Warning: This story contains spoilers from the season 2 premiere of Yellowjackets.
Working through her trauma? Shauna’s attempt to move on from Jackie’s death takes a wild turn when she eats her late friend’s ear during the Yellowjackets season 2 premiere.
At the end of the new episode, which aired on Sunday, March 26, Shauna continues to struggle with the reality of Jackie’s death. She keeps speaking with her and even has visions of Jackie responding to her — until a fight ends with the late girl’s ear removed from her body. Shauna carries Jackie’s ear around with her until the temptation proves to be too strong and she eats it.
The hit Showtime series, which debuted in November 2021, focuses on a group of teenage girls in the ’90s who have to find a way to survive after a plane crash leaves them stranded. The show then picks back up in the aftermath of their return two decades later in 2021.
The shocking events in the season 2 premiere kickstarts the group’s eventual descent into cannibalism, which Yellowjackets has been hinting at since season 1.
Showrunner Jonathan Lisco recently teased that things will only get darker in the upcoming season. “If we do our job right, the eating of a person will not be the most transgressive thing that these young women do in the wilderness,” he told Entertainment Weekly earlier this month. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
At the time, Lisco discussed how the first season shaped their approach to season 2.
“If season 1 was about our teen characters learning to adapt to their harsh surroundings, season 2 is where it all just really explodes,” he continued. “Each one of them is gonna make choices that they never dreamed possible. And, and as we cut forward 25 years, we’re gonna watch those terrible actions surface in ways that I would say irrevocably changed the fate of their lives.”
That same month, creator Bart Nickerson weighed in on how Yellowjackets fans have come together to share their theories about the show online.
“People seemed to either be watching it together or immediately connecting after to talk about it and have theories,” he shared, with his fellow creator and wife, Ashley Lyle, adding, “We gave total strangers nightmares, I feel so powerful.”
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Scroll on for a breakdown of where each character started out in the Yellowjackets season 2 premiere: