<em>Yellowjackets</em>, How Could You?

This story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Showtime’s Yellowjackets.

Back when she was just a member of the championship high-school soccer team known as the Yellowjackets, Natalie (played by Sophie Thatcher) was a wide midfielder, according to fans who studied the few scenes of the girls in action. The position comes with little glory. Wide midfielders don’t normally score the goals themselves; they are tasked with attacking from the wings and providing assists. They’re quietly powerful, in other words—often overlooked, yet integral to a squad’s success.

Off the pitch and throughout much’ run, Natalie has performed a similarly underappreciated role. In 1996, after the team’s plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness, she becomes a hunter, only to disappoint her friends when the brutal winter leaves her empty-handed day after day. As an adult, Natalie (played by Juliette Lewis) attempts to unmask a blackmailer threatening her and her fellow survivors, only to be kidnapped by Lottie (Simone Kessell), another former Yellowjacket. Again and again, Natalie has been a crucial catalyst: In the past, she made clear to her teammates how tough the cold would be to endure, and in the present, her disappearance reunited the other women. Yet in the second-season finale, killed her off. During a melodramatically staged, near-farcical scene, Misty (Christina Ricci) accidentally injects Natalie with a syringe full of poison after Natalie tries to stop her from hurting Lisa (Nicole Maines), a woman with whom Natalie had bonded at Lottie’s cultlike compound. As a way to cover up the circumstances of her passing, Natalie’s death is deemed an “accidental overdose”—a cruel punch line, given Natalie’s history of substance abuse.