‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2: What’s the deal with Lottie’s cult?

For the entirety of Yellowjackets Season 1, we had no idea whether Lottie (Courtney Eaton) was alive in the present day. But in the season finale, we finally got confirmation she’d made it through the wilderness.

What’s Lottie been doing for 25 years since they were finally rescued from the wilderness? Amid Natalie (Juliette Lewis) and Misty’s (Christina Ricci) investigations into the suspicious death of Travis (Andres Soto), we find out Lottie (Simone Kessell) was the one responsible for draining his bank account after he died. How is Lottie connected to Travis’s death? What’s her plan with all of his cash?

Well, in Season 2, we finally catch up with Lottie, who appears to be running a cult — sorry, a wellness retreat — called Camp Green Pine. What exactly is this place? Who are these purple-clad people? Here’s everything we know so far, and we’ll be updating this each week with additional details revealed per episode.

What happened to Lottie after the Yellowjackets were rescued?

Lottie’s return to society was not a smooth one. We get a glimpse into the team’s 1998 return in the second season’s first episode, as we see the girls herded past one hungry press horde. Since their return, Lottie hasn’t uttered a word. She spends her nights silently wandering around her parents’ home, so they have her committed to a psychiatric facility.

During a session of electroconvulsive therapy, Lottie experiences flashbacks to her visions from the wilderness, and later in her hospital room she uses her “healing hand” breathing technique to calm her roommate’s anxiety attack, like she did multiple times with Travis in the woods. It seems Lottie may have been inspired by her own confidence in her healing abilities to open a dedicated facility…in the woods.

What’s the nature of Lottie’s wellness retreat?

When we first meet Lottie as an adult, she’s giving a motivational talk from a minimalist wooden stage in a stunning lakeside location, near a woods. She’s orating to an audience completely dressed in shades of purple — “It’s heliotrope, it’s not purple,” Lottie insists. “We make the dye ourselves from the flowers used to treat wounds.” — while she’s dressed in bright orange. I’m just saying, it’s the same hue as the followers of Rajneeshpuram, the commune established in rural Oregon in the 1980s that formed the focus of Netflix’s Wild Wild Country. Do with that what you will.

“There’s only one person who can really give you what you’re looking for: You. Your truest, most authentic self. That’s why you’re here, so I can introduce you,” Lottie tells her audience. “Right now there is a version of you that knows exactly who you really are and what you really want. A primal, elemental self. And there is nothing more painful than hiding that self.”

But so far, there’s no cult-like activity at Camp Green Pine. Lottie appears to be running a pretty standard holistic mental health retreat for people seeking therapy for trauma or to process negative emotions. In episode 2, when questioned by Natalie, Lottie calmly explains, “We are not a cult. We are an intentional community turning suffering into strength so we can live as our greatest selves.”

Chickens roam freely among the camp’s curated grounds, residents sit in quiet conversation around the communal bonfire when they’re not in their fancy cabins, and late at night, they engage in ritualistic faux burials wearing animal masks and white robes — or sometimes nothing at all. “A therapeutic treatment, one of many we offer here,” Lottie explains in episode 2. Who knows if there’s a quiz night?

But it’s not all Goopy woo-woo wellness vibes all the time, as Lottie momentarily loses her chill over something so small as a health shake ingredient. When her associate Lisa (Nicole Maines) brings her daily shake, she quietly reprimands her. “I smell butterscotch, did you put maca root in here? Hmm. I asked for ashwagandha. I want my focus increased, not my libido.” Feigning she’s fine with it as Natalie is present, Lottie then promptly throws her shake, in a reusable cup with reusable straw, in the garbage.

But there’s one thing at Camp Green Pine it appears Lottie brought back from the woods: that dreaded symbol.

The seemingly apotropaic icon we’ve seen all series immediately comes into play in episode 1, when Natalie notices it being worn as a pendant by Lisa: “That thing around your neck tells me all I need to know.”

Why did Lottie’s group kidnap Natalie?

Essentially, Lottie’s community members kidnapped Natalie to save her life. But they didn’t save her…gently. In the first season’s finale, a group of purple-clad people burst into Natalie’s hotel room just as she’s about to kill herself, dragging her into a van marked with the symbol from the wilderness.

In Season 2’s first episode, Natalie is being held captive in a wooden cabin, where she’s restrained by the wrists. Why does Lottie have bed cuffs installed in her accommodation? “We were afraid you were going to hurt yourself,” says Lisa, who has been assigned to supervise Natalie. It appears to be the type of physical restraint used in psychiatric facilities, and as Natalie realises, it’s not a regular practice residents like Lisa are used to at all.

But Camp Green Pine’s real “Hotel California” energy comes into play when Natalie violently escapes her cabin cell, as followers in purple pursue her through the woodsy darkness, calling out, “Hey, get back here!” Not exactly welcoming, huh?

How did Lottie’s cult begin in the wilderness?

