Every Question We Still Have After the Shocking 'Yellowjackets' Finale

The end of Season 1 of the Showtime hit left us with even more questions than answers.

courtney eaton in yellowjackets, lottie yellowjackets
Courtney Eaton | Showtime
Courtney Eaton | Showtime

This post contains extensive spoilers from Yellowjackets Season 1, Episode 10.

The Season 1 finale of Yellowjackets, Showtime's hit series created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson about the fallout of a high school soccer team's plane crash, leaves you feeling like you're at the bottom of the pit that the survivors built in the woods. While some mysteries from the twisty first installment are solved,, it also introduces a handful of new ones that makes you as hungry as those feral teenage girls for more. Thankfully, the show has already been confirmed for a Season 2—which will likely explore many of the big reveals from the Season 1 finale—but in the meantime, we're breaking down every unanswered question that Yellowjackets left us with. Once you've watched Episode 10, "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi," dive in, and get ready to go down a theorizing rabbit hole.

antler queen yellowjackets
Showtime

Who fell in the pit?

The finale does not close the circle on the mystery teased in the opening moments of the series: Who falls in the pit full of stakes? And is then, in all likelihood, eaten? Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson start their pilot with an evocative and chilling scenario that immediately hooks the viewer, but they hold out on revealing the exact circumstances. We know a couple of things about the girl in the pit: She appears to have long dark hair, she is wearing Jackie's necklace, and she is almost definitely dead. Jackie's necklace was certainly a red herring meant to throw off the audience because now we know that her death wasn't by trap pit. If not her then who? It's not Shauna, Misty, or Taissa, because they are alive. The figure looks vaguely like Lottie, but it appears she survived too. Maybe it's Mari? Or maybe it doesn't really matter. Maybe it's all a vision. —Esther Zuckerman

How did Lottie survive?

We knew going into the Season 1 finale that there would be at least one more survivor reveal, perhaps at the high school reunion, perhaps somewhere else. While we didn't get to see another one of the Yellowjackets in the flesh, in the final seconds of the episode it's confirmed that Lottie and her creepy cult made it out of the woods and have been influencing the events of the season ever since. We still don't know how Lottie made it out of the woods or why none of the other survivors seem aware that she's been out there this whole time. Obviously her cult has expanded their ranks in secret over the past two decades, and if they're big enough to kidnap Natalie then they're big enough to potentially be noticed. One possible reason why no one seems aware of Lottie's survival might be because it's not Lottie at all, and maybe another one of the Yellowjackets has stolen her name. —Emma Stefansky

What is Lottie's cult up to and why was their emblem in the woods?

One thing Yellowjackets has done particularly well is keeping the existence of anything supernatural a mystery. We know that Lottie is schizophrenic and off her medication, which means she's been seeing and sensing a lot of weird stuff that likely isn't actually there. A few elements of the finale may call that further into question (more on that below), but the fact remains that something dark and evil seems to be influencing everyone's actions, Lottie's in particular. Whatever happened to the dead man in the cabin has left its mark, literally, on the land: the same cult symbol that Lottie adopted for her ritual was seen carved into the bark of trees surrounding the clearing, as well as in the attic of the cabin. It could also be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Lottie fully believes she senses all this dark energy around them and acts accordingly, and her band of followers follows suit. If their shroom tripping sacrifice playacting appears to be getting results, why stop now? —ES

Why did Lottie's cult kill Travis?

Not only did the final moments of the finale reveal that Lottie is still alive and running a cult, we finally got an answer to the mystery of who killed Travis. Thanks to Natalie's sponsor Suzie (Colleen Wheeler), who was able to tap into his bank account and find out who took money out of it, we know that Lottie is the one who did the deed and orchestrated his "suicide." Why, though? And why now, after all of these years when the man was seemingly living a life of peace and in isolation? We'll have to find out what the Cult of Lottie is up to at all before we get any answers, but is she making some sort of sacrifices to (what she thinks are) forest spirits on the crash's anniversary? Is she coming for all of the Yellowjackets survivors, who could have wronged her at some point? Or, is she and her cult just desperate and evil? They did also steal from him, after all. While it definitely makes sense that his death wasn't a suicide, we're left with more questions surrounding it now, and all we can say is RIP, you sweet, sensitive boy. —Sadie Bell

What is that stuff in Taissa's basement?/Is Lottie the bad woman who Taissa's kid has seen outside his window?

It appears that not only was Taissa a member of Lottie's cult in the woods, she's also kept the rituals going long after her rescue, keeping a shrine in her basement seemingly to influence the results of her political election (RIP Biscuit). Is it working?? Or is it just a placebo?? It's also possible that she was never in the cult at all, and the basement shrine has been planted by another member. Likewise, after we learned that Taissa has been sleepwalking and eating dirt at late hours of the night, it seemed like she was probably "the woman in the tree" her son saw outside his bedroom window at night. But, now that we know another one of the Yellowjackets is out there, and she could very likely be witchy cult leader Lottie, could Lottie be the backyard spectral figure disturbing the young boy's dreams? —ES

javi yellowjackets, javi and travis
Sophie Thatcher, Luciano Leroux, and Kevin Alves | Showtime

Where is Javi?

