Legend of the Wendigo
Have you ever been completely obsessed with a TV show, the season ended with a cliffhanger (as they do), and then either the show is cancelled or some other world event delays the return, leaving you with no closure and nothing but guesses of what could have been?
I’m a huge fan of the show Yellowjackets (Showtime in the U.S., Crave in Canada, no idea what service it’s on elsewhere, help a sister out and drop me an email so I can update this for others. Grazie!)
Yellowjackets is pretty dark, to put it lightly (pun intended). Season 2 wrapped in the spring of 2023 and the writers had only one day in the writers’ room to start work on Season 3 when the writers’ and actors’ strikes began and production ground to a halt. Yellowjackets is the story of a women’s high school senior varsity soccer team whose chartered plane crashes in remote northern Canada on their way to the national championships in Seattle. It follows the surviving teammates in a dual timeline - their fight for survival for 19 months in the wilderness in 1996-98, and their present-day lives in 2021 as they deal with the cascading effects of their trauma. It is loosely based on and inspired by the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose chartered Fairchild plane, Flight 571, crashed high in the Andes in October 1972, forcing the last survivors to eventually resort to cannibalism to avoid starvation. Their story was commemorated in the non-fiction book Alive by Piers Paul Read.
The Yellowjackets’ time in the wilderness is fraught with hazards - the prospect of starvation, accidents, illness, or freezing to death is at every turn. Most learn resilience and resourcefulness in their quest for food, shelter, warmth, and connection with each other. Some thrive in their new circumstances, others definitely do not.
A number of mysterious events (including an occurrence of apparent possession during a makeshift seance to rid their shack of the spirit of “Cabin Guy”) and weird sightings prey upon their fears and social fractures begin within the group between those who believe in potentially supernatural causes and those who reject that and maintain that everything that has occurred must have a natural explanation.
To the believers, The Wilderness becomes a semi-entity in itself, with malicious intent that foils their several escape attempts and stops at nothing to keep them trapped out there. Over time, the Yellowjackets come to believe that the Wilderness must be appeased by making offerings, which escalate to human sacrifices, in order to reward them with food. Their leader is crowned as the Antler Queen, seen to be favoured by the Wilderness.
Parallels can be drawn with the Algonquian legend of the Wendigo, a mythological evil entity of the forest that was said to be a former hunter who practiced cannibalism. There’s a deeeeeep rabbit hole you could go down Googling stories of cryptids like the Wendigo, skinwalker, Mothman, and many others.
A number of late wide-awake nights due to a vivid imagination and a binge-fest of Yellowjackets episodes led me to create my Legend of the Wendigo artwork you can check out here. Available in a variety of sizes from 11x14” to 30x40” in a choice of metal print, canvas, or archival photographic print, the art embodies the malevolent spirit of the Wendigo.
If the show’s premise hasn’t hooked you yet, it also has an amazing soundtrack, with many songs that will take you back to the mid-90s, as well as newer tunes (Sharon Van Etten’s “Seventeen,” which kicks off S2 E1, was an instant add to my playlist). There are also many moments of humour and quotable one-liners to lighten the mood on occasion - “you wanna save the corn nuts?” “oh Jackie you’re on fire, ooooooh that was supposed to be me!” “I suck at French!” “well, can you try NOT to?” and of course “THERE’S NO BOOK CLUB?!” If you’re a Yellowjackets fan, drop me an email with your theories on who the other survivors are, who is Pit Girl, how were they eventually found, what you think will happen in Season 3 (to be released in 2025) and the plane crash location.
I’m going to do my best to have a blog entry weekly although regular job duties may interfere especially during summer when I’m mapping wildfires. It’s hard to know what to expect - with the warm dry winter and early spring things got going quickly but then the rains came so it is currently slow. If and when it gets hot and dry again and we start getting lightning storms I fully expect it to get busy again.
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