‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2: This Character Is the Best Part of Both Timelines

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of Yellowjackets. Who knew a group of teenage soccer players would be so captivating to audiences? The writers and creators of Yellowjackets Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson sure did. They’re teenagers who survived in extreme conditions after a massive plane crash somewhere over the Canadian wilderness. Yeah, they survived with questionable tactics and influences, like eating one of their dead friends and believing that the wilderness is a higher power that dictates their decisions and who lives or dies, but still… they made it out alive! Well, most of them did anyway.

The women (both the teenage and adult versions) in Season 2 of Yellowjackets all have moments of being incredibly relatable and downright despicable. On the despicable end, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) shows zero remorse for everyone trying to help her clean up her murder investigation mess. We also have Tai (Tawny Cypress) who paid a private investigator to look into all the Yellowjackets and almost potentially exposed their wilderness secrets. Misty (Christina Ricci) is just, well, Misty. In her brain, all of her attempts to help her friends are justified, but in reality, she’s kind of a nightmare and has been since the plane crashed.

There may have never been any cannibalism, wilderness-born babies, or antler cults if young Misty (Samantha Hanratty) had just been reasonable and called for help from the black box she found in Season 1. Each and every single one of them has had their share of “WTF?” moments, but one character in particular stands out as being consistently likable and consistent across both timelines. Vanessa Palmer (Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose), known as Van, is hands down the best character in the show.

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Adult Van Is Just as Thoughtful as Teen Van

In Season 1, Van was brutally attacked and mauled by wolves and was almost killed by her friends. They thought she was dead after the attack, so they set up a funeral pyre and were ready to say their goodbyes. She luckily opens her eyes at the right time, and they recognize she isn’t dead and is in desperate need of help from the attack. Despite all of this, she still keeps a positive disposition and her signature dead-pan humor to keep her friends smiling. Did she have to be nice to them after they were so quick to set her on fire? Absolutely not, but that’s Van. She even chains herself to her girlfriend Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) while they’re sleeping to help her stop sleepwalking, which results in Tai biting her lip aggressively one night. The weirdest but also the cutest moment ensues when she uses her own lip blood to write “I love you” on Tai’s arm after she is freaking out about what she did. Wholesome content, Van, wholesome content.

We are finally getting to see adult Van in Season 2, and she does not disappoint. Splashing into Season 2 in a nostalgic ’90s wave, adult Van is the most level-headed and relatable character on the show. In Episode 5 of this season, we finally get to see present-day Van and how she’s running a ’90s-themed video store. Being stuck in the past is likely her trauma response and that’s so much more reasonable than say, perhaps, killing a man or your dog. Tai finds Van in her grungy, Alanis-esque store, and after the initial shock of seeing each other, they reconnect and Van is there for her just as she was in the past, despite struggling with her own internal conflicts.

Despite whatever happened between Tai and Van post wilderness cult and pre-present day, when Tai showed up looking for help, Van didn’t think twice about it. Later on in the episode, she convinces Tai that the cancer medication she finds isn’t her own and that it was her mother’s before she passed away. Van may be a little too self-sacrificing than she should be, but when a friend is in need, she doesn’t want anything to get in the way of her ability to help.

Is Van the Only Mature Adult?

For some time in Season 2, viewers are the only ones who know that Van is the one struggling with potentially terminal cancer, and we just want to hug the big fun-loving goalie with that infectious smile. She deserves so much better than being dragged back into the Yellowjackets drama that can’t seem to stay in the wilderness. When the group, consisting of Van, Tai, Lottie (Simone Kessell), Misty, Shauna, and Natalie (Juliette Lewis), reconnects together at Lottie’s cult (er, mental health retreat?) at Camp Green Pine, the secrets come out and everyone gets weirder.

The six of them are in the Sharing Shack together and everything is unearthed. Misty confesses to Jessica’s murder, and Shauna, Tai, Misty, and Natalie clue Van and Lottie in on murdering Adam, and that Jeff was the blackmailer all along. In all of this, Van is the only one in the group without deep skeletons in her closet and is handling all the post-survival mode trauma with relative ease and maturity. Her business may be going bankrupt, she’s entirely stuck in the past, and struggling with accepting her medical struggles, but unlike her friends, she draws the line at murder and blackmail.

Sure, she did also sprint through the woods to try and kill Natalie with the rest of them in Episode 8, but she showed up for her friends and is still willing to put her life on the line to figure things out. After all, she might literally have to sacrifice herself for the sake of the Antler Queen in the final episode. Episode 8 ends with Lottie mixing shots, one laced with phenobarbital, and saying the Sinful Six have to “give back” to the wilderness, and it will choose as it always has who gets sacrificed. Who will the wilderness choose in the Season 2 finale?