Kailey Schwerman/Showtime
The Yellowjackets girls are hungry, and since its opening moments back in Season 1, the show has promised to feed them. After the infamous pit scene that opened the pilot saw the girls hunting and ritualistically eating one of their own, the rest of the season slowly brought us closer to the cannibalism that was promised—and Sunday’s episode finally brought perhaps the most gruesome meal yet.
In the show’s second season, the feasting finally begins. But much like the rest of the show, the feasting scenes are never simple and never what we expect. Instead, in Season 2 of Yellowjackets, each of the show’s “feasts” has been a seismic, oddly artistic event. In fact, the act of eating takes on a myriad of subtle meanings, as shown through the layered representation of the feasts themselves.
Episode 2, aptly titled “Edible Complex,” concluded with the show’s first cannibal feast since the pilot’s stomach-churning final moments. After the girls place Jackie’s frozen body atop a makeshift pyre and set it alight, the gruesome conclusion seems inevitable: A gust of wind puts out the flame, leaving only burning embers below the body. It is, effectively, the perfect barbecue.