Yellowjackets spoilers follow.
Inside of you there are two wolves and one of them is probably a watered-down version of Misty Quigley: a bit awkward and longing to be liked. Those au fait with Yellowjackets, the most buzzed-about show of 2022 so far, know that this is true, even if you don't want to admit it.
An easy way to describe Yellowjackets is as a gender-swapped Lord of the Flies, but this wouldn't quite sum it up. Yellowjackets is an exploration of teenhood and womanhood, and what trauma does to those who suffer it; how they rebound and rebuild, or don't, doesn't define them but rather sets the framework of their lives.
In some ways, for Misty (played as a teen by Sammi Hanratty and as an adult by Christina Ricci) getting stranded in the wilderness on the way to soccer nationals was a dream come true. She wasn't lost in the background anymore, but rather her skills made her invaluable to her teammates as they struggled to survive.
Of course, Misty makes some, err, bad choices and we don't condone them, but neither does show demonise them. In fact, as the show wears on each character becomes more nuanced, and Misty's arc is subversive of a teen trope.
The show, told through dual narratives of the teens' time in the mysterious forest and their adult selves, doesn't give Misty a 'glow-up'. As an adult, she is still awkward and nerdy, her obsession with true crime goes beyond quirky and into kind of scary territory (though useful when her friends need to get rid of a body), and she inserts herself where she doesn't belong, presuming a deeper friendship with her fellow Yellowjackets than maybe she has.
All of this could make her, well, pathetic and easily despised. Misty is desperate for attention – as a teenager from her coach Ben, and as an adult from her friends – and will do basically anything to get it.
It's her desperation that makes her a seemingly easy target. But in the exact moment when you think she's been duped, she proves you wrong.
We learn that the 'journalist' trying to get all the Yellowjackets to spill their stories is actually a 'fixer' hired by Taissa herself to see if any of her teammates might ruin her campaign for Congress. Misty, sensing there's more to the journalist than meets the eye, kidnaps her.
The fixer Jessica (Rekha Sharma) is as shrewd as they come, and she knows exactly what will get Misty to release her: showering her with praise. Jessica charms Misty, promising her a book deal, a movie deal and all the attention and love that comes with the spotlight.
It is the precise ploy that should have worked, but Yellowjackets is cleverer than that. Instead, Misty proves herself to be strong and self-assured, no longer in need of external validation to know that she has a role to play in the story.
Okay, yes, killing Jessica with fentanyl-laced cigarettes is objectively a Bad Thing, but the point still stands. The show doesn't limit Misty to her role of annoying hanger-on, desperate for intimacy in the same way that it gives all of its leading women dimension.
And let's not forget that Yellowjackets' MVP Shauna also killed someone, and we're pretty sure Taissa decapitated a dog. None of these women is 'good' by any normal moral standard, but instead they operate within the morals that they learned from their shared experience.
Misty might be the most obviously 'weird' of the group, but she ends her season one arc as a good friend. Her first Very Bad Decision – to destroy the plane's black box and therefore remain valuable to her teammates – is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from her also Very Bad Decision to kill Jessica, because this time she does it not out of desperation, but because she knows that she is valuable, and acts from that place of self-assuredness.
The bulk of the season finale Misty spends with her girlfriends. She has fun and is welcomed into the fold in the way that she had always wanted, and this time she's needed and wanted not out of necessity or desperation but because of who she is and what she brings to the group dynamic (no black-box-smashing needed), and that is the kind of 'glow-up' we can get behind.
This is all helped, of course, by Ricci's nuanced and dynamic performance, which winds sadness and strength together with ease and is as captivating as it is bananas. We can't wait to see what she does in season two.
Yellowjackets is available on Sky and NOW in the UK and Showtime in the US.
