Here's What the Yellowjackets Stars Were Actually Eating in the Episode 2 Feast

[Warning: The following contains spoilers from Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 2. Read at your own risk!] 

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Since Yellowjackets premiered in November 2021, viewers have been dying to know the answer to one question. No, it's not who the Antler Queen is — though that of course, remains a key mystery. Rather, after we saw a hint of the surviving teen girls eating human meat in the Showtime drama's pilot, the elephant in the room has been: When does the cannibalism start? And when it starts, who will be eaten first?

In Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 2, we have our answer. While the cannibalism technically began in last week's episode, this is the first time that the majority of the teamparticipated in the act. Though Jackie's (Ella Purnell) body has just been lying around in the two months since her death — at the insistence of her traumatized best friend Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) — the rest of the players decide it's time to burn their former captain. But when the fire mysteriously goes out before the cremation is completed, the girls begin to look at Jackie's mostly-still-intact corpse differently. "She wants us to," Shauna says solemnly before reaching for a part of Jackie's body. Suddenly, the audience is then transported away from the pyre in the middle of the wilderness to a candlelit banquet table. All the girls plus Travis (Kevin Alves) are dressed in elegant tunics and cloaks as they devour the chicken and assortment of fruits before them. But in reality, they are eating Jackie — and in the same clothes they've been stuck in since the plane crash.

"The idea of a fantasy sequence was really powerful to us, because it allowed us to talk about a lot of different levels," co-showrunner Bart Nickerson told TV Guide. "One is their kind of estrangement from the trauma of the act. They're doing something that is a great kind of transgression." The scene with the fancy dinner setting captures how the players are attempting to dissociate from what they're doing. "There is probably, I don't want to say joy, but there is something good that is happening to their body," Nickerson continued. "They are starving and this is food — there is a kind of ecstatic joy of having basic survival needs met, which I think is also part of what makes it so traumatic." The showrunner said this juxtaposition shows the complexity of what the girls and Travis are partaking in.

Co-showrunner Ashley Lyle expanded on other layers of the cannibalism scene. "We also talked a lot about there being an element of reverence to it — that in a way, particularly Shauna is sort of perversely trying to honor Jackie," Lyle said. "There are instances historically in cultures where cannibalism is seen as an act of reverence." She expanded on the concept. "In a strange way there's a logic to that. As opposed to letting somebody kind of decompose in the earth, to bring that person into yourself," Lyle said. "And so we wanted to have all of those be a part of that scene."

When it came to filming the actual scene of eating Jackie, there were many instructions relayed to the cast. "I recorded — and one day if Showtime agrees I might release it — eight minutes of audio where production design, the art department brings the Jackie dummy to the pyre," said co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco. "There are crevices and fissures in the dummy like you've never seen before. And of course it has Ella Purnell's head on it with makeup," he shared. "Our cast was using humor as a deflective mechanism because they were about to be all-in on a very solemn event." 

Lisco said that the audio recording includes a description of what the stars were about to eat. "We talked about the spittoons and the spit buckets. We talked about how not all of them will have to be eating at the same time, we talked about where they should be getting the meat," Lisco said. "The skin was made out of rice paper that had been soaked and then air fried. And the meat itself was made out of jackfruit." There were even different versions of the jackfruit. "I believe it was paprika maple syrup and some smoke flavor, and then we had a non-flavored version as well for those who didn't like that flavor," Lisco recalled. "The whole thing was very bizarre." 

"We did say it was Jackfruit — it was Jackie fruit," joked Samantha Hanratty, who plays teen Misty in the show. The star described the mood during the hours-long shoot for the cannibalism scene. "We were all having as much fun as we could with it because there's nothing worse than having a whole day where you're just like, gloom and doom," Hanratty said. "We have to make light of this somehow, and this is our jobs." 

Still, Hanratty remembered throwing up on set — and she was not the only one. "People were throwing up, crying, having panic attacks. It was not fun at all," said Jasmin Savoy Brown, who plays teen Taissa. "The more fun half was the half where we're looking beautiful and eating figs." 

For Nélisse, it came as a surprise that Shauna was the one who gave the green light to eating Jackie. "I thought she'd be kind of bullied into doing it," she said. "It's such an interesting twist that she is the one that's leading."

Hanratty also said the sequence of events led to the players becoming cannibals. "Instead of it being like a, we're gonna eat Jackie, it was kind of like, oh, well, now Jackie's perfectly cooked so we gotta eat her," she said.

And what about Coach Ben, who was the only character to not participate in this meal? "Just seeing the looks on their faces and how rabid they were going after the body — at that point, it's fight or flight mode, and he realized that there's no point in fighting," Steven Krueger said. "I'm sure if he did try to stop them, then he was probably next up on the menu."

Yellowjackets Season 2 is available to stream.