15 Yellowjackets Moments That Gave Us Nightmares, Ranked!

Yellowjackets now has three seasons to its name. The show has never settled into one tone across those 29 episodes (with hopefully more to come). In fact, because of its dual timeline structure, Yellowjackets is, by nature, two shows in one.

The 1996 timeline, following a high school girls’ soccer team stranded in the Canadian Wilderness, is more survival horror—Lord of the Flies by way of Heavenly Creatures. The 2021 storyline is a murder mystery with a heaping of black comedy—which the 1996 story doesn’t exactly lack either.

But for as often as Yellowjackets can make you cringe with laughter when the show wants to get scary, it delivers. Here are our picks for the scariest Yellowjackets moments that live on in our nightmares, ranked!

15. The Yellowjackets Title Sequence (every Yellowjackets episode)

Yellowjackets has one of the best title sequences on TV right now. The images use a glitchy, period-accurate analog screen effect, blurring the images to make them creepier. The rapidly-cut titles contrast the girls’ pre and post-Wilderness lives. It’s all scored to No Return by Anna Waronker and Craig Wedren.

The titles are updated every season to include clips from the season’s episodes. However, some images stay consistent. The ominous opening riff always plays over the video of the Antler Queen, so the sound and video inspire dread in perfect harmony.

Jackie (Ella Purnell) miming a throat slicing during soccer practice has stayed in every season. It’s a snippet that perfectly melds the innocent and sinister.

The song, too, lets the eerieness build for a minute before descending into a mantra: “No return, no return, no reason.” Those words make you feel like you’ve hit the bottom of a descent into madness. 

14. The Man with No Eyes (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 3)

Yellowjackets purposefully suggests something supernatural is happening but holds back from confirming it. One of the most recurring instances of this is the Man with No Eyes. 

The Man is introduced on Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 3, “The Dollhouse,” as a vision from Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown/Tawny Cypress). It goes back to the traumatic memory of her grandmother’s death, who pleaded in her final moments to an unseen figure, “Don’t take my eyes.”

The Man with No Eyes is the grim reaper of Yellowjackets, personifying death. However, the jury is still out on whether he’s just a narrative symbol of death or a literal entity (especially because Tai isn’t the only Yellowjacket who has seen him).

But it almost doesn’t matter what the truth is. The subtext of the Man with No Eyes — that death is always watching you, waiting for the right moment — is enough to leave anyone chilled. 

13. Tai’s Basement Shrine and Dead Dog (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 10)

Season 1 of Yellowjackets builds up the idea that there’s something sinister going on with Taissa. During the pilot, she’s the one to propose and carry out the plan to break Allie’s (Pearl Amanda Dickson) leg.

Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 6 “Saints” reveals that the apparition her son Sammy (Aiden Stoxx) sees in his window is very real. It’s Taissa herself, sleepwalking and eating dirt.

Tai’s disturbing behavior climaxes on Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 10, “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.” After winning her state senate race, her wife Simone (Rukiya Bernard) enters a hidden part of their basement.

Inside are occult markings, an altar, and the decapitated head of their dog, Biscuit. The sight is terrifying enough to make you scream with Simone.

Although the Wilderness may not be real, its lingering influence on the Yellowjackets to solve their problems with violence and blood sacrifice is.

12. The Seance (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 5)

Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 5, “Blood Hive,” marks when the team realizes they’re truly stranded and their survival is not guaranteed. In need of guidance, the girls host a seance to communicate with the spirit of the dead cabin owner.

It starts off light with harmless questions. (Van: “Dear dead hunter guy… did OJ do it?!”) Then, a force seemingly crashes through the window and takes possession of Lottie (Courtney Eaton). Inexplicably speaking in French, Lottie begins ranting repeatedly: “It wants blood.”

This is the first time Lottie connected with “It,” and her words become the foundation of the Yellowjackets’ beliefs: they must sacrifice for the Wilderness to provide. Now, it’s clear that this was probably just Lottie hallucinating.

Perhaps her subconscious realized the Yellowjackets would have to do horrible things to survive and sent it as a “premonition.” However, the way the scene is presented makes it easy to argue that there is a spirit present.

11. The Aftermath of the Plane Crash (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 2)

The plane crash is the defining moment of Yellowjackets, but we never quite see the impact itself. The Pilot cuts away just as it’s about to happen, and Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) looks out the window in terror.

The cold open of Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 2, “F Sharp,” depicts the crash’s immediate aftermath. The girls are scrambling to get out of their seats and pry open the door, all shot in shaky handheld close-ups.

One passenger is already dead from a branch piercing their heart. Another catches on fire and dies in agony. Shauna tries to stay behind to free Van (Liv Hewson) from an encroaching fire, but Jackie (Ella Purnell) decides it’s hopeless and drags her friend away.

