Season 3 Proves Shauna Shipman Has Always Been Yellowjackets’ Dark Heart
(Photo: Courtesy of Paramount+)
One of the best things about Yellowjackets is that it isn’t a straightforward tale of good and evil. The story of a stranded girls’ soccer team and the desperate acts they’re driven to commit during 19 months lost in the wilderness is incredibly dark and frequently uncomfortable. But it’s always honest about the difficult decisions, moral compromises, and emotional compartmentalization that its characters must embrace to survive. There are no heroes here: Every member of the team has done some unspeakable things. But there are no true villains either. No one makes it out of the woods unscathed, and the scars from their experiences reverberate throughout each of the girls’ lives in different ways.
But while Yellowjackets has managed to keep its characters sympathetic through a seemingly endless array of poor decisions, horrifying choices, and outright crimes, it’s becoming increasingly difficult in the show’s third season to know how we’re meant to feel about Shauna Shipman (played as a teen by Sophie Nélisse and Melanie Lynskey as an adult). Initially introduced as the mousy sidekick BFF of team captain Jackie (Ella Purnell), Shauna blossomed upon getting lost in the wilderness, finding self-assurance and a sense of purpose in the wake of the team’s plane crash that her life had previously lacked. But as the show continued—and the traumas she experienced piled up—Shauna’s behavior has grown increasingly deranged, in ways that often seem fully at odds with the girl we once thought her to be. But while many of her actions this season may feel shocking, a certain darkness has always existed in Shauna, and was evident long before she ever set foot in the woods.
The first season of Yellowjackets paints the modern-day Shauna as a sort of loveable dork, the most normal of a group of traumatized survivors who are deeply scarred in unfathomable ways. A suburban mom who chose to embrace aggressive normalcy after her unspeakable time in the wilderness, she gave up on her dream of going to Brown, married her dead best friend’s boyfriend, had a daughter, and became a homemaker. None of this is the life any of us would have guessed teenage Shauna wanted, but it’s equally true that the girl who went into those woods isn’t the same as the one who came out. Or…is she?
The thing is, Shauna has always been a bit… problematic. Before she ever had to eat a teammate to survive, she was a liar who repeatedly slept with her best friend’s boyfriend, not because she particularly liked him, but simply because he was Jackie’s. Shauna’s obsession with her BFF—for both good and ill—drives much of the show’s emotional arc in Yellowjackets’ first season. As their established real-world roles are flipped on their heads in the wilderness, Jackie finds herself struggling as Shauna grows more confident. And while it’s genuinely satisfying to watch her transformation into one of the group’s primary leaders, her elevation ultimately comes at a huge cost (and fairly high body count) that underlines how rage and jealousy have always been part of who she is.
Despite her flaws, it’s easy to both like and root for Shauna. She comes into the story as an underdog in many ways, constantly living in Jackie’s shadow and struggling to balance her obvious love for her bestie with her desire for a life on her own terms. She also experiences unimaginable suffering over the course of the show, from cold and starvation to losing both her best friend and her baby in fairly short order. And that’s before we get to the cannibalism and the threat of a vengeful supernatural god in the woods. She’s been through it, and her trauma not only makes for compelling television but an understandable explanation for many of the increasingly unhinged choices she makes.