The pilot episode of “Yellowjackets” begins with a hunt. A teenage girl runs barefoot through a barren forest covered in snow. She is dressed in a thin, dirty nightgown and wearing a necklace with a gold, heart-shaped charm. We never see her face, but her abject terror is clear through her sharp breaths and trembling sobs. Unnerving whoops, caws and howls can be heard coming from behind her. Suddenly, the dark-haired girl falls through a hidden pit of spikes. Dead. Another young girl appears, wearing a long coat made of animal pelt, a face mask fashioned out of an old sweater and bright pink converse, looking over her body from above. 

When “Yellowjackets” first premiered on streaming platform Showtime in 2021, it quickly garnered rave reviews and a large fanbase. The show, which finished airing its second season in May of 2023, boasts a star-studded cast and a spine-chilling premise. “Yellowjackets” is told from two points in time: the first being New Jersey 1996, where the Wiskayok High School girl’s soccer team is going to nationals. Tragedy strikes when their plane crashes on the way, leaving the Yellowjackets stranded deep in the Canadian wilderness, hundreds of miles off-course, for a total of 19 months before miraculously being found. Cut off from civilization and subject to two brutal winters, the team forms into a cannibalistic cult to survive. In the second timeline, it is 2021, and the survivors of the horrific disaster are trying (and failing) to move on with their lives. In the first season, we know of five confirmed survivors of the plane crash: bored housewife Shauna Sadecki (Melanie Lynskey), high-powered lawyer turned New Jersey Senator candidate Taissa Turner (Tawny Cypress), Travis Martinez (Kevin Alves), reclusive son of the Yellowjackets’ head coach, strange, generally off-putting nurse Misty Quigley (Christina Ricci), and Natalie Scatorccio (Juliette Lewis), who is freshly sober and has recently moved back to Wiskayok. 

To me, what makes Yellowjackets one of the best shows of 2023 is not the cast or premise – though they are both incredible. Instead, it is the way the show discusses the lingering impact horrific trauma has on a person, as well as the struggles of girlhood in general. Out in the wilderness, the team eventually finds an old abandoned cabin in which to take shelter, and slowly become convinced that something supernatural is happening to them. They find the skeletal remains of a man in the cabin’s attic, and a strange symbol carved into its floor and on several trees. Taissa begins sleepwalking in some sort of fugue state where someone or something else seems to be in control. Charlotte “Lottie” Matthews, whose fate remains unknown in season one, starts having strange visions and prophetic dreams. Thus, Lottie quickly becomes the de facto spiritual leader of the group and personifies this supposed supernatural force as “the Wilderness.”

Despite all of this, the show is careful to never definitively confirm whether Something was out there with the team, or if it was all something they created to justify their violent rituals and eventual cannibalism. The symbols could have been carved by the dead man in the attic. Taissa’s sleepwalking could just be her mind trying to cope with the life-altering trauma she just experienced. Lottie had been on antipsychotic medication for most of her childhood, and only began seeing things after her medication ran out. Haunted by the things they did in the name of a supposed “God,” the surviving Yellowjackets are stuck in an indefinite limbo, neither able to absolve themselves of all guilt, or able to face the past and move on. And when the five of them are inextricably drawn back together in the present and get tangled up in each other’s increasingly bad decisions, we are again forced to wonder whether Something is bringing them together, or if their unprocessed group trauma is severely impacting their judgment skills.

Another thing that I find refreshing about Yellowjackets is that in spite of all the horrific things the girls go through and do, this is still a show about scared, complicated teenagers. No one in the wilderness is truly painted as a villain, because they are all young, vulnerable people forced to make impossible choices that most adults would also struggle with. Lottie is not portrayed as some evil mastermind lost in her madness, she actually believes that the Wilderness is trying to protect them at first. She tries to use her newfound “gift” to hold the group together and bring them comfort, even as winter sets in and the bonds of friendship are truly tested. Even when the team does turn to cannibalism to survive, it is as a last resort. They create rules and rituals that seem fair to them, and attempt to find order in inherently volatile circumstances.

While “Yellowjackets” can be gory and hard to watch sometimes due to its setting in the harsh, unforgiving wilderness, after a few episodes it starts to feel like a framework for the true focus of the show: the relationships between the survivors, in both the current and past timelines. The violence may feel shocking at times, but it’s never gratuitous – there’s always a purpose, a deeper meaning. For example, when the group first engages in cannibalism it is not borne of frenzied, desperate starvation (though that does eventually transpire); it is borne from grief, of love and shame. Even in the present timeline, when the survivors are estranged and have decades of unspoken secrets and anger between them, that fierce loyalty is still there, even if all it does is make them worse. In the end, “Yellowjackets” is a show that questions whether the past comes back to haunt us, or if we haunt ourselves.