Lottie’s journey toward becoming the Yellowjackets’ spiritual leader in the wilderness runs a steady pace in Season 1, but hasn’t quite been defined yet in Season 2.

Though Lottie’s initial connection to spirituality seems loose in Season 1, her increasingly prominent “visions” define her experience in the wilderness, from her French-speaking outburst during the attic seance to Jackie finding her standing in the lake in her PJs, not to mention her underwater premonition of Laura Lee’s explosive death. Lottie is the first Yellowjacket to find one of the series’ signature spooky symbols carved into a tree, and she dons a crown of antlers in the “Doomcoming” episode, all but confirming she’s the Antler Queen from the Season 1’s opening scene of ritualistic cannibalism.

Tripping on Misty’s mushrooms, Lottie easily leads several fellow Yellowjackets into a bacchanal of screaming, howling girls who pursue Travis for their own hedonistic, violent, and possibly sacrificial means. During their psychedelic journey, Lottie says aloud, “We won’t be hungry much longer.” The next day, she confronts a bear that wanders near their cabin and seemingly kneels before her so she can kill it. This moment seems to solidify her divine association to several followers, including Van and Misty, who join her for a ritualistic offering of the bear’s heart to an altar.

“Shed blood, my beautiful friends, and let the darkness set us free,” Lottie declares.

During their time in the woods, Lottie constantly talks about this darkness in the wilderness “being in all of you.” During the seance scene, she repeats the words, “It wants…It wants…It wants…hungry,” before speaking in French about something wanting blood and declaring, “You must spill blood or else.”

By Season 2’s first episode, Lottie’s not exactly running nightly bloodbath ceremonies, but she has established a ritual of giving Travis and Natalie tea she’s pricked her finger and bled into before each hunt, then drawing the symbol on the window to keep them safe.

Lottie’s gift of foresight has a longer history.

Lottie’s experiences with visions run deeper than her time in the wilderness. In Season 1, the series takes us back into Lottie’s childhood, when she screams in terror from the back seat of her parents’ car right before a crash occurs — one that would have most certainly involved their car had she not screamed, causing her dad to brake. Dismissing the possibility of Lottie’s clairvoyance, her parents decide to send her to a psychiatrist, where she’s prescribed an ambiguous medication for her mental health. In the wilderness, Lottie takes her last remaining pill, and the visions begin.

Why did Lottie take Travis’s money?

It’s confirmed in the season finale that Lottie was the one to drain Travis’s bank account after he died, but did she use the money to fund her retreat? Considering Lottie’s establishment is well up and running, it seems unlikely she used the money for this purpose.

What was Travis and Lottie’s relationship like after they left the wilderness though? Beyond that whole almost-sacrificial moment (whoops!), Travis seems to have found a spiritual connection with Lottie during her anxiety-quelling breathing practices, and Lottie flashes into Travis’ mind during sex with Natalie. Plus, Lottie has been insistent that Javi, his missing brother, is alive in the woods, despite Nat’s criticism of this “false hope.”

When grown-up Natalie confronts Lottie in episode 1, she’s pretty damn pissed, though Lottie claims to have a message for her from Travis. In episode 2, this turns out to be the note Travis wrote and left in his house, reading “Tell Nat she was right.”

Lottie tells Nat the story of Travis’ death as accidental in his quest to somehow communicate with the darkness from the wilderness. Driving to his house after a worrying call, Lottie finds Travis panicking, saying, “When Van almost died, when you did, you both said you saw something. The only way to confront the darkness to find out what it wants is to get as close to death as possible.” Lottie soothes Travis, they both fall asleep, and in the night Travis drives to the ranch where he works, apparently leaving Lottie instructions of how to get into his bank account. Lottie somehow guesses he’s gone to the ranch, finds him in the barn, and says, “He had lit candles around him in the shape of the symbol.” She helps Travis in his dangerous quest, but it goes wrong and he dies by suicide. Lottie leaves one part of out of her story: she sees Laura Lee’s ghost in the barn.

“I didn’t kill him, Nat. I was trying to save him,” Lottie says.

So, is Lottie telling the truth about what happened to Travis? Did she really try to help him? Was it an accident? Why didn’t Lottie try other ways to save Travis? Does it have anything to do with Camp Green Pine? As Natalie says, “I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

There’s plenty more ahead — we’ll keep you updated every week on all things Lottie.

Yellowjackets Season 2 premieres March 24 on Showtime’s website and app, with new episodes released weekly on Fridays(Opens in a new tab). Episodes also air every Sunday on Showtime at 9 p.m. ET, starting March 26.

If you’re feeling suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis, please talk to somebody. You can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988; the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860; or the Trevor Project at 866-488-7386. Text “START” to Crisis Text Line at 741-741. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. ET, or email [email protected]. If you don’t like the phone, consider using the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Chat at crisischat.org(Opens in a new tab). Here is a list of international resources.(Opens in a new tab)