Misty Quigley isn’t exactly the picture of social well-being. In Season 1 of Yellowjackets, her closest confidante, other than her African Grey parrot Caligula, is the woman she keeps chained up in her basement. She doesn’t have any friends in the present, and in the past, she was so excited to be needed by her teammates that she destroyed the airplane transmitter so that she’d bond with them.
But adult Misty in Season 2 makes it very clear she has friends, they just live on the internet. As a member of a Citizen Detective online community, she was able to pull strings and get info throughout Season 1. In Season 2, we finally see what kind of poster Misty is — a surprisingly refreshing bit of representation in television.
In Episode 1, Misty logs into a website called “Forritt,” pulling up her community, the Bureau of Citizen Detectives. It looks like a flourishing community, with the sidebars even advertising a conspiracy theory book club (what would Jeff think?).
Under her handle “AfricanGrey,” she investigates a post looking into the disappearance of Adam Martin. Misty knows he’s not going to be found — she helped Shauna clean up the murder and tucked his head and hands into a poor dead lady’s coffin before it was cremated — but she’s still curious about what the speculation is.
She reads a comment by a poster using the handle “PuttingTheSickInForensics” (whose voice sounds an awful lot like Elijah Wood’s) claiming to have found Adam’s last credit card statement containing charges that look like he started an affair. “Cmon, people,” he says, “We all know where this is going: it’s always the husband. Unless, that is, it’s the mystery lady friend.” Misty angrily downvotes the (correct) assumption.
It may seem like a little moment, but it’s a huge insight into Misty’s character. She’s not a loner, she’s just different from a lot of people. Reddit, or rather “Forritt,” allows her to talk about the things she’s passionate about with other people who are passionate.
Online communities often get a bad rap on TV, getting portrayed as a realm of online bullying, toxic misogyny, stock market manipulation, and conspiracy theories. But at this moment, we see that Misty does have friends — admirers even — in this little pocket of the internet. They may be caught up in some vigilante interference, but they’re there for each other, helping out and encouraging every step of the way. Except when it concerns a murder their friend committed.
Probably the biggest sign of this facet of Misty’s character isn’t her posting, but what she does right before: She reaches for her phone, hovers over Natalie’s contact, then decides to go online instead. When your real-life friends won’t answer, your internet friends are always there.
Yellowjackets Season 2 is now streaming on Showtime.
