By JILLIAN KRISTINA
Here we are, just days after the seasonal turning point of the Summer Solstice (and for our friends in the southern hemisphere, the Winter Solstice). A celebration of abundance, fertility and the pulsating primal apex of life. The sacred herbs were gathered on this day, stored for the approaching darkness and the medicine it would require: St. John’s Wort, lady’s bedstraw, mullein, lavender and mugwort; additionally calendula, chamomile, rosemary, thyme, mint and verbena were revered and harvested. When nightfall finally descended, the fires of virility and passion were lit – worshiped, even – as the flames kissed the now blackened sky, perhaps in their own way paying homage to the black that would soon trade places with the light.
It is here that the earth and the sky touch. It is here where liminality reigns. It is here where spirits walk…hunt…amongst us.
“Do you feel that?” Lottie (Courtney Easton) asks, staring past the girls, visually sweeping the lush green surroundings towering over them.
[It’s] “Like magic coming up from the ground,” Van (Liv Hewson) responds hazily, as if slipping into the dank, shifting liminality of the soil.
They may not be celebrating the Summer Solstice, but on the penultimate episode of the first season of YELLOWJACKETS, the starved, stranded teens are marking a turning point of their own – DOOMCOMING. And thanks to Misty (Samantha Hanratty), a turning point that will ignite a voracious transformation.
Whether they realize it or not, the group has begun curating their own ravaged version of the Witches Sabbath.
Meandering through the forest, they gathered the herbs and flowers for their crowns, contemplating the last celebration of their young lives. They crafted the wreathes they would place on their heads, donned themselves in silken dresses, fur pelts and dripping red lips. They walked, arm in arm, framed by torches, their pagan procession leading to the central focus of their last rites ritual – the bonfire.
The psychedelic stew, served; the wine, poured. The gifts from the land, ingested. The sleeping – waiting – spirits, awakened in fresh vessels. The old gods become flesh. Thus begins their initiation into the phantasmal advance which takes place as the last breath of Summer concedes to not just Fall, but Winter, and with it, the Wild Hunt.
Scholar Susan Greenwood describes the Wild Hunt as an event that “primarily concerns an initiation into the wild, untamed forces of nature in its dark and chthonic aspects.”
Carlo Ginzburg, author of Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, describes the Wild Hunt as, “Metamorphoses, cavalcades, ecstasies, followed by the egress of the soul in the shape of an animal—these are different paths to a single goal. Between animals and souls, animals and the dead, animals and the beyond, there exists a profound connection.”
According to Germanic myth, the hunt was led by Woden, or as he has come to be more commonly known, Odin. This ghastly, ghostly horde sped through the woodlands, raising the winds, the storms, and the howls of the savage beasts lurking in the shadows. It is said that those with magical inclinations willingly joined in the hunt, even leaving slumbering bodies to become one with the wood and the dead.
So it should be no surprise that Lottie, one whose sensitivities were subdued at an early age would, without the use of the medication prescribed to block them, and with the enhancement of psychotropic mushrooms, so naturally shift into the role of Odin, or Perchta, herself.
But more on Perchta in a bit. Now, it’s time to focus on the new initiates.
Turning and twisting into trees themselves, they surrendered their sensibilities and began swaying with the primal pulse of the land. Singing, laughing, embracing, they invited the ancients into their circle, engaging with an energy they could never comprehend.
“To the ancient Gods of the sky and the dirt, we give our thanks.”
Then the land – the old gods – seized the initiates and possessed their souls. They gifted them the gnashing teeth of the beast; the wild sight of the nocturnal carnivores. The pack formed naturally, led by carnal blood lust, doggedly pursuing their singular target…
Travis (Kevin Alves).
“The Stag. We have to catch it.”
The hunters began to encircle the hunted. A feeding frenzy of lust ensues, teetering on the brink of devouring. He sees their teeth turn to fangs. He sees their eyes, blackened.
Now let’s bring the focus back to Perchta. An Alpine witch, she was also amongst those named as leaders of the Hunt. What makes this figure so intriguing is that she is very specifically recounted as the wielder of a knife of sizable proportion. A knife, much like the knife that Shauna (Sophia Nelisse) grabs as the hunt for the Stag (Travis) ensues. Perchta is also associated with the Perchten, a troupe of lost souls, demonic in appearance. A horde of the damned.
“It’s in all of us, you know. Even him. Even you.”
And although Shauna would be the one to take up the knife, Lottie would be the one whispering in her ear, urging her towards bloodshed.
“It’s ok. It wants us to.”
Another detail attached to the Wild Hunt is that pertaining to those remaining outside after dark. Those who could be swept away with the speed and ferocity of the howling specters, dropped somewhere in the woods, far away. Sometimes, never to be seen again.
As the huntresses pursue the Stag, knife in hand, Shauna pauses as Travis’s younger brother, Javi (Luciano Leroux), watching from the brush, stops her. In compassionate restraint, the possessed Shauna utters one word:
“Run.”
The chase culminates at the bonfire which the transformation began, a sort of hierarchy forming. With the Stag cornered and tethered, Shauna approaches, hesitates. After the new leader urges her forward, she begins to cut below the Stag head atop Travis’s body. The charge of the Hunt is almost complete, that is, until Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) rushes in for the rescue, just as the first drops of blood begin to run.
Travis is saved. Javi is missing. The girls awake the next morning on the forest floor; confused, dazed, foggy. The Hunt has commenced, but their supernatural hell has only just begun.
