowjackets” season two premieres on Showtime on Could 14.