From the beginning, this shows that the Wilderness will demand the Yellowjackets make sacrifices to save their own lives. It’s already taken something from Coach Ben (Steven Krueger): his crushed leg. Misty (Samantha Hanratty) decisively amputates it with an axe, ending the cold open on her blood-splattered face. 

10. Van, Akilah, and Shauna’s Dream (Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 3)

On Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 3, “Them’s The Brakes,” the girls go hunting for Coach Ben. Shauna, Van, and Akilah (Nia Sondaya) find themselves separated and somewhere else entirely, leading to the most surreal sequence of the show yet.

It keeps you guessing, unable to predict what will happen next, but unnerved by whatever does. Van is in a toasty apartment with a burning fireplace.

Akilah is tending to her farm animals (including a talking alpaca). Shauna is relaxing in a river and sees her still-living son on the shore waving to her. Then, it all collapses.

Van’s apartment catches fire as the hands of the dead grab her. The earth swallows up Akilah. Shauna can’t, and will never, reach her son and begins to drown.

Awakening in a classroom, somehow sharing the same dream space, the girls meet their teacher, Lottie. The lesson of the day? “Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” Is this just toxic cave gas, or is “It” (wearing Jackie’s face) trying to guide the Yellowjackets?

9. Lottie Prays to the Wilderness (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 10)

On Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 10, “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” Natalie (Juliette Lewis) is about to take her life when cultists wearing the Wilderness symbol burst in and abduct her. A phone call to Natalie is heard, asking, “Who the f*** is Lottie Matthews?!”

The horrifying music of the scene leaves a pit in your stomach as your mind races with the worst possibilities of what Lottie and her cult represent. The episode ends with the birth of that cult.

Carrying the heart of the bear she killed, Lottie lays it on an altar and says a prayer. Half in French, half in English, she looks into the camera, saying: “Versez le sang, mes beaux amis [Shed blood, my beautiful friends], and let the darkness set us free.”

Season 2 didn’t live up to this tease, instead dialing back Lottie’s creepiness and complicating her character. However, it is chilling as a way to end Season 1.

8. The Thanksgiving (Canada) Feast (Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6)

The team first became cannibals on Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 2, “Edible Complex,” but their madness reaches an apex on Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6, “Thanksgiving (Canada).”

Feasting on the remains of Ben and dressed in animal pelts, the girls begin to sing and howl like wolves at Lottie’s urging. It’s a sight right out of The Wicker Man.

The girls answer the sounds of the Wilderness and dance around their campfire. Even the saner ones, like Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) and Mari (Alexa Barajas), join in and enjoy themselves.

If we didn’t know they’d gone home already, you’d think madness has consumed the Yellowjackets at this moment — that there’s nothing else but the Wilderness for them. As the singing continues, you’re waiting for the shoe to drop, and then it does.

Scientist hiker Edwin (Nelson Franklin) wanders into the ceremony, and his companions offer the Yellowjackets a shock and reminder of what they’ve lost. That wasn’t the sign Lottie hoped for, so she throws an ax in his head during the next episode.

7. Shauna Dreams the Girls Ate Her Baby (Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 6)

Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 6, “Qui,” features Shauna finally going into labor. In any other place, it might be time to celebrate, but in the Wilderness, this is life or death.

Sophie Nélisse has said that the scene’s goal was to show the unglamorous and even horrifying side of pregnancy, and it delivers. But then Shauna passes out, waking up to her smiling friends and a healthy baby boy.

She savors the moment before falling asleep once more. Waking up again, the crib is empty, so she walks further into the cabin. Her (and our) worst suspicions came true — the others butchered and ate her son.

Some of their faces are guilty, some are ravenous, but they all look at Shauna with blood-smeared mouths. But Shauna comes to and realizes this was all a dream.

Not that reality is any better: her baby was stillborn. Sobbing, she mutters, “Why can’t you hear him crying?!” repeatedly. That scene will scare you from how much it breaks your heart.

6. Natalie’s Death (Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 9)

Natalie’s death on Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 9, “Storytelling,” remains the show’s most controversial moment. Natalie dies, saving Lisa’s (Nicole Maines) life, balancing the scales of what she did or let happen in the Wilderness.

Whether it was the right call for the story overall to kill its heroine, the death itself is effective—peaceful but eerie. The whole scene almost acknowledges Natalie’s death as unexpected but counters that it was inevitable. 

Natalie sees herself in an empty plane: the flight and crash were a curse that’s finally caught up to her. She’s not ready to go, but Javi, her teenage self, and Lottie promise her that death isn’t something to be feared.

Yet, her words suggest Natalie is still being consumed by something greater: “Natalie, it’s not evil. Just hungry, like us. Just let it in.”

That comforts Natalie enough that she can look her fate in the eye. As the light pushes in on her face and cuts back to her dead expression, in reality, you have to ask: Is there anything waiting for her?

