Yellowjackets: Misty Killing [Spoiler] Was Foreshadowed In Season 1

Contains spoilers for "Yellowjackets" Season 2, Episode 9 — "Storytelling"

The Season 2 finale of "Yellowjackets" packed a devastating punch in its unforgettable closing moments. After Walter's (Elijah Wood) surprising arrival to take care of the threat of police intervention, the Yellowjackets engage in another vicious hunt to appease the wilderness. Even though the unnerving card ritual chooses Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Natalie (Juliette Lewis) ultimately pays the sacrificial price.

"Yellowjackets" Season 2 finally revealed the identity of the mysterious Antler Queen before ripping her away in the closing moments. Still haunted by her guilt for allowing Javi (Luciano Leroux) to die in her place as a teen, Natalie jumps in front of Misty's (Christina Ricci) deadly needle to save Lisa (Nicole Maines). Consequently, Misty kills her best friend, which was actually creepily foreshadowed in a scene from the pilot episode that's briefly revisited in the Season 2 finale. 

In a meaty interview with The Hollywood Reporter, director and executive producer Karyn Kusama said that the creators intended Misty to fulfill this ominous role from the early stages of the series. "Something I know the showrunners had always thought about, and that Ashley [Lyle] and Bart [Nickerson] had always thought about from the pilot, was that mysterious moment when Natalie hallucinates Misty at the kegger in the woods," Kusama explained. She continued, "That was always this time-defying flash-forward to the notion that Misty was always going to be kind of an angel of death for Natalie." 

It makes it all the more appropriate that Kusama directed both the pilot and Season 2 finale, threading these dark moments together in a fitting and visually similar way.

In the very first episode of "Yellowjackets," the soccer team celebrates their impending trip to nationals with your typical teenage outing in the woods. Among the various alcoholic drinks are some hallucinatory party favors in which teen Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) partakes. Over the blazing campfire, she sees Misty (Samantha Hanratty) eerily staring at her, though it's only an effect of the drugs. However, the sinister lyrics to PJ Harvey's "Down By The Water," which accompanies the moment, clues us in that something significant is happening. "Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water. Come back here, man, gimme my daughter," almost sounds like the wilderness whispering to Misty about Natalie, which defies time as Karyn Kusama mentioned. 

The Hollywood Reporter also pointed out the creators' insights from the "Yellowjackets" aftershow "Behind the Buzz," which broke down the fulfillment of this prophesied exchange. "As upsetting as it always is to lose a character who is as important to our story as Natalie, the fact is that the stakes of the world are life and death," Ashley Lyle outlined. "The ritual itself awakens something in them that had been dormant for a really long time." 

"What we're trying to do with the present-day story is to show that that force is not one that ends when they get rescued," Bart Nickerson added. The lasting presence of that force is also because, as Shauna screamed in the finale, the wilderness isn't a mystical evil but rather the girls' hive mentality that drove them to cannibalism.