Yellowjackets: Why The Cabin Was Abandoned (& Attic Twist Explained)

Warning: Spoilers for episode 3 of Yellowjackets ahead.

In Yellowjackets episode 3, “The Dollhouse,” the girls discover an abandoned cabin in the woods with a nasty surprise in the attic, begging the question: what happened to the previous owner? Following the story of a fiercely competitive high school girls soccer team whose plane crashes on the way to the National Championship in 1996, Showtime’s new series offers a brutal, wildly engrossing tale of survival, as well as an examination of the trauma that is left behind in the aftermath. Receiving rave reviews, Yellowjackets is one of the best new shows of the fall.

Split between 1996 and the present day, Yellowjackets raises many questions about what may have happened during the mysterious 19 months that the team spent stranded in the Ontario wilderness before being rescued. Episode 1 indicates that they eventually resort to cold-blooded murder and ritualistic cannibalism, but how are they driven there? It’s also unclear how many of them managed to make it out alive. But in the most recent episode, the girls are delighted to find a hastily deserted cabin where they could take shelter, but something doesn’t seem quite right about the place. Lottie initially won’t go inside, telling Taissa that she has a bad feeling about the cabin. Later, after convincing Lottie to come in for the night, Taissa finds her in the attic staring at a long-desiccated corpse positioned upright in a chair, one of the multiple Yellowjackets episode 3 ending twists.

The presumably male body most likely belongs to the former owner of the cabin but what happened to him is still a mystery. He seems to have been living alone (if his extensive porn catalog is any indication), and the decayed state of the corpse and the cabin mean that he has probably been dead for years. The seated position he’s found in suggests suicide as a possibility, though his cause of death is not clear. Perhaps this man was in hiding, off the grid, or trying to get away from something. Being so alone in a deserted area for an extended period of time could have made him mentally unstable if he was not already, which may have led him to take his own life.

However, the presence of the cryptic symbol etched into the floor complicates the situation. After appearing on a tree near the Yellowjackets plane crash site, the symbol has been seen throughout prior episodes in various places, including on postcards sent to survivors in the present day. This suggests that the girls are not the only inhabitants of the area and that the previous residents are far from friendly. It’s possible that the man in the attic was murdered by them, or maybe even was one of them. If this group is still there, it seems to be a matter of time before the girls cross their path. Integration into a preexisting, isolated cannibalistic community could explain how the girls managed to survive as long as they did, as well as what happened to those who did not.

Maybe the postcards are being sent by members of the original community who have emerged from seclusion, or even former Yellowjackets who chose to stay behind with them. Certain events, especially surrounding Taissa, also point towards Yellowjackets‘ supernatural elements and rituals being in play. Whatever the case, many questions are left to be answered in Yellowjackets season 1. Hopefully, the series’ end will be as strong as the show’s start, with many more twists and turns to come.

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