Spoilers below for fans who haven’t yet watched the latest Yellowjackets episode either on Showtime or streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.
Buzz, buzz, the coach is dead. Which old coach? The potentially wicked old coach.
After revealing Steven Krueger’s Coach Ben has been totally miserable while surviving an anti-glamping existence since the cabin burned down in Season 2’s finale, Yellowjackets put him through an intense Wilderness-influenced trial that didn’t exactly convince everyone he was to blame for destroying their lodging. And in “Thanksgiving (Canada),” Natalie was convinced to end his suffering, despite believing him to be innocent, and despite others believing him to be the key to getting rescued.
But I no longer believe that Coach is the one who set the fires, and even though his mental faculties were clearly frayed, he never really lost hold of his logic and empathy. So what if someone else in the group was responsible for the fire? Someone who, for instance, has been emotionally erratic, unpredictable, and very much guilty of other misdeeds and untruths? The trauma-drenched Travis is the only remaining male left in the group, and he's really starting to fit into the villain mold.
Travis Hasn't Ever Really Been A "Good Guy," So To Speak
From the jump, it was clear that Travis wasn't enthused about going on the trip with his dad and the soccer team, and his behavior in the days immediately following the crash were impulsively rude, judgmental and without empathy, particularly when it came to his mourning brother Javi. Travis' anger over the juvenile nickname "Flex" didn't help.
His early bond with Natalie was shattered in part whenever he backout out of having sex with her, only to soon get caught getting rowdy with Jackie. That illicit act (itself influenced by Lottie drugging the group) led to Travis nearly getting raped and/or killed, and was also the catalyst for events that led to the ousted Jackie freezing to death.
Don't get me wrong. I get that Jackie's death and cannibalized corpse likely fucked Travis up in newly dreadful ways that were only compounded by Javi's disappearance, and that there was likely no coming back from watching his brother suffer the same fate as Jackie, regardless of who was to blame. Yet in Season 3, the Yellowjackets creative team has continued to expand Travis' patterns of both experiencing and causing suffering.
Travis' Lies About His Visions Sparked A Terrible Domino Effect
As it goes with many elements within this series, Lottie has a high level of influence where Travis is concerned, and often comes across as Yellowjackets' overarching antagonist. But in my mind, Lottie is always of the belief that she is helping others, even when she's doing everything but, and her diagnosed mental issues also complicate such blanketed distinctions.
So she's certainly to blame for coercing Travis into repeatedly ingesting her psychoactive tincture, believing him to have a pure psychic connection with the surrounding Wilderness. However, it's Travis who chose to lie and sic Lottie on Akilah by claiming the Wilderness chose her. Sure, his initial attempts to get Courtney Eaton's character to back off didnt' work, but potentially dooming the entire group should have been the "Break Glass For Emergency" option.
While it's certainly plausible that Akilah is experiencing genuine premonitions, she's likely seeing distorted versions that don't necessarily reflect reality. Which, if true, means that the aftermath of Coach's trial — from the unsuccessful firing squad to Shauna slicing his tendon to starving himself near his rotting food — was all for nothing, and his suffering should have ended far earlier.
And if this cycle of chaos continues unbroken, I can only imagine that Akilah will become one of the next Yellowjackets characters to die, and in a way where Travis will be unable to escape feeling responsible for his doom-causing actions. He's already had several chances to come clean, and made a vague attempt at dissuading Lottie's faith in Akilah during the latest episode, but all while falling short of telling the truth. That's villain behavior, people!
I Think Travis Burned The Cabin Down
While there may very well be some form of evidence that proves it impossible for Travis to have been responsible for setting fire to the team's lone cabin abode, I don't think it's such an outlandish theory. His face has shone with guilt ever since Season 3 started, and thus originated before Lottie's hallucinatory therapy sessions. Sure, he could still just be harboring foul feelings from having ingested his brother's heart, but...
I think after Travis resorted to that horrifying behavior, the same part of his brain that was previously inflamed with rage over Javi's death completely snapped, and his vengeful impulses took over, possibly without him being completely aware of what was happening. We've seen it happen with Taissa, both in her youth and as a grown woman, and while that seems entirely tethered to her being haunted by No-Eyes Man, maybe it's just the wiles of the Wilderness at play.
I don't believe Travis would have ever resorted to such destructive actions before Javi's death, even after the heartbreaking discovery that Natalie lied about the clothes she found. Because I think he truly felt responsible for his little brother's safety, despite being a douchebag in the immediate aftermath of the crash. But once Javi was dead and no longer a viable target for familial doting, Travis lost the only thing still connecting him to his pre-Wilderness life.
I think attempting to murder a group of teenagers, even if the attempt was unsuccessful, is enough excess baggage on top of everything else Travis has suffered that would help drive a lifetime of trauma, guilt, and substance abuse.
Obviously, lots of fucked up moments are yet to come as Yellowjackets fills out both of its mystery-driven timelines, and I can only imagine how heavily the two surprise arrivals (as portrayed by Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton) will factor into it. But I just think viewers should be reminded that for all the villainy that Shauna and Misty display at times, Travis may just the most dangerous antagonist of either timeline, even if he doesn't mean to be.
Or maybe those new arrivals are TV producers who reveal that the teens are just part of a long-form reality television experiement. That would be...something.
Yellowjackets streams new episodes on Fridays via Paramount+, and airs Sunday nights on Showtime at 8:00 p.m. ET.
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