Hooray, it's Yellowjackets release day! The fourth episode of season 3 is now available to stream on Paramount+ with Showtime. In this episode, the girls put Coach Ben on trial for burning down the cabin. Meanwhile, in the present-day storyline, Misty and Shauna continue their feud, while Taissa and Van search for a new sacrifice to appease the wilderness. And of course, Lottie is being... well, Lottie.
Spoilers from Yellowjackets season 3, episode 4 ahead!
Coach Ben faces prosecution
At the end of the last episode, the girls discover Coach Ben in the mysterious cave. The new episode opens with them bringing him back to their settlement to determine his punishment for burning down the cabin. After a bit of bickering, they ultimately agree to put him on trial. Tai chooses to run prosecution, while Misty takes on the role of defending Coach Ben.
After a lengthy trial involving Mari and Nat serving as witnesses, the girls debating Coach Ben's character, and Coach Ben pleading his case, the trial finally moves to the voting stage. However, this process drags on due to the uneven numbers. The group is forced to vote repeatedly until they achieve a two-thirds majority. It takes Shauna applying pressure on the other girls to sway them into voting Coach Ben guilty for a final decision to be made.
In the end, Coach Ben is found guilty of attempted murder. Though disappointed by the outcome, Coach Ben appears to accept his fate. However, this episode never explains or shows what will happen to Coach Ben next. Will he be killed or face another kind of punishment? After the trial, Travis presents Lottie with a scroll showing three girls watching someone lying down. He refers to the drawing as "the outcome." Could this illustration be a preview of what’s to come for Coach Ben? We'll most likely find out his final fate in the next episode.
Ghost Jackie revisits Shauna in a senior home's freezer
As you may remember from the previous episode, Shauna and Misty are on bad terms after Shauna blames Misty for her car's breakdown, among other things. In the latest episode, Shauna’s husband, Jeff, encourages her to volunteer at a senior home, unaware that Misty works there. Feeling guilty about the wrongdoings he and Shauna have recently committed, Jeff believes performing good deeds will help atone for their sins.
While Jeff cracks jokes and has a good time with the senior citizens at the home, Shauna is in the kitchen preparing food. Misty approaches Shauna, frustrated that she seems to be enjoying herself. She had hoped Shauna would suffer after the way she treated her. After a tense exchange, Misty storms off and later decides to go home.
Shauna takes some of the food she made and heads to the freezer to store it. However, the door ends up closing on her in the process. With the way the door slams, it appears it didn't close on its own. Someone must have closed it. Shauna immediately starts banging on the door, but no one hears her. Time passes, and suddenly, ghost Jackie appears to her as a hallucination. She mocks Shauna, suggesting that being trapped in the freezer might be her fate, a consequence for all the wrongs she’s committed both in the wilderness and in her life since. Then, she disappears.
Randy, an employee at the senior home, enters the kitchen and hears Shauna yelling from inside the freezer. He rushes over and frees her. Shauna quickly runs to the entrance of the senior home and asks one of the staff members where Misty is. Believing Misty was the one who trapped her in the freezer, she’s shocked when the employee tells her that Misty left hours ago.
Taissa and Van search for a new sacrifice
In the previous episode, Van got a positive health update regarding her cancer. Taissa convinced her that the improvement was connected to the waiter’s death. She suggested that the waiter had been sacrificed to appease the wilderness, and in return, the wilderness improved Van's health as a reward for the offering. They believed things would improve from there, but their hopes were shattered when they unexpectedly came across a wolf carrying a bloodied rabbit in its mouth. It led them to believe that the wilderness was demanding another sacrifice.
In the latest episode, this is what we see them doing. They find a deck of playing cards, take out the queen of hearts, and then place the card in the middle of a busy pathway. Remember, whoever pulled the queen of hearts card in the wilderness was the next sacrifice. Now, whoever picks up the card off the ground will become the next offering to the wilderness. A man in a suit ends up picking up the card and pocketing it. Taissa and Van then follow him all the way back to his apartment. As Taissa is about to walk through the door to the man's apartment, Van quickly grabs her to stop her.
Essentially, they would be committing murder, and Van doesn't believe that's the right thing to do. She's had enough of the wilderness and its strange demands. She expresses this to Taissa, but Taissa is convinced that if they don't appease the wilderness, something bad will happen—like Van's health deteriorating again. Van manages to persuade her to let it go, and they decide to have a cute date in the park later in the episode. However, Van's hand is shown shaking on the date. This is basically a sign that Van's health could be on the brink of declining again.
Lottie meets her end
The most shocking moment of the episode occurs when it’s revealed that Lottie’s dead body has been found. While Misty is browsing the Bureau of Citizen Detectives website, she stumbles upon a post announcing that a body has been discovered. She clicks on the post, and a photo appears, showing Lottie’s lifeless body lying on the ground in front of a set of stairs with candles placed along the steps. Based on the positioning of her body, it seems she was either pushed down the stairs by someone or fell on her own. Given the type of show Yellowjackets is, it wouldn't be wrong to assume another person was involved in her death.
However, it’s also possible that Lottie sacrificed herself in an attempt to appease the wilderness. Earlier in the episode, she is shown speaking to herself in the mirror, repeatedly apologizing, though it’s unclear to whom she’s apologizing. Lottie clearly wasn’t in a good mental state, so it’s possible her death was a result of her descent into a dark, troubled place. Or, someone else could've sacrificed her. Wasn't Taissa and Van looking for a sacrifice earlier? Maybe they changed their minds. I guess we'll have to wait until the next episode to find out the truth.
Yellowjackets season 3, episode 5 will be released on Paramount+ with Showtime on March 7.