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Now that season three is over, and both the lottienats and lottielees were fucked, can we all just hold hands? We're all just freaks who like lesbianism with religious symbolism. Super extremely important gay dissertation under the cut.
I think the argument on whether or not Laura Lee or Nat meant more to Lottie is kind of stupid, considering they've both been shown to have a lot of value in her story. Laura Lee was the sort of precursor to the wilderness, she's the one who started all of that in Lottie. Meanwhile, Nat was "always its favorite"; the one who was at the center of the wilderness for Lottie, she was the sort of chosen one. I also think Laura Lee and Nat work as interesting foils in Lottie's overall story. Laura Lee represents complete unwavering belief and faith, while Nat represents doubt and skepticism. Throughout the first two seasons (before the massive nosedive in season three happened) we saw Lottie navigating the thin line between faith and doubt, and Laura Lee and Nat are the physical embodiments of those key elements.
Due to these different roles Laura Lee and Nat played they both offered different but very needed things to Lottie in their respective moments. In season one Laura Lee offered Lottie what she so desperately wanted, belief and validation. Lottie has always felt insecure and unsure about herself, especially in regard to her schizophrenia. Laura Lee, for better or for worse, intensely validated Lottie. So much so she convinced her she was a prophet touched by god. Laura Lee offered her comfort and belief, which is something Lottie had never received from anyone else throughout her life. Jump to season two we can see now that the way the girls have deified Lottie is beginning to weigh heavily on her. She doesn't know what to do with it, she's not even fully sure of herself, and definitely not sure enough to lead an entire group of girls who are desperate for something to believe in. But then there's Nat who disagrees with her and challenges her at every possible moment, she doesn't deify her, she just views her as a teenage girl. Even if it was frustrating, it's what Lottie needed in that moment, a break from being put on a pedestal. Which is why one of the only scenes in season two where we see Lottie just acting like a teenage girl, separate from all of the wilderness politics, is with Nat in the bathtub scene. It's also a contributing factor to why she ultimately crowns Nat as their new queen.
-I realize in season three the girls stopped believing in Lottie and instead begin to dehumanize and demonize her. However, as we see in episode eight, Nat doesn't call her crazy when she wants to stay like everyone else does and instead tries to reason with her and talk to her like what she is, a scared teenage girl.
With all of this in mind, I'm just incredibly mad at how they handled Lottie's character in season three. They did not mention Laura Lee once, and they did not give Lottie's connection with Nat the exploration it deserved. I was very pissed at how they handled her death; it could have been a very interesting final exploration of her relationship to faith and doubt, but instead we got no real insight into her mental state. Lottie deserved some kind of post-death scene, not necessarily a plane scene, but a scene where she confronted the wilderness and what it really meant to her. She could have been met with Laura Lee and Nat who were the physical embodiments of her faith and skepticism, and seemingly two of the most important people to her. Instead, they stripped out all of the nuance from her character and left what's honestly a quite harmful portrayal of schizophrenia. So yeah, with that being said, we should all just kiss and hold hands because this season absolutely massacred Lottie's character.
Callie: Okay yeah I killed Lottie but it was an accident.
The accident in question:
To me the crux of the story in Yellowjackets will always be a reflection of how modern major societies continuously and systematically fail the most vulnerable.
Every character in this show is a victim one way or another.
Lottie was born into a privileged life but was othered by her own mental illness and constantly failed by a world that continuously silenced and isolated her rather than guiding or dealing with the issues she didn't understand how to address.
Natalie started with nothing. She is the reflection of many children in America who are born into families that do not have the physical, economic, or emotional resources to care for them.
Travis very clearly has some sort of anxiety disorder and has been shown to have a history of being bullied and even ridiculed by his own father. God forbid a young boy have any type of sensitivity. Beyond that, his character is a very deliberate example of a survivor of sexual assault- an issue that is never really addressed by the perpetrators.
Taissa was born into a middle-class privileged family and a great deal of pride and ambition that was likely learned or reinforced in some way. She also was a teenage, mixed race, lesbian in the 90's. She had every instinct and drive to succeed despite a world that was structured so that she couldn't.
Jackie was born into a privileged, suburban, white family- but she was still a teenage girl in the 90s with perceptions of who she was forced onto her.
Shauna was the stereotypical poster child of teen angst in modern America, but she also had a deep set insecurity and maladaptive issues that were never looked at or acknowledged.
All of these children undergo a tremendous amount of stress, loss, grief, pain, and both physical and emotional trauma that changes them forever. But then they return to a world that is indifferent to all of that. Their pain is spectacle. Something to be publicly agreed upon as a tragedy. But they don't ever receive the care they need from it. They are shuffled back into a world they no longer fit into and expected to return to their roles as proper, civilized, demure young women and gentleman.
The tragedy of Yellowjackets was never about the horrors of survival in the wilderness- the tragedy has always been that this is a very clear depiction of how society's indifference and persistent marginalization of those considered "other" can push people to the brink of destruction or their own humanity.