The Adult Timeline takes place 25 years after the crash, in 2021, and has a different atmosphere. Trauma and grief reign here as some of the survivors try to live a normal life, while others are all too aware of all that happened in the Wilderness, even now. There's a different kind of problem solving that takes place here and generally the stakes don't feel as high, but the adult timeline works really well in offering information from a different perspective and with characters that can say things with hindsight.

• "Serious Stuff" that keeps coming back, some better argumented than others
• Survivor's Guilt - They all have issues (tm)

  • Pointing out the obvious, I knoooow. The interesting thing is how the main surviving cast deals with it differently.

    Taissa mostly does not talk about it at all, unless it's part of some campaigning. A good scene imo is at the fundraiser/dinner thing where she's really pushed to the limit of how much detail she's willing to share for some benefit later on. The climax hits with her deliberately doing Wilderness(tm) ritual stuff to (possibly?) secure the win in the state senator election.

    Shauna lives a miserable and boring life for somewhat similar reasons, but there's enough room to say it's all about Jackie, too (because when is it not?). Few things spice up the mundanity at the suburban home: like killing and serving a wild rabbit, cheating (and also killing), going head-to-head with your teenage daughter in some emotional power struggle. Shauna either seems very in control or wants to seem like she is. A lot of things are done impulsively and with lack of taking the consequences into account. Fun lady.

    Misty has found the best way of people needing/relying on her in an elderly carehome while she sleuths on the internet on the side. Both are very logical places for her to be after the test-run in the Wilderness. People in the home rely on her care so much that they can't complain or push back like Ben and/or other Yellowjackets could. On the internet forums, she's amongst like-minded people who don't know her beyond the interest they share. It's more difficult for her character to push them away. The cracks that appear when she does join the Yellowjackets again for solving this mystery are small but there. Overall she has the least clear guilt, beyond maybe Crystal, or chooses to completely ignore or shrug it off (successfully?)

    Natalie is soooo full of guilt, good lordie. It comes back a lot of times in word, or through her destructive actions. After the season 2 finale it's clear why she'd put the blame so much on herself, and yet it's not completely her fault. Natalie's pitfall is that she cares too much, which makes her best suited for the role she was pushed into, and the greatest sufferer of the trauma that would cause. That whole thing about the most unwilling doing the best job at something. Natalie's search for reason and purpose is a tragedy. Bittersweet and gut-punching.

    Lottie is doing a good job? bad job? Who knows to be honest. Her "therapy sessions" are a very interesting look into her processing of the Wilderness because she seems aware that some of what she thought she saw was not real or okay, and yet she gives into that again by the end of the second season. Conflicting stuff! Her place does seem to help people, even if the practices are a bit vague or straight-up shady. Intentions all-around good. She's just a (tall) lil guy.

    Van is yeah okay trying to force herself into a time that she missed out on. For adult Van I do still think that the scene of teen Van expressing to Taissa how she's not sure about what her place in the world is with so many close encounters with death and still surviving. That'll mess with you, but adult Van seems way more disillusioned about it than teen Van, who takes the Wilderness with both hands.

• Death and Prophesy - Jackie gets a bonus

  • This one's more rambly, but bear with me!

    There's at least some argument to be made that The Wilderness (tm) has some afterlife logistics. Forshadowing is bound to happen in a show like this, but there are moments of hmmm...

    Okay I guess I went on a deep-dive with the 2.01 M*A*S*H game that "Jackie" and Shauna play in the meat shed. It's the exact same as the one Shauna views in a different notebook in Jackie's room in 2021, and in both cases we can say that it is eerily accurate.
    Meatshed Jackie isn't real, of course, but let's entertain the idea that she is! There's a thing in (Graeco-Roman) myth that has the dead, or deities with a connection to death/the underworld, to have some level of foresight. The exact way this works differs.
    Aeneas goes through the Underworld and sees the ghosts of his descendants because time isn't real there. Orpheus is in one myth shred to pieces by Maenads, but his head drifts off to Lesbos where it tells the future as an oracle because he's not allowed to die. The Fates reside in the Underworld and/or are siblings of Death. Carmenta, Roman goddess of childbirth and prophesy stands on the opposite side of the spectrum but does a similar thing.

    Liminal spaces have a weird connection to both space and time. Lottie is the prominent vessel of this in the show, especially when she encounters Laura Lee in the fake mall. Shauna's nightmare could be a "potential" future that is shown to her, but very much a visualization of fears about the past actions with Jackie's body. Either way, Shauna acts as if it might as well have happened. Travis and Natalie make strange allusions to their future or their state of being while high (Travis in the 90s, Nat in the present). Travis's entire perception of coming close to death to speak with "it" may very well add another layer to this. I wonder how Van's cases of near-death factor into that.