When "Yellowjackets" debuted its pilot episode in 2021, its use of a dual timeline to introduce the series' core characters as teens, and then as adults, caused viewers to worry about the safety of people already shown to have survived the worrisome thing.
Over the course of the episodes leading up to the Season 2 finale, we came to understand the literal and figurative ways in which we were right to be concerned. Witnessing most of the '90s Yellowjackets make it through 19 months trapped in remote Canadian wilderness by sacrificing the goodness innate to youth — both outwardly as well as inwardly — they made it possible for their adult selves to live, not knowing, but maybe sensing somewhere deep inside, that there would come a day when it would become too burdensome to push away the feeling that they didn't deserve to.
