I visited the WGA library to read Yellowjackets scripts and wanted to share some of my findings! (Pt. 2)
Here are my notes for 1x03! Quotation marks indicate direct lines from the script, whereas everything else is me paraphrasing.
1x03 “The Dollhouse”
•The script starts with a scene of a panicked adult Travis bursting out of his secluded house (shack?) with a “wild glint in his eyes” “as if desperate to find the source of something and also terrfied he will find it.”
•Then it flashes back to the 1996 teen timeline and Travis hears a whisper late at night in the woods. He is “inexplicably drawn” to the plane wreckage. “The breeze rustles the tree branches, and again he hears a soft, hushed sound, as if the wilderness is calling his name.”
Travis is interrupted by Javi, who approaches him saying he had a bad dream.
As Travis is walking back to their camp with Javi, “The breeze picks back up. We hear a low and sinister exhalation, as if the woods are whispering for Travis to stay and preparing to make him stay.”
Both of these scenes were obviously cut, but I do think it’s really interesting that Travis was originally made out to be, arguably, just as connected to the Wilderness entity as Lottie is. Travis is one of the first people to be “contacted” by the Wilderness and it seems to take a particular interest in him. Also that line about making him stay is eery as hell.
•When the group is voting on whether to go to the lake or stay at the plane wreckage, the script makes sure to point out how hesitant some of the girls are to go against Jackie. Some of them even vote to stay at the wreckage just to avoid pissing her off. This shows her influence over the girls at the time, even though it eventually fades as they become more adapted to their new way of life.
•While the group is hiking to the lake, Taissa sees the man with no eyes for the first time, crouching in the bushes staring at her blankly. It understandably freaks her the fuck out and she’s shaken by it for the rest of the episode.
In the final product Tai doesn’t see the man with no eyes until later on, but this scene sounds creepy as fuck in the script.
•When Nat is looking through Travis’s house and finds the photo of the two of them together on his dresser, we get this line:
“We realize Natalie’s not only seen Travis recently, but they were close. Intimate. Natalie glances up from the photo, and suddenly sees adult Travis in the mirror. He’s standing behind Natalie, and his eyes seem to be judging her.”
Just thought it was interesting, particularly the “judging her” line. Judging her for what? Maybe judging her for looking for him? For not keeping herself safely away from all this?
•When the girls are swimming at the lake and Jackie is sitting with Mari trying to make Shauna jealous, there’s a line about Jackie being “clearly tired of Mari’s yapping” but trying to hide it, which I found funny. Mari is a canonical yapper.
•The girls also play chicken at the lake, with Nat on Van’s shoulders and Laura Lee on Shauna’s shoulders. This is so cute and I’ll take whatever scraps of VanNat friendship I can get. I wish they kept it in the episode.
•And another deleted part from the lake scene, Lottie is standing on top of a rock above the lake preparing to jump in and she does the cabbage patch dance on top of it while everyone cheers her on (if you don’t know what the cabbage patch dance is you should definitely look it up). Then she sees the cabin in the distance and stops.
But I love a little hint at silly goofy Lottie! Before all of the visions, just a silly goose.
•While Nat and Misty are in the jail cell and Nat asks Misty about her messing with her Porsche, Nat and Misty stare each other down and the script then says this:
“So much history between these two.”
A little sneak peek at a lot more happening between these two in the Wilderness that we don’t know about yet.
•While Nat is on the phone with Tai trying to get her to bail her out of jail, this line:
“We realize these two are closer than we thought.”
Tainat friendship acknowledged!🙏
•Also on that phone call with Tai, the script says that “Natalie is struggling to even speak his name,” referring to Travis. This again shows just how painful and complicated Nat’s feelings are towards Travis.
•When Nat and Misty are bailed out, there’s a cut scene of Misty going through a plastic bag full of all of the things that were in her purse at the time of her arrest. Here are the items in Misty’s purse: peanut butter, condoms, Travis’s notebook that she stole, and a small plastic toy cat.
God, I love that woman.
•After Jackie spills the nasty canned food all over the floor and complains that they should have stayed at the wreckage, Van snaps at her “How is this helping?”, and the rest of the girls roll their eyes at Jackie. Jackie storms outside and we get this line:
“Suddenly, she stops, overwhelmed by her emotions—how scared she is, how alone she feels, how much she hates the wilderness, and the shame she feels for showing it.”
A great look into Jackie’s mental state and very representative of Jackie’s gradual loss of influence and power in this new environment. She’s used to being sure of herself and having this magnetism that everyone naturally follows. In society, Jackie is influential and powerful. But here in the wilderness, she cannot adapt and cannot lead the group like she once did. And the other girls can see that, hence the rolling eyes and snapping at her.
•After Nat and Misty find Travis’s body and they are driving away, there is a line that was cut from the final product in which Nat admits to Misty:
“We were together, on and off. We started up again about ten years ago.”
So this would mean that Nat and Travis started up their relationship again around 2011 and have been on and off for ten years. Does this mean they were not together after they got rescued but rekindled things about 12 years later? Or did they stay together for a little while after the rescue, broke up for years, and then got back together and that’s what Nat is referring to? I don’t know, maybe this line was cut for a reason and it’s definitely not canon yet so we’ll see. But the timeline of Nat and Travis’s relationship is confusing to me and I want to know more.
My theory is that Nat and Travis have broken up after Javi’s death and don’t get back together in a romantic capacity until 2011.