Did We Learn Joel McHale's Fate Before He Even Showed Up On ‘Yellowjackets’?

Spoilers

Things are finally afoot on Yellowjackets as we head into the back half of season three. Van discovered that Tai is basically full-time possessed by her Other, after Tai (the real one) woke up screaming for help. Misty has some DNA evidence from Lottie’s nails, and also learned that Tai met with Lottie the day she died. Shauna finally listened to that mysterious DAT tape, and in the past, Coach Ben is dead! Natalie mercy-killed him to stop his suffering (and his force-feeding). Then the team ate him… err, “honored” him, and that’s when something truly exciting happened: A pair of strangers walked up to witness all that sweet teenage cannibalism happening in the woods.

See, kids, this is why you don’t decorate with severed heads on pikes.

One of the unspoken mysteries of Yellowjackets is just how off-the-grid the team actually is. They’re so deep in the woods that nobody can find them, nor can they find a way out to civilization, and yet there’s an airplane, a cabin, and a bunker stocked with food conveniently waiting for them to find. It’s clear that wherever they are, they’re not the first humans to arrive there — so the arrival of more people shouldn’t come as a complete shock. Yet the moment delivered quite a cliffhanger, as the girls look on in shame while the newcomers (played by Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton) clock Ben’s decorative head.

The moment is pivotal for several reasons. It marks the first time the team has eaten someone they killed outright. Their previous bouts of cannibalism could be explained away as a desperate use of available resources (meatsources), but explaining what happened to Coach Ben will be a lot harder now that there are witnesses. Which wouldn’t be an issue if they hadn’t laid his head out like a damn centerpiece — they could pretended they were just eating a bunch of giant rabbits or whatever! — but I digress. These witnesses could have been the team’s ticket home if they hadn’t just been caught red-handed eating their coach, which means Akilah’s vision of Ben as their bridge to civilization may have been correct. The scene also matches the recording Shauna, Van, and Tai heard on the DAT tape, which means one of the newcomers was recording the encounter - and lends an ominous new meaning to Van’s reaction: “The only people who even know about this are either us or dead.”

The biggest question I had, though, doesn’t come from the episode. It comes from a throwaway line in Deadline’s interview with Yellowjackets creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and Coach Ben actor Steven Krueger. While recapping the events of the episode, Deadline says:

And while Coach’s death might have been a surprise to some — especially as Lottie (Courtney Eaton) convinced the team to spare him after a vision told Akilah (Nia Sondoya) that he would provide their way home — the real curveball was the sudden appearance of three outsiders (played by Joel McHale, Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton) while the girls eat his body and dance around his head.

Three outsiders?! I only saw two! And neither of them was Joel McHale! Was he the shadowy figure Lottie thought was Ben? Did Deadline just spoil something we’re not going to discover until the next episode, that McHale was standing just out of frame or something? McHale’s casting was announced months ago, so we’ve known for a while he’d be turning up. For that matter, Hilary Swank was also announced as a guest star this season — is she going to be a surprise fourth outsider? No, of course not, she’s going to be adult Melissa or something. If she was another random outsider, I’m sure Deadline would have spoiled that too.

I’m like 99% we haven’t actually seen Joel McHale on screen yet, but he’s going to be revealed soon as one of the newcomers (hikers? scientists?) who discover the girls. And based on what Van said about the tape, that means he’s going to die - and the team is probably going to eat him. “Joel McHale Eaten By Teenagers,” you heard it here first. TV is so back, baby!