Now We Know Who Built the Pit on ‘Yellowjackets’

The penultimate episode of Yellowjackets season three provided lots of answers to questions we didn’t even know we had. No, we didn’t find out who the Pit Girl is - but we did learn who built the spike pit (Travis), who isn’t going to make it to season four (adult Van), how Joel McHale dies (knife in the eye!), and what Yellowjackets has in common with Game of Thrones (“Winter Is Coming”). And although we don’t know what happened to Lottie, it looks like Misty just found a big ol’ clue she’s going to drop on us during the season finale.

Yup, Travis built the pit — or at least the spikey part of it (the pit itself is probably the one Coach Ben discovered, the cache left by the previous team of frog researchers). Adding spikes and a brush cover makes it a handy trap for passing wildlife, though Travis decides to aim a bit higher: he lures Lottie over to it. Travis thinks Lottie is the one dividing the Yellowjackets, and with her gone they’ll agree to be rescued. He’s wrong about that, if only because Tai and Shauna have their own reasons to stay that have nothing to do with Lottie’s mystical woo-woo, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Lottie somehow walks over the pit and doesn’t fall. Coincidence, or the Wilderness in action? At this rate, we’ll literally never know.

I like to imagine that guest stars on Yellowjackets sign up with a stipulation that their inevitable deaths be as gross as possible, so I hope Joel McHale was satisfied taking a knife to the eye. That lingering shot of the eye-goo pouring out of the hole was reeeeeal sweet. Of course, we all knew he was going to die, but even I was a little taken aback when it happened — mostly because it wasn’t Shauna or any of the other Yellowjackets who killed him. It was Hannah, the frog lady! In a last-ditch effort at rescue, Natalie snuck a knife to Hannah and asked her to free herself and Kodi (that was McHale’s character’s name, RIP) and meet up with the girls who wanted to go home. Unfortunately, Shauna’s pain-in-the-ass sense started tingling, and she caught Hannah red-handed during the escape. So Hannah turned her knife on Kodi as some sort of “See, I’m a psycho too” peace offering. Now everyone has murdery dirt on everybody else, nobody knows how to get out of the woods, and like I said: winter is coming. Natalie’s tears when she sees the snow start to fall really drives home how bad things are going to get. Last winter, they didn’t know what they were doing, but this year? They know exactly what it takes to survive.

Cannibalism. It takes cannibalism.

Speaking of people dying in unexpected ways: Van did not die from cancer! She left the hospital with Misty and Tai to track down Shauna, only to discover Melissa on the side of the road. With the girls reunited, they try to get to the bottom of what the hell Shauna was doing to Melissa and… I mean, it doesn’t look great. Shauna remains convinced that because Melissa sent the tape, she also must have killed Lottie. Melissa’s defense boils down to “OK, but Shauna is crazy and wrong about everything,” which is accurate! Misty decides she won’t clean up Shauna’s mess this time and leaves to continue her investigation. Van takes a necessary breather, only to return and discover Tai, Shauna, and Melissa all unconscious because Melissa closed the fireplace flue when no one was looking. The good news is that when Van pulls Tai to safety, she pulls the real Tai out — the fumes gave Tai a chance to defeat her evil persona and emerge at long last. After sharing a kiss with the woman she loves, Van decides she’s finally ready to save her own life by taking a sacrifice, and she pulls a knife on Melissa. In the end, though, she can’t go through with it, and her hesitation allows Melissa to turn the knife back on Van.

I’m not clear what Melissa hoped to gain from sacrificing Van, because that’s what she did. This wasn’t an act of self-preservation because Van had already decided not to kill her, and Melissa even asks, “Isn’t this what It wants?” after driving the knife into Van’t chest. Wait, does this make Melissa the new-new Antler Queen? And what does it mean that we’ve seen both Natalie and Van return to the plane moments after their deaths? Did Lottie or Travis find themselves there, too? Is the show doing a Final Destination riff, collecting all the souls that should have died in the plane crash, because that would be weird. The movie came out in 2000, so how would the Wilderness even get that reference? (I kid, I kid!)

Misty flounced off before this all went down and had Walter pick her up in a helicopter (while wearing some adorable little shorts). She finally remembered that he had cloned Lottie’s phone however many episodes ago, and she saw something enlightening while scrolling through Lottie’s photos. She takes off with it, leaving Walter behind — and as much as I want these two psychos to team up and maybe make some babies, I also think Misty is unintentionally dodging a bullet. Walter is giving Callie-level “I’m up to something” vibes, but that could just be Elijah Wood’s resting suss face.

And finally, remember how Misty destroyed the plane transponder and is responsible for the team being stranded without rescue and turning to cannibalism? That little fact made its seasonal reappearance when past-Misty decided to dig up the ol’ Black Box and see if she could use it to fix the researchers’ broken satellite phone. Too bad Natalie walked up on her with the transponder, which means Misty has some explaining to do.