‘Yellowjackets’: The Show’s 5 Best Couples, Ranked
Yellowjackets is not a romantic show, to put it mildly. This is a story where people fall into spike pits during ritualistic hunts and are eaten for sustenance in the Canadian wilderness. It’s many things — gory, intense, unpredictable — but it’s definitely not rom-com material. With that said, there have been several relationships among the main characters that tug at viewers’ hearts (and usually, this is a show where they’re roasting hearts on spits).
We’ve had pairings that got together despite the brutality and uncertainty of their circumstances, a married couple whose various conflicts have spawned fan-favorite in-jokes, a couple of weirdos on each other’s same weird-frequency, and pairings who didn’t technically end up together, but we wish they’d had the chance. Here are the Yellowjackets couples we’ve rooted for and enjoyed watching throughout the show’s first three seasons, and who we’re looking forward to seeing one more time in the fourth.
Yellowjackets, Season 4 Premiere, Friday, November 20, Paramount+ Premium
5. Misty & Walter
We’d feel better wholeheartedly shipping Misty (Christina Ricci) and Walter (Elijah Wood) if we could get a handle on what’s going on with Walter. On one hand, he and Misty have a lot in common; they’re quirky, they share a love of musicals and true crime, and they have a mutual serial-killer streak. (On a show like Yellowjackets, that’s almost swoonworthy.) On the other hand, throughout the two seasons in which Walter’s been involved, we’ve never gotten a good sense for what’s motivating his mysterious obsession with Misty.
It’s possible that it’s exactly what it seems. Maybe Walter loves her, in their weird, “you’re perfect for each other, but never involve anyone else in what you’ve got going on” type of way. However, it’s also plausible that Walter’s fixation on Misty is a cover for something more sinister — a determination to dig into what happened in the wilderness, or even a familial tie to one of the people who died there. Does Walter love Misty, or is he trying to expose her and her friends? We don’t know, but we hope the final season will explain.
4. Shauna & Jeff (and Jackie...?)
If anyone on Yellowjackets deserves immense credit for everything they’ve dealt with, it’s Jeff Sadecki (Warren Kole). It’s not easy being Shauna Shipman’s (Melanie Lynskey) husband. Granted, Jeff’s not blameless. All the drama in Season 1’s adult timeline unfolded because he’d been sending anonymous threats blackmailing the survivors into giving him money, which he was using to pay off his debts. After that, though, the drama has been on Shauna’s side… so much so that Jeff helps her cover up a murder, and then, for their daughter Callie’s sake, leaves Shauna and takes Callie (Sarah Desjardins) with him.
Honestly, we’re not totally sure why Shauna chose to be with Jeff in the first place. When they were teenagers, Shauna (Sophie Nelisse) was hooking up with him behind her best friend and his girlfriend, Jackie’s (Ella Purnell), back. Shauna got pregnant, but, given the lack of nutrients or medical care in the wilderness, she suffered a pregnancy loss. That ordeal left her with plenty of trauma. There’s also the “Jackie” of it all. Did Shauna really love Jeff, or was she in love with Jackie? Canonically, Shauna’s bisexual, and in the wilderness, she was in a lopsided and toxic relationship with Melissa (Jenna Burgess). Where this pertains to Shauna and Jackie, there are emotions there that are too tangled to separate. In the end, though, we mostly feel bad for Mr. “There’s No Book Club.”
3. Nat & Travis
Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) and Travis (Kevin Alves) started out innocently enough. They were two teenagers with nothing better to do, stuck in a situation where anyone could die at any moment — a fixture of teen-drama survival shows. Slowly, that developed into something deeper… but it was always riddled with communication issues and missteps because, again, they were teenagers. Then, when Travis lost his younger brother under suspicious circumstances, and then Nat ended up in control of the camp, it drove a wedge between them. They appeared to grow apart throughout Season 3, where they shared few scenes. (Although Travis still jumped to Nat’s defense, when necessary.)
And yet, in the Season 1 present-day story, Nat (Juliette Lewis) and Travis (Andres Soto) were on-again, off-again… which was the way they always were, really. They weren’t good for each other. They fueled each other’s worst habits, but they did remain in each other’s lives after they returned to civilization — even if they walked in and out over the decades, never fully committed. Nat was devastated when he died. One of the last sentiments Travis ever expressed in a note found after his death? “Tell Nat she was right.” We still don’t know what he meant, and now that adult Nat’s dead, too, perhaps we never will.
2. Coach Ben & Paul
It breaks our hearts that these two never got to be together after the rescue. Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) and Paul (François Arnaud, also known as Heated Rivalry’s Scott Hunter) had been in a secret relationship before Ben left to travel with his team to regionals, but because Ben hadn’t felt able to publicly move in with and acknowledge Paul as his boyfriend (Ben was closeted; Paul was not), they broke up.
In the wilderness, Ben hallucinated the happy life he could’ve lived with his boyfriend if he had chosen to move to New York City. Tragically, Ben never got the chance. Put on trial in Season 3 for burning down the cabin — which we still don’t know if he actually did — he was eventually mercy-killed by Natalie, with whom he’d developed a friendship during their time in the wilderness. Paul, we hope, ended up in a loving relationship. It’s just immensely tragic that it couldn’t have been with Ben.
1. Tai & Van
How these two ended left — and still leaves! — a bad taste in our mouths. If any relationship on Yellowjackets could be called “wholesome,” it was these two. Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Van (Liv Hewson) were a couple during the wilderness timeline, although it’s implied they’d been together before that. (Coach Ben caught them kissing and never told anyone, because Ben was a decent guy who deserved so much better.) From what we’ve seen so far, they stayed together throughout those difficult months in the wild, but we also know they broke up when the Yellowjackets were rescued. Adult Tai (Tawny Cypress) went on to get married and pursued a career in politics, while adult Van (Lauren Ambrose) opened a video-rental store.
And yet, they couldn’t stay away from each other. In the present-day timeline in Season 2, Tai tracked down Van, and they rekindled their romance, despite the fact that Tai was married. Whoops.
Predictably, Tai’s marriage fell apart — less predictably, Van was dying of terminal cancer. Together, they decided to make the most of the time Van had, and, for a short while, they lived luxuriously and happily. That all came crashing down during the events of Season 3. When they all converged on Melissa’s (Hilary Swank) place, the drama ended with Melissa fatally stabbing Van… who’d refrained from killing her and intended to let her go. Tai was heartbroken. Van ended up buried in an unmarked grave, and Tai ate her heart in a nod to the rituals they’d performed in the wilderness.
Yellowjackets is a show where no one gets out unscathed, and it’s a possibility that no one makes it out of Season 4. Van herself had even once told Tai, “Surviving this was never the reward,” but we’d have preferred her death had less of a “done for shock value” factor.
