As anyone who read the headline above can no doubt tell, we’re set to discuss perhaps the biggest issue I had with Yellowjackets’ twisty Season 2 finale, and not from an “I can’t believe they did that!” perspective, but more of a “Did they mean to do that?” angle. (As such, SPOILERS are below for those who haven’t watched.) The element I took issue with was Van and Tai seemingly not having any kind of a follow-up plan after intentionally calling off Lottie’s psychiatric hospital pick-up in the adult survivors’ timeline, since that played its own part in the lead-up to Natalie being killed off. Now, that question seems to have been answered, thanks to the episode’s director.
Karyn Kusama, arguably best known for her genre work on films such as Jennifer’s Body and The Invitation, definitely didn’t leave the world of horror behind in her years of TV work, having helped episodes of HBO’s Stephen King adaptation The Outsider and Amazon Studios’ recent TV remake of Dead Ringers. Her work on Yellowjackets’s latest finale is something of a full-circle return, as she also directed the pilot episode. Speaking with Uproxx, Kusama was asked about the aforementioned plan falling apart as soon as the hunt for Shauna started, and revealed that it was the collective hive-mind shift that so quickly knocked their instincts for a loop. In her words:
