This review contains spoilers for season 3 episode 3 of Yellowjackets
For the past two seasons, Yellowjackets has expertly toed the line between thriller and outright horror, building suspense as we wonder whether or not there are actually supernatural forces at work in the Wilderness. Trying to figure out how much is real and how much is in the survivor’s heads is part of what makes this show so intriguing to watch. Episode 3 “Them’s the Breaks” doesn’t just toe this line, however, it takes a high dive into horror and might just be one of the scariest episodes of the series yet.
The episode begins with my current favorite pairing of the season Mari (Alexa Barajas) and Coach Ben (Steven Krueger). The two are in his secret cave, still very much at odds. Mari tries (and fails) to flirt with him in an attempt to try and stay alive before he exasperatedly tells her that he’s gay, and even if he wasn’t he definitely wouldn’t be interested. Even after she accidentally sprays them both in the eyes with mace in an attempt to escape, Ben decides to cut her free and let her go. A kindness which she almost immediately repays by giving him up to the others.
And so the witch hunt begins. Mari leads the others back to the caves, where they end up splitting up to try and find him. One group, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), Van (Live Hewson), and Akilah (Nia Sondaya) crawls through a tunnel that takes them on the worst trip of their lives and through one of the most haunting hallucinations we’ve seen yet.
Van envisions herself in the cabin nearly consumed by flames. Shauna sees her son on the shore of the lake and nearly drowns making her way to him. Akilah is nearly consumed by the earth that she tends to so well. And then they all come together in the same hallucination featuring Jackie (Ella Purnell), a lethal slap bracelet, and the man with no eyes. The Wilderness is hungry for a sacrifice after all these months without one and will clearly do whatever it takes to get one.
Eventually, they regain consciousness thanks to Ben pulling them away from the poison gas that is supposedly causing these hallucinations. The rest of the group finds them and captures Ben. But if he truly wanted them all dead, why would he have saved them from the poison gas? It’s starting to look like Ben might not have actually set that fire after all. Or at least wasn’t conscious of it.
The Wilderness may be screaming at the survivors in the past, but it isn’t exactly quiet in the present either. Van (Lauren Ambrose) discovers that her cancer might be in remission, and Tai (Tawny Cypress) is very quick to celebrate it as a gift from the Wilderness after the waiter’s death. We see her actively pray to the Wilderness while Van looks at her with slight terror.
Later that night while watching old recorded episodes of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Tai and Van see the man with no eyes in a commercial for a now closed ice cream parlor from when they were kids. They decide to go investigate the building and see a coyote kill a rabbit, to which Van says “We know what It wants. It wants more.”
Speaking of sacrifices, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) and Misty (Christina Ricci) have a near-death experience when they realize that the brakes on Shauna’s minivan have been tampered with while on the road and go careening into a nearby park. Someone seems to have it out for Shauna, and doesn’t seem to care who gets caught in the crossfire. I also submit this scene as evidence that the music supervisor for this show deserves a raise because playing “Nookie” by Limp Bizkit as the background song for this scene is an impeccable choice.
Meanwhile, Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Callie (Sarah Desjardins) have been having a girls day, shopping, bonding, and preparing dinner for the family. Until Shauna returns home to see Callie wearing Jackie’s necklace. Furious, she confronts Lottie, wondering how she even got it in the first place. Lottie calmly, yet ominously tells her “It never meant what you thought it meant,” to which Shauna replies by kicking Lottie out of the house in a rage.
“Them’s the Brakes” packs a mighty big punch for only being the third episode of the season. From literally screaming at the survivors through the sounds of the forest to causing mass hallucinations to making its presence known in the present, the Wilderness is making it clear that it can’t be ignored any longer. Which will likely mean, as the Drowning Pool song playing in the trailer seemed to promise, that bodies will be hitting the floor sooner rather than later.
Last season featured multiple instances of cannibalism, and yet this still might be the scariest and most unsettling episode in the series thus far in the best possible way. It feels like the Wilderness is making its presence known to us as well, insisting that it’s very real and very hungry. And after watching this episode, I too am ravenous for more.
The first three episodes of Yellowjackets season 3 are available to stream on Paramount+ now. New episodes will premiere Fridays on Paramount+ and Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Showtime.
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