We’ve Finally Figured Out What’s Up With Those Moths on ‘Yellowjackets’
Editor’s Note: Spoilers ahead for Yellowjackets, Season 3
Yellowjackets can’t get enough animal imagery. The bees – a given – have been joined by bears, birds, even frogs in the show’s three seasons. As Season 3 winds down, its antepenultimate episode, “A Normal, Boring Life,” brings in even more symbolic fauna. Moths. In yet another melancholic vision of Jackie (Ella Purnell), Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) dreams of a mundane life as a teen working in a grocery store.
There’s plenty to unpack – Jackie is older, wearing the colors she told Shauna she chose for an imagined shared dorm, pointing out that Shauna’s post-wilderness life hasn’t reflected her dreams of college, literature, and a better life. Shauna realizes she’s ringing up hot chocolate (Jackie’s drink in the vision of her death) and the packaged meat turns to human body parts (you know, the cannibalism) — as above her, the fluorescent light panel fills with moths.
The Death’s-head Hawkmoth Is Loaded With Significance
Shauna wakes from this dream, parked somewhere near Melissa’s (Hilary Swank) adulthood-secret-identity home. In the teen timeline, as Melissa (Jenna Burgess) rambles about everything she wants to do once they get home, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) sees an enormous, singular moth fluttering over Melissa’s head. But it isn’t just any moth. It’s the Death’s-head hawkmoth.
These moths are most recognizable in pop culture as the calling card of fictional serial killer, Buffalo Bill, in Silence of the Lambs. But there’s a record of the Death’s-head being a symbol of death as early as 1875, and it appears in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Sphinx. The moth’s scientific name is a call to mythology and death. The genus Acherontia comes from Acheron, one of the rivers surrounding the Greek Underworld. Acheron is a branch of the river Styx – the river that divides the mortal world from the Underworld – and is known as the River of Woe. One subspecies of the moth, Acherontia Styx, of course references the aforementioned river, which serves as a passage from life to death, more directly.
Acherontia Lachesis and Acherontia Atropos reference the Ancient Greek Moirai, commonly called The Fates in modern English language interpretation. The Moirai are three sisters who weave the fabric of life and death. Clotho spins the fabric of life. Lachesis decides how long the thread should go. And Atropos cuts the fabric at its end. Atropos is most directly associated with death. In Yellowjackets, the introduction of this moth does spur a trinity. Lottie (Courtney Eaton), then Shauna, and then Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) all say that leaving the wilderness would be wrong shortly after Shauna’s wilderness vision of one and her present daydream of them.
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Could Kodi be the key?
But the Moirai, while intriguing and on-brand for a show that has intentionally and repeatedly referenced mythology, aren’t the only potential meaning. Where can these moths be found? In beehives. All three species of this moth raid beehives by mimicking the scent of the bees. It’s speculated that the chirp these moths can make might mimic the sound vibrations of a Queen bee. With this disguise, they can eat all the honey from the hive, sometimes without being detected. While they may never attack the bees, this often leads to casualties. Sometimes, the disturbance can even take down a hive.
Who – or What – Does This Moth Represent in ‘Yellowjackets’?
Taking a step back from the symbolism of the moth species, there’s the popular idiom, “Like a moth to a flame.” Meaning, someone pulled towards something dangerous – even fatal – with little ability to stop themselves. An early documentation of this can be found in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: Thus hath the candle singed the moth, referring to Arragon’s continued pursuit of Portia, despite no real love between them. As the moth appears in Shauna and Melissa’s hut and later in a guilt-infused Jackie dream outside of Melissa’s house, the show could be linking the moths to Shauna’s inability to walk away from loose ends in her past, one of those ends being Melissa.
But Yellowjackets is rarely specific in its mythology or allusions without purpose. While there’s certainly a play on Shauna and Melissa’s toxic and warped love story, the more obvious threat when the moths appear is Kodi (Joel McHale). If nothing else, Kodi’s disdain for the wilderness troupe is hardly subtle. Edwin (Nelson Franklin), the frog researcher axed by Lottie, previously pointed out to Hannah (Ashley Sutton) that Kodi’s clothes aren’t his own. The inside of Kodi’s jacket is labeled, “Erik Cheung.” Just before Edwin discovers this, Kodi says “the wilderness provides,” a phrase we mostly hear from Lottie, as he prepares a wild rabbit. Edwin always raises concerns that Kodi is leading them in the opposite direction to where they’re meant to be and may have broken the phone on purpose. It’s possible that Kodi either knew no rescue point or knew one but wanted to lead them elsewhere. Perhaps the moths were just a warning not to follow him. Or, Kodi was a very good red herring.
With Kodi now dead, stabbed by Hannah (and Hannah and Melissa taking on larger roles in opposite timelines), they’re the most likely representation of the moth. Past and present Shauna are doing their fair share of chasing after Melissa (likely orchestrated by Melissa in the present day). Melissa uses flame in a way, plugging her fireplace to smoke the metaphorical beehive. But in Episode 9, “How The Story Ends,” her relationship with Hannah is certainly evolving. Shauna pocketed her lock of hair when they first chased after Hannah. In this episode, Shauna twirls that lock of hair in her makeshift bed. Hannah is both a foil and a parallel to Shauna. She’s a teen mother with a living child she gave up for adoption so that she could still pursue her dreams. She’s who Shauna might have been without the plane crash. Hannah choosing to lie and say that Kodi stole the knife, then killing him before he could protest, certainly echoes Shauna’s willingness to survive and violent instincts. Hannah could very well be the moth in bee’s clothing.
A schism between the remaining teens had already happened. All that’s left is for official factions to form. Hannah could very well become the head of one of these schisms. She could reveal to Shauna and those who followed her lead that Mari and Natalie not only gave her the knife, but also planned to make a run for it with Kodi and leave them. This might inspire loyalty, but even without that, it gives Hannah control. This is made stronger by the likelihood that the long strands of brunette hair that are pinned to the Antler Queen belong to Hannah. They’re all the same color, length, and texture. Shauna twirling her strands of hair now could represent that Shauna will overcome her and honor her by keeping the hair as a royal adornment. It’s strange, but not any stranger than eating your dead best friend’s ear as an expression of grief and love.
Hannah as a kind of clan leader and potential Queen, echoes the fable Kodi shares with Edwin and Hannah in the tent. Frogs on a log ask their god for a new king and the new king is a heron that eats them. Hannah has spent a lot of time lording over frogs.
Shauna and Her Moths Is Another Ambiguous Mystery
Where Lottie‘s visions have flickered between tangible symptoms of schizophrenia and less-explained phenomena like the birds, the bear, and her episodes of fluent French, and Tai has Other Tai and her childhood visions of death to contend with, Shauna seems to have the moths and the moths alone. These moths are the first time that Shauna has given in to the idea of some sort of guidance from the wilderness. While she tells Lottie, “I’m not staying because of you… or it,” it’s clear that both past and present-day Shauna are shaken by its appearance. Shauna has, at the very least, a more feral instinct that protects her, however inappropriately for civilized life, and it echoes that central argument between herself and Lottie in the season 2 finale: “You know there’s no ‘it,’ right? It was just us.” But she responds, “Is there a difference?”
With Melissa and Van acknowledging the continued ambiguity of the wilderness in “How The Story Ends,” the moths themselves stand as much of a chance of being a wilderness omen as a coincidental moth appearance at the right time. Perhaps the moths exist only to Shauna. For now, this is another piece of the puzzle, as delightfully ambiguous as every puzzle piece before it. Whether it becomes a mystery solved or a permanent question mark, it’s undoubtedly one of the most important representations of Shauna’s story in particular to date.
