‘Yellowjackets’ Reveals the Identity of the Blackmailer, Plus Who Dies? (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 9 “Doomcoming.”]
The Yellowjackets hold their version of a homecoming in the wilderness following their plane crash — hence the title for the penultimate episode. Things get pretty wild and they nearly sacrifice Travis (Kevin Alves), due to their accidental ingestion of shrooms (Misty’s doing), the present-day timeline includes a murder and the revelation of who’s blackmailing them as adults.
Picking up right where the last episode left off, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) storms into Adam’s (Peter Gadiot) apartment, demanding to know who he is. After all, she found glitter like the blackmailer was covered in in her closet where she’d had him hide from her husband, Jeff (Warren Kole). Adam thinks she’s just introducing roleplaying to their relationship, but she searches through his things as she goes on about falling for him and letting him into her life and having the safe code be the flight number (“so f**king dumb,” she says).
She doesn’t find her journals from their time in the wilderness as she expected, but he has been researching the Yellowjackets. Yes, he Googled her, he admits, after they met. She grabs a knife, and as he tries to insist he’d never hurt her, she has flashbacks to what happened after the plane crash — and then stabs him in the chest! (The best part of this: seeing both teen and adult Shauna standing there).
After Adam dies, Shauna goes home and asks Jeff if he knows where the glitter in the closet came from. “Glitter? What’s that?” the terrible liar basically asks before caving. Yes, he’s the one who was blackmailing them, but she was never supposed to get involved, he insists. He was about to lose the store and needed the cash. He took out a loan from “bad, scary guys,” but it’s all over. There’s just one problem, she tells him.
“What do you mean you killed someone?” Jeff asks. “Like you murdered someone?” Oh, Jeff. “I stabbed him, and now he’s dead,” Shauna confirms, explaining she thought Adam (“you stayed in touch with the guy you rear-ended? That’s weird”) was blackmailing them. She reveals she had an affair, but argues he did too … until he reveals that Bianca is actually one of the people he borrowed money from and scares him. “I can’t believe you thought I was going to book club this whole time,” Shauna says, shocking Jeff. “What? There’s no book club?!” Oh, Jeff. You sweet, stupid, naïve man.
Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME
Jeff then decides to turn himself in with the claim that he found out about his wife’s affair and accidentally killed her lover when he went to confront him, but she points out that there’s a good chance the cops will discover what else he’d been up to and people will wonder why the Yellowjackets were being blackmailed. So the new plan is to make the others think Adam was the blackmailer, too. But first, Jeff reveals he read Shauna’s journals years ago and knows exactly what the Yellowjackets are keeping quiet about what really happened out in the wilderness. “You guys were so young. You were traumatized,” he says before assuring her, “of course I still love you.” Her response? She’ll be home soon.
And so Shauna has Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Natalie (Juliette Lewis) meet her at Adam’s and presents him as the blackmailer. She claims that when he went out to get them coffee, she found the bag they’d used for the cash in his closet. He came back and saw her with it and attacked her, so she had no choice but to fight back. The burner phone with their texts is there, too. And to explain how he knew about the symbol, she says he stole her journals from her safe. Natalie’s angry because they can’t question Adam and find out if he killed Travis. But they have a more pressing concern: getting rid of the body, considering Shauna’s DNA is everywhere. Taissa is a lawyer, Shauna argues. “I practice land use, not murder cleanup,” Taissa says. (Yellowjackets really has some of the best lines on TV right now.) But fortunately, Natalie has an idea.
Meanwhile, Misty (Christina Ricci) has found someone to bond with (in her Misty way) in the kidnapped Jessica (Rekha Sharma), who uses the opportunity to manipulate her into wondering just how good of friends she really is with the others. (Answer: Not at all, as we know.) She’ll make calls so she can meet with the ghostwriter, Jessica claims. “So you guys ate each other? I mean, that is what happened, right?” she asks. “My point is, they’re not going to blame you. They’re going to feel sorry for you. Just like they did with those guys who crashed in the Andes. You were just trying to survive. You know who they’re going to sympathize with the most? The first person to break the 25-year silence.”
The manipulation works. “I just couldn’t live with it a minute longer,” Misty says. “No one should have to go through what we went through. And we were just kids, innocents, and of course when we came back, we couldn’t get help, we couldn’t betray the team. But it’s time to face the truth. No matter how much it hurts. So that everyone can begin to heal.”
That’s when Natalie shows up at Misty’s and offers an apology before getting to why she’s really there: “We need you to get rid of a body.” And Misty, who always likes to be needed, smiles.
Yellowjackets, Sundays, 10/9c, Showtime
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