With new Yellowjackets episodes coming out, we’re sorting out who to watch for the Antler Queen’s identity in the cannibalistic cast of characters.
Things are heating up in Yellowjackets season 2 (or, at least, as much as they can amid a frigid winter in the 1990s timeline that’s leaving the team starving and freezing). The new season on Showtime has it all: woo-woo cults, mysterious deaths, dogged law enforcement officers hanging out with teenage girls, and, of course, cannibalism.
In conditions like this, it’s easy for a hierarchy to form — especially one that yields the long-awaited reveal of the Antler Queen Yellowjackets has been promising since the opening of the pilot. With mysteries piling up across the first two episodes of season 2, we’re going to be running through the power rankings each week, exploring who’s poised to lead and who’s set to feed the cannibal cult.
Of course, the criteria for this is a little loose; much like Yellowjackets’ first foray into frosty cannibalism, we’re playing it by ear. Suffice it to say, those who show the fortitude to step up to the Antler Queen mantle (and whether they got closer, in each episode, to her and that title) will rise through the ranks. And since the Antler Queen seems to oversee the glimpse of cannibalism we get in the pilot, stepping up to the plate means also generally leading the charge to eat people. Who is on the rise in Yellowjackets’ cannibal cult?
Shauna — Shauna took a huge step forward in the rankings this week by leading the cannibal charge and convincing the rest of the team that it really would be a shame to waste such a perfectly chargrilled Jackie. While Shauna’s really never had leader vibes before this exact moment, this could easily be her first step toward Antler Queendom.
Lottie — The question of Lottie persists: Is she the Antler Queen, or more of a high priestess in the Yellowjackets hierarchy? There’s not much to suggest her modern-day cult is cannibalistic, but she’s clearly got something happening in the way she can compartmentalize parts of her personality as a leader (and in the trippy vision she has of zombie Laura).
