It’s no news by now that Yellowjackets has come to hit us right in the 90s feels. The show that takes us in a Lost-like fashion back and forth between 1996 and the present day is heavy on that era’s music and style as it reveals the mysteries of what happened to a New Jersey team of high school soccer player girls whose plane crashed on their way to a national championship in 1996 and were forced to spend 19 months stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Season one left us with the girls struggling through a snowy winter somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, battling against the lack of food and the mysteries of those woods. Season 2 premiered on Sunday, March 24, to an audience just as hungry as the stranded soccer team. And fans were pleasantly surprised to learn that Van, one of the stranded players, also made it out alive, in spite of having half of her face almost bitten off by a wolf.
Two weeks ago, episode 4 of season 2 was released, Old Wounds, where we got to see an adult Van, brilliantly interpreted by Lauren Ambrose, who is currently running a vintage store where she sells/rents all things 90s, from music on CD to VHS movies along with VCR players.
We can guess from this that although she seems to be very chill and at peace with her life, much like the other survivors, she has not entirely moved on from their traumatic past. Unlike the rest of the girls, however, she has embraced their past and understands that it’s a big part of who she is today. While the other girls have made big efforts to hide and forget the horrors they lived, only to have their past come back to bite them and their seemingly normal lives, Van has decided to honor and live by it. Now that she joins the rest of the girls, we’ll see how they’ll navigate their present as the story unfolds, and we’ll learn more about the mysteries they’ve left behind. The next episode of Yellowjackets will be released on May 5th on Paramount Plus.
