At the beginning ofYellowjackets,Lottie Matthews (Courtney Eaton) flies under the radar. Slowly, she starts to see and feel things that leave the other girls questioning her sanity until the events at the séance thrust her into the middle of the mystery unfolding in those woods. Eventually, it’s revealed that she had experienced premonitions from a young age; Her mother thought she had a gift while her father thought she needed to be medicated.
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When the medication runs out, her premonitions and visions become more vivid as Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) teaches her to trust her gift. By the final episode, this quiet side characterdrives the surprise twist of Yellowjackets' first season. Most of Lottie’s premonitions came to pass in obvious ways, like the deer shedding its antlers and being diseased and inedible. Yet other premonitions remain open for interpretation and unresolved going into season 2.
“Doesn’t Feel Right.”
The first hint of Lottie’s intuition comes surprisingly early in the series. It’s subtle enough to go unnoticed on first viewing but stands out on a rewatch. When Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) talks with some of the girls about freezing out Allie (Pear Amanda Dickson) so she doesn’t cost them the game at states, Lottie is resistant.
The only reason she gives is that it “doesn’t feel right.” Sure enough, Taissa’s plan ends in disaster with Allie’s leg breaking in a horrific way.
Finding the cabin in the woods constitutes a stroke of good luck offering a safer place to shelter and a doomsday prepper’s stash of ammunition for hunting. Lottie, however, refuses to set foot in the place. When Taissa tries to get her inside, she talks about the bad feelings she has and warns her friend that bad things happened here.
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Taissa talks Lottie into going inside but awakens in the middle of the night to find her in the attic. They see the remains of a man who appears to have killed himself long ago. After burying the body, Lottie continues to hear noises in the attic and is surprised when the other girls hear them too. This man’s death certainly counts as a terrible thing happening in the cabin, but the strange symbol carved in the floor indicates that more may be revealed about this premonition.
The Séance
When scratching in the attic disturbs the team, they hold a mock séance in order to turn the scary situation into a joke. What starts as a game spirals out of control when the candles go out and Lottie appears to be possessed. Bouncing between French and English she goes on and on about something that wants blood, warning that blood has already been spilled in this place and that whatever demands it is hungry. She informs Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) that “it’s in you already,” and tells the team, “You must spill blood. Or else.”
This fulfillment of these words has been hinted about since the opening scene. Though the first season doesn’t reveal entirely how it will play out, you know plenty of bloodshed lurks in the Yellowjackets’ future. Van (Liv Hewson) and Jackie (Ella Purnell) both have an experience with the entity that lurks in the woods while they’re near death. Shauna assumes “it’s already in you” is a reference to her baby, but it seems more likely that Lottie is referring to the entity. Could this be what later drives Shauna to consider tasting the bear’s blood?
The Baptism Vision
Lottie seeks help from Laura Lee to make sense of her premonitions, and Laura Lee encourages her to accept Jesus for help doing the right thing and discerning the true from the false. During her baptism, Lottie has a vision. She sinks deeper and deeper into the lake before walking into an underground corridor that looks like a mechanical room. She sees a stag and follows it through the corridors to an altar covered in candles. She walks up a set of stairs lined with candles and lights the center candle. It burns brighter and higher until Lottie opens her eyes.
Although Lottie sometimes struggles to make sense of the images she sees, her visions tend to come true in literal ways. A fireball becomes an explosion, and red smoke winds up being a flare. Knowing this, the baptism vision may reveal a place the girls will find later on. Lottie’s candle does seem figurative, however, and its unnaturally large flame may indicate her coming ascension to leading the team and subsequently the cult.
“It didn’t want him to leave.”
As Lottie comes up out of the water, she sees Laura Lee’s head surrounded by light, giving her a haloed appearance like a saint as they are traditionally portrayed in art. The halo becomes a fiery explosion turning Laura Lee into a blackened silhouette, hearkening to the first loss among the survivors. When they first discovered the plane tangled in vines, Lottie warned the team that “it” didn’t want the man from the cabin to leave. When Jackie found Lottie standing in the water, she said she had expected it to be warmer. Laura Lee misinterprets the fire as a sign of the Holy Spirit and disregards the warnings when she boards the plane and flies for help. It explodes over the lake,killing Laura Leeand raining fiery wreckage into the water where Lottie collapses and weeps for her friend.
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While the explosion literally happened, the halo may warrant further contemplation. Perhaps it indicated that Laura Lee could be a force of good to guide Lottie in the proper use of her gift, but her death would extinguish that light. After things spiral out of control at the end of the season, Lottie’s final words are, “Versez le sang, mes beaux amis, (shed blood, my beautiful friends), and let the darkness set us free.”
“I Think It’ll Keep You Safe.”
When Taissa and Van prepare to lead a small group of girls to search for civilization, Lottie dreams of red smoke and a river of blood. She gives Van a bone that didn’t burn from the incinerated deer and tells her she thinks it will keep her safe. The river of blood winds up being water reddened by minerals while the red smoke comes from a flare gun.
There is no definitive answer on whether the bone keeps Van safe because Taissa wanders off with it while sleepwalking. Without the bone, Van winds up mauled by a wolf and nearly killed. She hangs onto the bone for the rest of the season, surviving at least that long and becoming one of Lottie’s first followers.
A lot happens when the wrong kind of mushrooms end up in the stew, making it hard to suss out what is a premonition and what is part of the trip. Lottie becomes fascinated with the hollowed-out stump and tells them, “Something’s coming. We won’t be hungry much longer.” This premonition passes when a bear wanders into camp and lies down, allowing Lottie to kill it. Lottie’s foresight coupled with providing for the group thrusts her into leadership. She begins creating a religious practice that the others participate in, and Van and Misty join her in offering the bear’s heart in the stump.
After Jackie sleeps with Travis (Kevin Alves), Lottie leads the team to confront her, telling her that she took something that didn’t belong to her. Lottie also tells Jackie, “Don’t you understand? You don’t matter anymore.” This might simply mean Jackie has lost her power in the group, or it could indicate thatLottie knew Jackie’s life was about to end.When Travis flees, Lottie sees him as the stag from the mechanical room. They chase him, trap him in the stump, and Lottie tries to get Shauna to butcher him. “It’s okay,” she says, “It wants us to.” Travis survives this incident, but the scene of his death years later contains traces of a candlelit ritual involving the mysterious symbol. Did Lottie eventually manage to sacrifice Travis? The final warning from the trip comes after Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) stops them from killing Travis. Lottie says, “It’s in all of us, you know? Even him. Even you.” This seems to confirm that her warning to Shauna wasn’t about the baby. Whatever entity lurks in the wilderness has begun to affect the whole team.
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