What’s up Yellowjackets fans this is Jim from BingetownTV and today I want to talk about one of the most popular theories about the show and break it down a little. If you aren’t caught up on Yellowjackets season 2 this is your warning because there will be spoilers ahead.
The theory I want to discuss is the cave/mine under the cabin theory. Now, there are multiple branches to this theory, such as the cave/mine causing mercury to leak into the water, food, and maybe even the air causing the survivors to hallucinate everything (and present day still feeling the effects of mercury poisoning), the infamous symbol being a map of the caves or mining shafts, dead cabin guy being the one who created the symbol and when he was alive he worked underground… among many others. We will definitely get into those in other blog posts but for today we are going to focus purely on one theory in a vacuum, and that is that a cave exists under the cabin.
So let’s break down the clues and the “evidence” that we’ve been given so far in season 1 and 2.
Number 1 is the dripping sounds that Mari keeps hearing that season 2 seems to majorly be focusing on so far. Does the dripping in the cabin indicate that Mari is hearing dripping coming from a cave below? She cant find the source of the dripping anywhere in the cabin but always seems to hear it when the room is quiet enough. It seems plausible that this could be a little hint that the writers and directors are leaving us. Or, it could be one of the many hallucinations our survivors have been dealing with since crashing.
Number 2 is the Javi situation. This is a big one. We know that Javi had been missing for months and we have seen how dangerous the cold has been… Killing Jackie and nearly killing Shauna and Tai. Travis and Nat have traveled and mapped large portions of the area and have not found any structures or buildings that could have been used for shelter for months. With them specifically searching for Javi himself, I feel confident that they would have been scouting out areas above ground where he could have found shelter. Enter the cave theory. Javi could have inadvertently, or with the help of the forest spirits (if you believe in the supernatural side of the show), found an entrance to the cave or mining shaft and hid there the night of Doom-coming. We’re not sure why he would not have returned to the cabin (Except for the fact that he saw crazy teenagers chasing down his brother with knives), but he could have survived down there if he found food and water. There are also rumors and theories that the cave/mining shaft has a bunker that cabin guy created, which would be even more evidence for the Javi theory if he found it.
This leads to number 3. Throughout season 2 we have seen our survivors (specifically Nat and Tai) find trees where the snow has melted and moss is growing despite the freezing climate. The solution to this could be that they are above a cave or mining shaft that is somehow heated – via something such as a hot spring. If the cave was heated somehow, this would have been a perfect shelter for Javi.
Number 4 is Lottie’s vision of the underground corridor in Season 1 when she is being baptized. Was this a hallucination that means nothing, or a glimpse into the future? We do know that she has somehow been able to predict the future in the past.
And number 5 I am going to bunch into one big group because they are some of the branches that we will discuss in later videos. And these are theories that the red river was actually a mining run-off, the cabin guy was actually a miner, and the symbol is a map to certain important locations or entrances to the mine or cave.
Did these 5 things convince you? Okay well let’s play a little devil’s advocate here. The dripping sounds can easily be just one of the many hallucinations that the survivors have been dealing with the months they have been stranded. They are stranded in the wilderness with barely any food and only each other. We’ve had many, many Lottie hallucinations, but we’ve also had Nat and the others have their moments, so it is not just Lottie that is seeing things. If we also want to take into consideration the mercury poisoning theory, there is a chance that the dripping could be just another hallucination that is driving Mari crazy during this awful time in her life.
I think that the cave theory is a great theory for where Javi has been. Soon we will find out who the mysterious “she” is that told him not to come back to the cabin, but it would be concerning to find out that Javi found a cave, or mine, or bunker that helped him stay warm in the winter and he only came back to the cabin because Tai and Van caught him and he STILL hasn’t told any of them about it. I get it if he doesn’t want to help the girls because he saw how crazy they were being the night of Doom-coming, but you would think he would want to save Travis at the very least. He even seemed to bond with Shauna and she was the one who told him to run (not to mention she is pregnant). So you’d think he’d want to help her too.
The rest of the theories can easily be explained away if the show really leans into the supernatural. The river could actually be running red with blood like Lottie said, the cabin guy could have possessed Lottie during the séance, and the symbol could literally be the symbol of the forest spirits / antler queen. The problem with all of that is that it seems illogical now, but supernatural aspects of a story are illogical until they are explained, and they have not been explained yet. So we will see.
If you want my opinion, I think that even if the supernatural aspect of the show is fully leaned into, it’s still highly probable that the cave/mine/bunker exists. The evidence for the cave seems to make sense at this point in the story.