Poor poor Javi. He's a traumatized kid trapped in a raging tornado of teenage hormones. He eats the stew during the Doomcoming, trips balls, and then watches a group of girls chase down his brother who they probably plan to sacrifice. Shauna, high and feral, spares him, issuing him a command: "Run." But where does he run to? The next morning he's nowhere to be found and Travis is distraught looking for him. Where did Javi go? Is he alive? Did he get eaten by the bear that comes wandering into camp the next day? We're really hoping he made it. —EZ

Are there ghosts in the woods?

Perhaps the biggest unanswered question on Yellowjackets is whether or not there's something supernatural going on in those woods—something even scarier and out of this world than teenage girls eating each other. Throughout the season, it's been teased in the form of the symbol and dead body in the cabin, the girls' seance going awry, and the fact that the woods may or may not have some sort of overwhelming power that forces planes to crash and animals and people alike to lose their minds.

Something paranormal would definitely bring the show into an even more addicting territory—but is that the kind of show Yellowjackets is? Are we really going to find out six seasons in that they're in purgatory, or something? Probably not. Maybe we're skeptics here at Thrillist, but one of the best things about the show is its ability to explore women at their most feral, the lengths that fear and survival drive humans, and mental illness. With Lottie, for instance, who is the biggest believer in somethingpowerful in the woods—and is apparently now a cult leader—it's important to remember that the series made a point of showing that she ran out of the medication that she was taking early on. Then and in the present, it's possible that she is dealing with delusions of grandeur, among other things.

Then again, when Jackie dies in the finale, it's as if she meets the ghosts of all of the other now-deceased Yellowjackets, and, presumably, even the spirit of the pilot. They could be haunting the woods, although it doesn't seem likely since Lottie's bizarre forest leader stint seems to begin before all of their deaths, and Jackie probably wouldn't drive them to… eat her body. Of course, everything is speculation right now, and this might just be the one question that haunts us the most until Season 2. —SB

Who lives and who dies in the woods?

At first, it seemed as though Misty, Natalie, Shauna, and Taissa were the only surviving Yellowjackets (at least who made it into middle age)—but now that it's clear that Lottie is alive, that leads us to wonder if anyone else is still around. As we know, a few of the other girlies (or Coach or Javi, TBD) are guaranteed to get eaten, and maybe some of them die from natural causes, but it's possible that there are still others out there. The show has been concentrated mainly around New Jersey where Misty, Natalie, Shauna, and Taissa currently live, and they weren't even in contact with each other to begin with; perhaps some of them moved away. Or, even scarier a thought, could some of them be in Lottie's cult? Misty was right at her side in the '96 timeline when she appeared to do her first ritual with human meat, and so was Van (Liv Hewson). She could be working alongside her, still to this day. Since we don't know how they make it out of the woods, or all that goes on once it gets even colder, it's hard to say. In the meantime, start fan casting which '90s stars you'd like to see make an appearance. —SB

christina ricci in yellowjackets, misty quigley
Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci | Showtime

Are Misty and Taissa still involved with Lottie somehow?

The kneejerk reaction to this question is maybe, What? Of course not!! But the more digging you do, the less straightforward the answer seems. All the way back in the pilot, Shauna meets Taissa at a diner and first asks about Natalie, then, "And there's still no sign of the others?" To which Taissa says, "No, not for months"—meaning, that was the earliest hint that it wasn't just Shauna, Taissa, Natalie, Misty, and Travis who survived 19 months in the woods. In Episode 2, Misty has a scan of Travis' drivers license in her file of newspaper clippings from the plane crash. And, of course, the big, big reveal of the shrine in Taissa's secret back room (RIP Biscuit). Despite these clues, it seems more likely that the three women aren't associated with each other: Taissa's been too caught up in her senate race/turning feral; Misty's just a creep and a true-crime junkie; and Lottie's… well, who knows what she's up to. They probably know that Lottie is still alive (and maybe unwell), but it doesn't seem like they've been in cahoots since their days in the Canadian wilderness. —Leanne Butkovic

Was Adam just some dude?

Shauna's lover Adam was the center of copious internet theories, the prevailing one being that he's somehow grown-up Javi. Now he's dead and we still don't know that much about him. We know he lied about going to Pratt, which was pretty sketchy. We know that he was researching the Yellowjackets, but he says that was just because he was trying to find out more about Shauna. Was he just a Hoboken-based artist? Or was he somehow involved in all of—gestures broadly—this? Presumably, we'll find out more in Season 2 given that his family and friends have definitely noticed that he has gone missing. Misty knows how to destroy evidence of a crime, but she can't make people forget a person's existence. —EZ

Is the reporter/fixer dead?

Misty had a penchant for secretly poisoning people wayyy before she let Rekha Sharma's fake journalist/fixer Jessica Roberts, who was hired by Taissa for her senate campaign, out from basement captivity, sending her on her way with a poisoned cigarette. (See: The time she poisoned soccer coach Ben; the other time she spiked the Yellowjackets' celebration soup with magic woodland mushrooms.) The real question is, what exactly did she inject into the cigarette? We know she has access to pretty much anything she could ever want because of her job at a nursing home. In Episode 7, "No Compass," Misty monologues to Jessica about how "great" fentanyl is because it's legal and deadly, so that's almost certainly what Misty squirted into that cigarette, banking on Jessica's death that could be chalked up to an overdose, even after they had established a shaky rapport after Jessica explained why she wouldn't go to the cops if Misty released her. Hazarding a guess, Misty intended for Jessica to die because she didn't totally trust her—but I'd wager that this won't be the last we see of Jessica, given that cliffhanger. —LB

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