“We’re all made of lies”: “Yellowjackets” gives us more of Misty’s origin story in “Digestif”

After every episode of “Yellowjackets,” as the credits roll and that final song plays, my brain is simply buzzing with thoughts. We’ve been given a lot to chew on, just three episodes in to Season 2, but after sitting through “Digestif,” cannibalism, men with no eyes and blood-clot beehives weren’t at the top of my mind. I was thinking about online dating.

About 20 years ago, I met a girl on Facebook who lived in Australia and, over the course of a few months and about 2,000 exchanged messages, fell in love with her. That love grew not from the photos she shared with me, or the things that she wrote to me, but from what I built up in my own mind about her. I didn’t know this person. We never met in real life or even talked on the phone, but I carried her in my heart every day until all of a sudden — I didn’t. She met someone in Australia. I met someone in Chicago. And that whole thing, which felt so real for so long, was just done. Thinking of this situation, and how describing it to my friends at the time would elicit looks of deep concern or even pity, I can easily draw a comparison to Misty Quigley — played as a teen by Samantha Hanratty and as an adult by Christina Ricci — who is also a master of making something out of nothing.

For as large of a role as Misty plays in this show, and for as much as she talks, we know the least about her. And what we have learned about her seems to be comically conflicting. She was an equipment manager for a soccer team in high school, but seems to have no interest in sports otherwise. She used her first aid skills to be of use after she and the rest of the team crashed into the Canadian wilderness — and furthered those skills into a career in nursing as an adult — yet is shown to be malicious and manipulative towards those under her care. She was in hot pursuit of Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) in the wilderness, and kept that same vibe going as an adult — pursuing men and luring them to her home for purposes that don’t seem genuine or even romantically inclined — seemingly uninterested in anyone other than her “friends” from the team. And she loves birds, but is consistently shown with clothing and other accessories featuring cats, their most likely predator. Put together, the pieces of her life don’t fit because they’re affectations. Like she’s putting on a play of her life rather than living it. And in “Digestif,” we see how she learned to do that.

After Lottie (Courtney Eaton) suggests that the girls put together a baby shower for Shauna’s (Sophie Nélisse) soon-to-be-born child (which Lottie somehow knows will be a boy), Misty isn’t sure what to present as a gift until her new BFF, Crystal (Nuha Jes Izman) steps in with a suggestion.

Bonding over a love for theatre, Misty says, “I’m always in awe whenever I can see someone becoming someone else,” but worries that she won’t be able to follow the prompt to “find what’s true” in her newfound babycoming thespianism.

“Then do what my acting coach said,” Crystal tells her. “Find the biggest truth of all. We’re all made of lies.”

This advice not only leads Misty to deliver a crowd-pleasing rendition of Sally Field’s heart-wrenching graveside monologue from “Steel Magnolias,” it serves as the origin story for the coping mechanism that will carry her through adulthood. “Fake it till you make it” has a much deeper meaning when there is no real “you” to be in the first place.

Nuha Jes Izman as Teen Crystal, Samantha Hanratty as Teen Misty and Alexa Barajas as Teen Mari (Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME)

One of the reasons why it’s so hard to figure out what’s real and what’s delusion in “Yellowjackets” is because, in a sense, everything we’re being shown is delusion. The events we’re shown, which we as viewers athletically build theories on, are either recounted as memories of severe trauma or given to us via the actions and tellings of extremely unreliable adult narrators. None of these main characters can be trusted, the actors playing them and the showrunners who created them have warned of this since the beginning. Circling back to my intro, if any of the adult Yellowjackets were to dip into the world of online dating, they’d all likely be catfish. Misty especially.

In the present-day timeline, while adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) uses the carjacking of her family’s minivan as an excuse to hornily threaten to murder a man, we see Misty’s acting skills in action. To the tune of a highly anticipated Veruca Salt needle-drop, “Seether” plays over a scene in which she walks the distance from her car to Walter’s boat as though she’s never been in public in her life. 

In last week’s recap, I questioned if Javi (Luciano Leroux) would end up being the guy who’d been living at the same motel as Natalie, but that was wishful thinking. Which I’ve already proven here that I have a history of doing. That their would-be informant is Randy (Jeff Holman) ends up being way more useful though, in terms of advancing the plot, because he knows that Jeff (Warren Kole) was the blackmailer in Season 1, not Adam (Peter Gadiot) and soon Misty will too, which will lead to Shauna having to explain why she implicated everyone in a murder for no reason.

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At first, their interrogation of Randy seems like it yielded no information that will get them closer to finding Natalie, but then they realize that his mention of weirdos in purple guzzling Fanta from the motel’s vending machine can produce a much needed piece of evidence. Walter (Elijah Wood) gets their credit card info from the machine and traces it back to a location in New York. Next episode we’ll see them on a road trip that will likely lead them to Lottie’s cult, where Misty will be reunited with Natalie, an event that will be blissful for Misty alone. 

In snippets from the Season 2 trailer, we see Misty dressed in purple, banging on a bongo alongside a bunch of Lottie’s followers. So that leads us to believe that even after locating Natalie, they don’t leave right away. Is it that Natalie needs convincing to leave, or does Misty decide that her next “role” is that of a cult member? Let’s not forget who was kneeling next to teen Lottie at the bear heart altar at the end of Season 1. Misty was on one side of Lottie, and Van was on the other. We’ll see her in the next episode too. If you didn’t quite catch what Taissa’s “bad one” said to her in the mirror during the scene that took place at Simone’s (Rukiya Bernard) hospital, it was “Go to her.” For Van’s (Lauren Ambrose) sake, let’s hope she learned how to tie a stronger knot over the past 25 years. 

QUICK BITES:

• Ben’s fantasies about staying with Paul (François Arnaud) and never getting on that plane to nationals were heartbreaking. If only he’d taken those keys.
• Tai ate Jackie’s face. SHE ATE HER FACE!
• “You should never swing an axe that close to your hand, you could hurt yourself.” Even when Natalie is being menacing, she’s still so reasonable.
• Mossy tree soaked in blood at Lottie’s cult and hallucinations of bloody beehives . . . seems like she’s got some “blood on her hands” we’ll learn more about later. As Lottie is crying about her bees, a cult member comes behind her and is heard saying “il veut du sang,” which translates to “It (or he) wants blood.” This, of course, only happened in Lottie’s mind, but it shows that she hasn’t fully healed as much as she’d like to put on, and that the darkness is still calling to her, same as the others. 
• Jeff telling Shauna that strawberry lube is only for bisexuals and goths is such a Jeff thing to say. As is, “Have you ever churned butter?”
• “Your cat is disgusting,” – Chop shop guy
• Shauna holding that gun was very this. 
• Walter’s boat being named Great Expectations was such a missed opportunity. Should have been named The Hobbit. 
• “Have you ever peeled the skin off a human corpse?” Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s. 
• Why did Tai call Jessica Roberts on her way out of the hospital to go find Van?