Warning: Spoilers for Yellowjackets
and Lost, though in the latter they are both related to character arcs then
the overarching story of the series.
Almost
since the debut of Yellowjackets in the fall of 2021, the comparisons to
Lost have been inevitable and not undeserved. Both series, after all, do
involve survivors of a plane crash being stranded in an unfamiliar and bizarre
setting which involve mysterious phenomena that end up driving the survivors.
Both involve parallel timelines; in the case of Yellowjackets in the
aftermath of the plane crash and the survivors 25 years later. And its hard to think of a series since Lost
in which the viewers have been trying to speculate so hard as to the
mysteries that are unfolding in the past and how they have affected everybody
in the future. There are also a fair amount of hallucinations, cultural
references, and trying to unfold why some characters are not in the present.
Having
watched the series for the first season and a half, I have to say that while Lost
is a clear ancestor text for the writers of Yellowjackets, one could
just as easily see references from almost every other mythology based series in
the past thirty years. There is a clear link to Twin Peaks, both in the inability
to peg down the style of the series (much of what we see in the present does bear
a striking resemblance to David Lynch), the survivors are stranded in the woods,
where the residents of Twin Peaks knew evil was present, there’s clearly a
malevolent presence that is guiding them and it doesn’t take much contortion to
see that the survivors are hiding out in a lodge, albeit a real one. There are subtler
links to The Leftovers (Damon Lindelof’s follow-up series): a major
traumatic event has left great emotional scars on a group of people and to
survive, many turn to a cult. (Having seen the outfits that Lottie’s group
wears in the present day, I am struck by the similarities to the garbs worn by
the Guilty Remnant, the major force of darkness in the first two seasons of the
show.) And the fact that this is a female driven series that has to deal with
women trying to cope with the supernatural does remind one of Buffy The
Vampire Slayer (the crash actually takes place the year just before the
series premiered on the WB)
But since
I’ve spent many years watching and rewatching Lost, I believe that the
relationship between that series and Yellowjackets is by far the
greatest parallel, and not merely in the similarities I pointed out in the opening.
I am now fairly certain that all of the female survivors who exist in both the
present and the past are clearly modeled on key characteristics of the major
characters on Lost. Furthermore
with one exception, none of the characters are modeled on the female regulars
on Lost but amalgams of the male characters. This is almost certainly by design: even the
most adamant devotees of Lost will acknowledge that one of the bigger
weaknesses of the series was that very few of the female characters were fully
developed or were far more often killed off before they realize their
potential. I am not saying that the writers of Yellowjackets created the
series as an antidote to that earlier show’s failings, but it is an interesting
concept to consider.
So as
the series takes a one-week hiatus, I think now would be an excellent time to compare
the leading female regulars we have met so far with what I believe are their Lost
equivalents. Incidentally, I am indebted in part by the excellent work of Nikki
Stafford’s Finding Lost series. Throughout her volume she would frequently
analyze works of literature that the characters were reading or were referenced
in the series. She would try to draw to
parallels between some of the characters in these books and the characters on
the show. In the final volume, she spent
much of each individual episode going into great detail of every character we
had met during the course of the series and explaining how they changed over
the course of the show – or how they hadn’t.
(For
the purposes of this article I am excluding the character of Van, played in the
past by Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose as an adult. Because we only fully became
aware of Van as a grown-up recently, I don’t think I know enough to draw a
parallel. That said, there are clear character links already. She bares major
scars on her face, much like Locke had after the plane crash, she is addicted
to drugs like Charlie and Jack were, and her clear link to Taissa in both the
past and the present, well, you can’t help remember how Desmond consider Penny
his constant in that sense.)
Taissa:
Jasmin Savoy Brown as a teenager, Tawny Cypress as an Adult
This
will either enrage or fascinate some people, but right now I think the character
on Lost that Taissa parallels the most is Jack Shephard. Fans of both
series might be perplexed by this: an African-American power lesbian is being
compared to the white male protagonist on Lost? (Maybe this is a sign of
progress.)
But
the parallels are obvious when you think about them. In the past Taissa is as
alpha as Jack was and just as much a Type-A personality. We see her
fundamentally taking the role of leadership in the past and is utterly
resistant to the idea that there is anything mystical going on even as the
darkness continues to get deeper. She
clearly has no problem withholding information from her loved ones and this goes
so far as to her actions in the present. When she decided to run for State
Senate, she hired a reporter to spy on her colleagues to make sure they would
not betray her because she did not trust any of them with her secrets. One can
only remember Jack deciding to hold the key to the gun case for much of Season
1 because he was the only one he trusted with them.
More
to the point, Tai neither accepts help nor blame for anything that is going
wrong in her life and that includes admitting her inner darkness. There is
something very dark within her personality that may link her directly to what
is happening in the woods, but she refuses to tell either her wife or even
acknowledge to Van what is happening when she goes to see her for the first
time. It is clear that she is utterly self-destructive when it comes to her
relationships (Jack did so in both his marriage to Sarah and his engagement to Kate)
and when she begins to see clear links to her crash, her fundamental reaction
is not unlike Jack’s utter denial and avoiding the subject. Jack became
addicted to painkillers to deal with the fact he was seeing his dead father in
the present; Tai reacts to the fact that she is sleepwalking and destructive by
drinking coffee and doing everything in her power to stay awake. In neither case
do their methods work, and indeed in both cases, an automobile crash reveals just
how broken they truly are.
