From the very first time I saw them in Yellowjackets, I thought Shauna and Jackie were destined to be together. Pretty quickly, the show tells you that’s not the case. While we see Shauna and Jackie as best friends in 1996, with Jackie clearly not very attracted to her boyfriend and Shauna obviously pining for Jackie’s attention, the present day tale in 2021 shows Shauna married to Jackie’s boyfriend and heavily implies Jackie is long dead, with 2021 Shauna haunted by visions of 1996 Jackie in her Yellowjackets uniform.
Right now, midway through season three with Jackie confirmed dead, I still believe that on a cosmic level, Shauna and Jackie are destined to be together. 2021 Shauna will never be truly happy with her life because she has already met (and, um, eaten) her soulmate. Everything that I see of Shauna’s character in Yellowjackets, and to an extent everything I see of Jackie, is informed by this belief, which is presented as close to canon as possible by the show.
The close-knit relationships, gaps in the timeline, and general mystery around what really happened in 1996 encourages you to fill gaps in your head of relationships between the survivors. But it feels like some fans are missing out, and I hope the show doesn’t follow suit.
Yellowjackets’ Best Relationships Aren’t All Romantic
Exploring the romantic undertones of Shauna and Jackie’s connection, and how it continues to impact Shauna in the present, is a core part of the show. The same could be argued for Nat and Travis, given his death is the catalyst for most of the events in the modern day, but their relationship in the wilderness is given less focus as the show goes on. Other girls have flings with each other in the woods too. It features around 20 hormonal, athletic teenagers stranded for a year and a half – they’re gonna kiss sometimes.
But it seems the show has been reduced in some fans’ eyes to the girl kisser show. Undeniably the fact it has so many lesbian relationships makes it an important piece of media, and different to the often tokenistic depiction of queer love in other mainstream shows, but it’s about more than that. It’s about ritualistic sacrifice, the power of cults, what desperation does to people, the ways we cling to the past, and a supernatural mystery. To only watch Yellowjackets for a chance glance that supports your chosen ship is to miss out on so much of what makes Yellowjackets great.
Look, I’m not here to yuck anybody’s yum. This is a fun TV show, and if shipping is your thing, go nuts. Write all the fanfic you want, make it sweet and tender or the smuttiest thing ever… and then send it to me if it’s Mistynat. I’m not saying shipping is wrong, or that you’re a bad person, not a real fan, or less intelligent if the main draw of Yellowjackets is how easy it is to ship everyone with everyone. I get it. It just feels as though as the show increasingly becomes a viral phenomenon popular for ship edits on social media, fans risk missing out on what makes the show special.
Fans Can Write Fanfic Ships, As Long As The Show Doesn’t
This isn’t motivated by a personal disdain for fanfiction. Part of the reason I pursued writing as a career was because I wrote fanfiction as a teenager, which may in turn give you a newfound disdain for fanfiction knowing the monster it created. I think it’s a great place to express yourself, can tell fantastic stories and, let’s be honest, the implied love and spiritual connection between Shauna and Jackie is all fine and good, but a lot of people will want to read about a more… physical connection between the pair. We never even see them kiss!
But after Baldur’s Gate 3, I’ve become more wary of seeing these trends. Post-launch, we’ve seen a lot of patches for Baldur’s Gate 3 add some fanon in-jokes to the game. Some of these are harmless, like God’s Favourite Princess being added to Shadowheart’s voicelines, but others feel like they detract more from the game, like flattening Astarion’s abuse arc to make him a more sensual, dominant figure the way he is depicted in the fanfiction. Writing Astarion as a sexy vampire in fanfiction is fine – canonising this at the cost of his actual character is not.
That’s my fear for Yellowjackets. Given their continued connection in the present, I don’t think exploring, say, Mistynat in depth would ruin Yellowjackets as they already make a lot of sense together. I’m picking on them more because they’re my ship, there are many like it but this one is mine. But I worry that as the show becomes discussed more and more through the medium of shipping, we see it lean harder in that direction at the cost of its character development in season four.
It’s not the fans responsibility to watch out for this, of course. Fans should be free to engage with the show however they want to, and with Yellowjackets, it makes a lot of sense that ‘however they want’ is shipping. But in an age where it feels like every show is at constant risk of cancellation and so much appeasement, demographic-led thinking in our media, I worry that the show becomes a parody of itself and just starts putting all of the most popular characters in ships together because that gets free advertising on TikTok. We can ship who we want, as long as the show’s main ship is still Interesting Scenarios x Sharp Dialogue.
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