5. Lottie Sees Ghost Laura Lee (Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 2)

Part of the swerve in Yellowjackets Season 2 shows that while Lottie (Simone Kessell) may run an “intentional community,” she’s not trying to recreate the Wilderness. She, too, is trying to move on like the others.

But Travis’ (Andres Soto) death, when he called her for help because he sensed the Wilderness, reawakened something in Lottie. During a flashback to after Travis’ death on Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 2, “Edible Complex,” we see the first of Lottie’s hallucinations.

The late Laura Lee (Jane Widdop), who first baptized Lottie, appears before her and becomes a nightmare. Her eyes turn black, her skin goes a veiny grey, and her jaw hangs open as she lets out a horrible scream. It’s the most like a horror movie Yellowjackets has ever felt.

This foreshadows Lottie’s other hallucinations, like on Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 3, “Digestif,” when she imagines her bee hives bleeding and staining her hands. On Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 7, “Burial,” her therapist is a hallucination — she morphs into the Antler Queen and urges Lottie to resume the bloodshed: “Does a hunt that has no violence feed anyone?”

4. Lottie Dreaming of Death (Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 10)

The cold open of Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 10, “Full Circle,” packs a lot, dashing across time itself. The teenage Lottie dreams of herself in a cave, seeing a veiled figure with antlers and unnaturally long figures. 

This throws some of our understandings for a loop. “Full Circle” reveals that Shauna is the Antler Queen from the Pilot. But is that outfit how Lottie sees the Wilderness entity, and was Shauna’s Queen outfit fashioned in tribute to it?

Lottie walks toward the Queen and then speaks to her adult self at the morgue. It’s unclear which Lottie’s dream this is, but it seems like the teenage one is shepherding the adult one off the mortal coil.

It seems that Lottie expects a reunion with her Queen but finds only a cold, empty hallway. “Are you there?” she asks, and no one answers. Once more, the uncertainty of what happens after death—and the possibility that, no matter what you believe, nothing is—underpins the horror of Yellowjackets. 

3. “Chasing the Stag” During Doomcoming (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 9)

Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 9, “Doomcoming,” is when the madness starts to seep in. The girls decide to have a party to make up for the prom they’re missing. What should be fun turns into a nightmare when everyone accidentally gets dosed with shrooms.

Lottie takes command of the pack. They hear wolves, so they howl back. They lock Jackie away in the cabin and descend on Travis (Kevin Alves), crazed and ravenous.

At first, they kiss him, but it turns to biting, and Travis even starts to see them as shark-toothed monsters. Yellowjackets, wise to gender dynamics, rug-pull the male fantasy of Travis’ predicament (the only boy for miles with 15 girls around him). 

Travis runs, and Lottie commands them not to let the “stag” get away, lest they all starve. The Yellowjackets charge through the night, hunting together like a pack for the first time.

They corner Travis and tie him up. Shauna, the group butcher, comes three seconds away from slicing his throat until Jackie and Natalie run in, bringing sanity back with them.

2. The Pit Girl Hunt (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 1/Season 3 Episode 10)

What a spectacular series opener. Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 1, “Pilot,” opens deep into their time in the Wilderness. A girl wearing only a white nightgown runs from something unseen chasing her.

Her bloody feet impede her, and soon, she falls into a pit of skewers while a masked hunter leers over. The scene includes only the natural sounds of the Wilderness: the girl’s labored breath and cries of terror, the hunters’ howls in the distance, and the way the wind whooshes past the trees.

All this makes you feel like you’ve been dropped into something, and somewhere, inhuman. Subsequent moments of the masked girls silently butchering and feasting on the Pit Girl feel more and more alien.

This 90-second cold open tells a story all by itself, but one that demands greater context. Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 10, “Full Circle” gave it. That episode didn’t disappoint, but the horror of not knowing all the details means the pilot pit girl hunt remains the most chilling.

1. Jackie’s Death and Last Nightmare (Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 10)

Jackie freezing to death was a tragic, if mundane, way to go. But Yellowjackets Season 1 Episode 10, “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” adds a whole other level of terror by giving Jackie a final nightmare.

In her dream, Jackie imagines Shauna forgiving her and the other Yellowjackets warming her with cocoa and love. In this, we see Jackie for who she really is—a scared and insecure girl longing for the comfort of home.

But something is wrong, especially once the dead Laura Lee shows up. Jackie’s eyes drift to a figure hiding in the shadows—if you told me it was the Devil himself, I’d believe it. “I’m so glad you’re joining us,” he says to Jackie. We’ve been waiting for you.”

During Yellowjackets Season 1, Jackie becomes increasingly fatalistic. Just before she hooks up with Travis, she tells him they’ll all end up like the dead cabin guy.

Those words return to her at that moment, as her smile drops and her eyes flood with silent terror. Death has come for her, and it’s too late to fight him off.

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Yellowjackets streams on Paramount+ with Showtime.

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