Tai
refuses to accept help and its pretty clear she has a very direct link to what
happened both in the past and what is happening now. Does that mean, like Jack,
she will be the center of this story?
Misty:
Samantha Hanratty as a teenager; Christina Ricci as an Adult
Initially
I was inclined to draw a parallel between Misty and John Locke, the character
who knew the most about survivor and was always excluded from the group until
the end. Having seen last night’s episode, it’s pretty clear I’ve misread this:
Misty is clearly modeled on Ben Linus. Stay with me.
We’ve
seen from the beginning of the series that Misty is a very good manipulator of
people and has always been watching the rest of the survivors. She has also
been very good at placing cameras and recording devices, is good at holding
people prisoner and as we learned in last night’s episode, she’s been keeping
tabs on the survivors since they returned to civilization. All of this
fundamentally tracks with Ben Linus, as well as the fact that she’s more than
skilled at putting up fake identities.
Last
night’s episode, however, revealed the clearest link. Misty spent much of her
life pre-crash the class geek, utterly unloved and unpopular until the crash
when all of her information became useful for survival. We learned in the
second episode that she discovered the black box and then destroyed because she
didn’t want to let go of that feeling. During the flashbacks of Season 2, she
had been becoming friends with a similar outcast Kristal, who she clearly was a
kindred spirit too and clearly did not have any friends before the crash. When
they were telling each other secrets, Misty decided she could trust Kristal
enough to tell her that she had destroyed the black box and Kristin immediately
turned on her. An enraged Misty threatened to kill her – and a terrified Kristin
fell to her death. Misty was repentant – but then immediately returned to the cabin
and told everyone else that Kristin had disappeared.
We can
all recognize the kind of manipulation that Ben Linus was capable of throughout
his entire life as well as the fact that he continuously justified his
decisions no matter how ruthless or brutal they were for ‘the good of the
island’. These manipulations continued even after he left the island and as we
saw in the later seasons, he used similar manipulations to get the Oceanic 6
together so that he could return to the island. Throughout Misty has been
arguing that she is doing everything that she can protect them, but she seems
to be under the delusion that she is doing so because they are friends when in
fact the other survivors want nothing to do with her in the present, no matter
how useful the information she might have. I’m beginning to think that at some
point, Misty’s secret will become public knowledge to the rest of the Yellowjackets,
because it would explain both why they are so hostile to her in the present and
why she is so determined to help them even if they don’t want to be helped. (Misty, there’s no Hallmark card that says: “I’m
sorry I made sure you had to eat one of your teammates.”)
There’s
also the fact that Misty has drugged people in order to get what she wants, has
no problem created complete lies and false personas and can easily clean up
after a murder. Oh, her chore in the past was to clean out the toilet. If you remember Lost Ben’s job in the
Dharma Initiative was essentially a janitor. And since we know by now you can’t
take any character Ricci plays any more than Michael Emersons at face value...
Natalie:
Sophie Thatcher as a teenager, Juliette Lewis as an adult
In an
earlier column I compared Natalie to Sawyer, and nothing I have seen in the
last three weeks fundamentally has changed that opinion. Admittedly, there is
the critical difference that Natalie at least in the past seems to care about
someone – Travis – there’s just as much indication that it’s a self-destructive
relationship. We actually got proof of that in one of the last moments of last
night’s episodes: Natalie had hooked up with Travis, who had been clean and in
a healthy relationship. Natalie broke that apart just because that’s the kind
of person she is – and you can pretty much see a through line involving the
cons Sawyer pulled on women and leaving more than broken hearts behind.
Like Sawyer,
Natalie comes from a traumatic family situation – her father was abusive, she
killed him defending her mother and her mother never forgave her. Natalie seems
to be driven by rage from her past and always needs to find a reason to blame
someone for her problems. She does abuse alcohol and other substances, so there
is clearly a reference to Charlie here but that’s more a general one than
anything else. Charlie was driven by a need to protect; Natalie’s drive is one
of rage against the world.
She has
been in and out of rehab many times before this, and its clear from the pilot
the latest stint did no good. Currently she seems determined to stay sober, but
there’s clearly a suicidal streak in her. At the end of the first season, Lottie’s
cult saved her from killing herself and she refused to acknowledge any thanks
for it when she was called on it. She was determined to bring Lottie down, and
when she learned that everyone knew the truth, it broke her in a way we just
haven’t seen in the series before. One is reminded of how Sawyer, after finally
getting his revenge, was utterly broken in a way we’d never seen.
There’s
also the fact that, like Sawyer, Natalie will do anything in her power to drive
people away from her. When Misty finally managed to find the compound where she
was being kept, Natalie’s immediate reaction was to tell her to get lost. Like
Sawyer, there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to be saved.
