Tamal Kundu
‘Yellowjackets’ is a Showtime thriller drama series that revolves around the members of a New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team who gets stranded in the Ontario wilderness after the plane taking them to the nationals in Seattle crashes in 1996. As the winter arrives and resources become scarce, the survivors are forced to take drastic steps, including cannibalism. In the present day, those who have made it out of the Wilderness alive still carry the trauma of their experience.
Charlotte “Lottie” Matthews (Simone Kessell as adult; Courtney Eaton as teen) is one of the important characters in the show. As her adult version is absent in the first season, many viewers presumed she might have died. However, the adult Lottie is introduced in season 2. We learn that she leads the cult-like organization that kidnapped Nat right before she was about to shoot herself. In season 2 episode 7, certain events make us wonder whether the therapist Lottie sees is real or a product of her imagination. Here is what we think on the subject. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Is Lottie’s Therapist a Hallucination?
Lottie had been struggling with visions even before the plane crash. She was at least ten years old when she had her first vision. Lottie was in a car with her parents when she suddenly started screaming. Soon, there was an accident on the road right in front of them. Lottie’s mother came to believe that her daughter possessed precognitive ability, but Lottie’s father concluded that she had mental health problems and took her to the correct professionals. Lottie was apparently diagnosed with schizophrenia and was heavily medicated until the crash. As her meds ran out, her visions returned. Lottie became a shaman-like figure in the community of survivors and priestess to the entity she called the Wilderness.
After returning to civilization, Lottie was institutionalized and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy treatments. In the present day, other survivors think she is in a facility in Switzerland until they discover this is not the case. Lottie reveals in season 2 episode 7 that she left the facility a decade ago.
It seems that Lottie made herself believe her visions resulted from her condition, completely disregarding the notion that she had a gift. She claims that she set up Camp Green Pine, the wellness center that acts like a cult for all intent and purpose, to help people. However, things start to change when the other Yellowjackets return to her life. With them, her visions come back as well.
Lottie has a horrific vision in which she visits the beehives on her property and finds that the honeycombs are covered in blood, and the bees are dead. Disturbed, she goes to speak to her therapist, only to discover he is on vacation. And this is how she meets his replacement, a woman who initially has a conservative response when Lottie begins speaking about her visions.
However, in episode 7, the therapist seems excited and encourages Lottie to embrace the freedom she experiences whenever she is around fellow Yellowjackets. Soon enough, the scene shifts and Lottie finds herself sitting opposite what she perceives as the embodiment of the Wilderness — a woman-like figure with a veil and antlers.
The entity speaks to Lottie in her own voice before the scene shifts again, and Lottie finds herself in an empty room. This indicates that the therapist was never real. Depending on what one’s view is of Lottie’s abilities, the therapist was either the Wilderness itself or a hallucination. We haven’t yet got the full confirmation of whether Lottie’s visions are real. So, until that happens, the mystery will remain around them. But if we regard the therapist as yet another manifestation of Lottie’s schizophrenia, it can help explain why she was initially skeptical about Lottie’s visions. She was simply embodying what was going on in Lottie’s mind as she (Lottie) was still clinging to the rational explanation. As Lottie becomes exposed to other Yellowjackets, her old self resurfaces, and that is represented by the last vision involving the therapist.
Read More: What Happened to Crystal’s Body? Is She Alive in Yellowjackets?
