Tamal Kundu
‘Yellowjackets’ is a Showtime thriller drama series that revolves around members of a New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes in the Ontario Wilderness on its way to the Nationals in Seattle. Confronted by the harsh conditions, the survivors resort to drastic measures, including cannibalism, as the weather deteriorates and the resources become scarce. Twenty-five years later, those who have made it out of the Wilderness alive are still traumatized by the experience. This is when a few of them start getting mysterious postcards later associated with blackmail. If you are wondering about the person responsible for this, we got you covered.
Misty and Nat Discuss Mysterious Postcards
The mystery about the postcard sender prevails almost throughout the first season. In episode 2, Misty Quigley (Christina Ricci as adult; Samantha Hanratty as teen) returns home with her date to find Natalie (Juliette Lewis as adult; Sophie Thatcher as teen) waiting for her with a gun in her hand. This spooks Misty’s date, and he promptly leaves. Nat reveals that she has received a postcard referring to the 19 months they spent in the Wilderness. One side of the postcard has the phrase “Wish you were here” written over a photo of the frozen Ontario landscape. On the other side, there is a drawing of the mysterious Symbol that will become one of the most enduring mysteries in the series. It seems to depict a woman hanging upside down from a hook.
Misty claims that she didn’t send the postcard. To prove her innocence, she shows Nat the postcard she received. It is then revealed that Taissa has received a postcard as well. Throughout the first season, several characters appeared as probable suspects before the truth was revealed. It was briefly implied that the adult Jackie might be behind the postcards before the revelation that she died in the Wilderness.
The viewers were also led to believe that one of the other Yellowjackets was responsible for the postcards. By then, it was already established that several others besides Taissa (Tawny Cypress as adult; Jasmin Savoy Brown as teen), Shauna (Melanie Lynskey as adult; Sophie Nélisse as teen), Misty, and Nat made it back to civilization alive and have since gone off the grid. It was also possible that a disgruntled family member of one of the Yellowjackets who didn’t return was behind the postcards.
Ultimately, it became clear that the fact that Shauna didn’t receive a postcard was a clue about the identity of the sender. But even then, there was a smokescreen in the shape of Adam Martin (Peter Gadiot), an artist Shauna met when they got involved in a vehicular accident. After concluding that her husband was having an affair with a woman named Bianca, Shauna began her own affair with Adam, only to conclude later, albeit erroneously, that he sent the postcards.
In episode 5, Nat and Taissa received messages from the postcard sender, demanding $50,000. In episode 7, with Taissa and Nat chasing the blackmailer, they got covered in glitter. Shauna later discovered a few specks of glitter inside her closet, where she hid Adam when her husband Jeff (Warren Kole) came home. This leads her to conclude that Adam was the blackmailer. She went to his apartment to confront him. It was briefly implied that Adam is Javi, one of the two male survivors stranded in the Wilderness with the Yellowjackets, but that was eventually revealed to be misdirection. Shauna killed Adam, thinking he was the blackmailer, only to find glitter in Jeff’s clothing later.
After she confronted him, Jeff admitted that he was the blackmailer and the one who sent the postcards. His furniture business had been struggling, so he took money from loan sharks. As he realized that he didn’t have enough to pay them back, he resorted to blackmailing. He read Shauna’s diaries and knew what the survivors did in the Wilderness. It turns out that he wasn’t even having an affair. Bianca was actually one of the loan sharks, and she terrified him. Jeff explained that it was never his intention to drag Shauna into this mess before assuring her that he was able to pay the loan sharks with the money he got from Taissa and Nat.
Read More: Why Did Misty Destroy the Flight Recorder in Yellowjackets?