Lottie:
Courtney Eaton as a teenager, Simone Kissell as an adult:
It’s
now clear in a way it wasn’t when I
first reviewed the series that it is Lottie who is the John Locke of this
series, with a healthy mix of Eko, the other major religious figure on Lost,
mixed in.
To be
clear, Lottie is not the person responsible for them staying in the wilderness
as long as they did, but in a sense she is the disciple of the mystic powers
that are surrounding them. She also clearly has the ability to be the hunter
that Locke was, as we saw when she managed to kill a bear in the season finale.
But the clearest parallel is her certainty both in a higher power and that is
protecting them in the wilderness. She
clearly has a communion with it in a way that Locke and Eko both had (she’s had
vision that were common to both characters throughout the series) and she has a
calm certainty about things that unsettle many people, even when they turn out
to be true. In the season premiere, she tried to assure Travis that his teenage
brother who’d been missing for months was alive and in last week’s episode, he
was. (There may be a parallel between Javi and the eventual fate of Sayid; it’s
clear that whatever happened to Javi, he ‘came back wrong’)
People
accused Lottie of being crazy and its worth noting that when she returned to
civilization she underwent electroshock therapy and was found clinically insane.
She has now maintained a position of the leader of a ‘self-improvement group’
that is essentially a cult. (I mentioned
in my first review that every character is in a sense trapped in the person
they were at the time of the crash; Lottie is following that model.) But unlike
Locke and Eko, who were convinced that the island was fundamentally beautiful
and that they were being driven by a force of good, Lottie’s visions are
forcing to realize that there is clearly a greater evil guiding them and it terrifies
her in a way we never saw either character on the show. It’s not yet clear what
forces are guiding Lottie’s visions, but for those of us who remember the
character of John Locke, he spent his entire time on the island convinced he
was being led by a force of good. It was not until the final season that we
learned that a force of evil had been doing all that work, all for the purposes
of using him to commit an act of true destruction.
Shauna: Sophie Nelisse as a Teen, Melanie Lynskey as
an adult
Alone
among the major characters Shauna does not have a single parallel among the
characters of Lost. However, she seems to be built on an amalgam of
them.
The
clearest parallel is Claire, at least when it comes to the past. Like her, when
she got on the plane she was pregnant and she had to give birth in the wilderness.
We don’t know yet what happened to the baby (we’re going to find out soon) but
it’s looking like nothing good will come of it. There’s also the fact that she
clearly has a link to the dead, much like Hurley did – she spent much of the
first two episodes talking to the dead Jackie. (By the way, any of you remember
that awful joke Ricky Gervais made at the 2011 Golden Globes about how he
thought Lost ended? In that sense, he might be more accurate here.)
But I
think the clearest link between Shauna is Kate. Like Kate, Shauna was skilled
at deception at an early age – Jackie didn’t
know until after the crash Shauna had been sleeping with her boyfriend. Shauna
is clearly more skilled at deception than Kate ever was – as we all know Kate
was never a very good liar. And as we
saw at the end of Season 1, Shauna is now a murderer and will soon have to deal
the police.
Perhaps
the clearest link between Shauna and Kate is the parallel between how the two
were drawn between the good and evil parts of the nature. In the case of Kate,
that was the love triangle between her, Jack and Sawyer. Jack was the part of her she wanted to be good
enough for; Sawyer was the part of her that was the kindred spirit. For Shauna,
it’s more complicated than that. She wants to be the model of the good suburban
housewife, but there is a part of her that is drawn to deception and violence.
It’s the part of her that cheated on her husband even though there was no evidence
of it. It’s the part of her that had no problem spying on her daughter. It’s
the part of her that beat up the man who carjacked her and her husband and held
a gun to the man who was trying to fence it. In Shauna’s case, however, she is
excited by the thrill of violence in a way that Kate never was, though like Kate,
she had no problem lying just for the sake of lying.
Kate’s
character was heavily criticized in the final seasons of Lost, perhaps
because she was trying to follow a moral center while everyone around her was
acting crazily. Somehow I don’t see Shauna doing that her: she lost her moral
center in the wilderness and its never coming back. The question is, can she
find something to redeem her?
These
parallels are, at this point, mere theorization and it remains to be seen if
they will follow through the remainder of Yellowjackets’ run. However, I
think that these are clearly influences when it comes to the writer’s decisions
as to when they started this series.
However,
before I close this article, a word of warning to the writers. Yellowjackets
is clearly a great series already. You’ve already demonstrated that you’re
not taking fans theories as suggestions and that you have a better grip on what
a mythology series may be than Lost did. You might even have an idea of
what the ending is right now. Just one minor warning. However you choose to end
Yellowjackets, don’t close the series with the end credits over the
wreckage of the plane. It will use up all the goodwill you’ve been building.
(For those of you who aren’t Lost fans, ‘it’s an inside joke’. Those of
you who are Lost fans, you know why I put that last part in quotes.)
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