Hannah Keeney, senior psychological science major and president of the student body, discusses the loss felt by seniors as classes are moved online in their final semester as William Jewell College students.  

A Jewell staff member that I’ve spoken to recently implied that the emotional side of the impact that the student body is facing as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak warrants the grieving process. The stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. For whatever reason, this always angered me in previous encounters with the grieving process. I despised having my feelings reduced to what seemed like menial stages. In my experience you feel all of them at once – except for the last one of course. 

Most of us are familiar with this process – some more intimately than others. Because of my personal encounters with grief, I’ve questioned whether this circumstance was even worth grieving. It seems like everyone has a sadder story right now; aren’t I one of the lucky ones? How childish, I’ve thought to myself, to grieve for something that’s not even tangible. I’ve been hard on myself. I’ve even been critical of other articles and social media posts I’ve seen written. 

The reality of it, though, is that the impacts of this pandemic do warrant a grieving process, and all responses, from doom-and-gloom to the optimist, are valid. Grief, to me, is a series of contradictions: highs and lows, laughing out of fear, crying hysterically, seeing this time as an opportunity for growth, realizing the abundance of loss, the list goes on. There is no wrong way to grieve, and allowing yourself to do so typically leads to some sort of emotional freedom.

However, the class of 2020 is in a particularly odd predicament.

What a peculiar time of life we’re in. We’re grieving our premature end to our Jewell journey yet ready to launch into the rest of our lives. After all, it feels as though we’re done with Jewell. We’re ready to move into the beginning of our careers, graduate school, medical school, law school, physical therapy school or what else our next steps may entail. 

By all accounts this would be an opportune time to be looking at apartments, perfecting our interview skills or getting a head start to our further education. However, our nation – and the world – is put on hold. Those looking at potential first real jobs have the phrase “hiring freeze” laced in their minds as newfound insecurity – as if finding that initial job wasn’t enough pressure. 

We’re still expected to complete our classes and are only hoping that professors show us grace during this trying time. We’re doing all the work without the usual stress-relievers. Those de-stressors are what kept many of us invested in Jewell. They gave us energy and challenged us to have more than a transactional relationship with our education. We didn’t get to say goodbye to those, and now we’re still just going through the motions to get our work done. 

As students of a school that lives and dies by the value of authentic engagement, this feels incommensurate. It’s difficult to even begin to quantify all that we’ve lost. No senior days, no last recitals, no known last meetings in our Greek organizations, no senior lunches with our professors, or proper farewell or truly just soaking in the little things and being able to appreciate them one last time. From sitting outside on a sunny day at Jewell to the final traditions, we’ve been deprived of the simple luxury of closure.

Choosing to acknowledge these issues and address them does not make you weak, it does not make you selfish, and it’s not taking away from other struggles felt by those with sad stories. 

There’s no denying the additional stressors placed on us, in addition to the already pertinent struggles we’ve faced this year. Embracing the struggle, acknowledging it and not trying to avoid the undeniable inconvenience allows you to move forward. This season of life – this strange purgatory – is an indefinite amount of time. This is a large component of the given challenge. 

However, moving forward does not always mean moving onto your next chapter. For the first time in, well, probably four years, we have no expectations. Everything is on hold. We’re free to do what we want. Someone once told me that you can really tell what someone’s made of when they’re under an extreme amount of pressure. Like a water bottle, they said, if it wasn’t a clear bottle, and you couldn’t see what was inside, you’d have to squeeze it to make the contents come out. Once you do, it’s evident what’s inside. 

For the first time in a long time, friends, we have no pressure. The world has halted. We need not advance. We truly can heal ourselves, so when the world starts again, and squeezes us once more, we speak with words of wisdom and acts of kindness.

Although this is not an ideal closing to my favorite chapter of life, I am grateful for what Jewell has brought me. I appreciate everything each of you, class of 2020, has given me. To be amidst such genuine kindness and closeness in one place is something I intend to never take for granted again. My hope for my class is that we take advantage of time. Time to grieve, time to reflect on our last few years, time to thank those who have impacted our lives, time to pray, time to establish staying in touch, time to strengthen relationships and time to heal. 

This is my hope because one day, sooner rather than later, the world will be thrust out of a halt. Once it is, there will be new pressures, and the world will test us once more. We are strong, and what is inside of us is far stronger than the adversity facing us now. For these moments, however, take time. Rest, play and give yourself some grace. We’ve earned it.