This article contains spoilers for Yellowjackets season three, episode eight, “A Normal, Boring Life.”
Melanie Lynskey and Hilary Swank playing cannibal ex-lovers sounds like a millennial lesbian’s fever dream, but with this week’s Yellowjackets, it’s officially a reality.
The identity of Swank’s character has been kept closely under wraps ever since the actress was officially announced as part of the season three cast. After months of speculation, episode eight — titled “A Normal, Boring Life” — finally confirmed that she plays the adult version of Melissa, a.k.a. “hat girl,” with whom teenage Shauna shared a contentious situationship in the Canadian wilderness.
You might be wondering why our adult survivors never thought to mention the fact that adult Melissa is still hanging out on this mortal coil, seemingly rocking the exact same grubby backwards baseball cap as her high-school counterpart. I know her younger self only gained the ability to speak this season, but still! She seems worth mentioning! Well, apparently Melissa faked her own suicide after the girls got back and started a new life under the name “Kelly.”
“I had no other choice,” Melissa spits at Shauna, who kicked off the episode by sneaking into her house with a hunting knife (classic Shauna). “After we made it back, I was no longer one of you. And you scared the absolute fucking shit out of me.”
Although we don’t know exactly what alienated Melissa from her teammates in the past, I’m guessing that it has something to do with the late Hannah (Ashley Sutton), one of the adult frog scientists who stumbled across the Yellowjackets’ latest cannibalistic feast a few episodes ago. Adult Tai previously remarked that teen Melissa grew close with Hannah in the wilderness, but episode eight takes that closeness to a new level with the reveal that adult Melissa is now married to and has a child with Hannah’s daughter Alex.
Both teen and adult Shauna are grappling with her penchant for trauma-fueled bloodlust and cruelty this year, in ways that have proved controversial with Yellowjackets’ fandom. In perhaps her most out-of-touch moment yet, adult Shauna even asks Melissa if she’s still in love with her (girl, really?!). But Shauna was right about Melissa sending her an incriminating DAT tape with audio evidence of the Yellowjackets committing some Lord of the Flies-level acts. Melissa tells Shauna that, after learning about adult Natalie’s death on the grounds of Lottie’s doomed cult, she became consumed with guilt and paranoia; after all, her own wife doesn’t know that Melissa knew her mother, let alone probably witnessed her death.
