Travis: The Hidden Villain of Yellowjackets

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Spoilers below for fans who haven’t yet watched the latest Yellowjackets episode either on Showtime or streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.

Buzz, buzz, the coach is dead. Which old coach? The potentially wicked old coach.

Since the cabin burned down in Season 2’s finale, Coach Ben has been struggling through a harsh wilderness existence on Yellowjackets. In the latest episode titled “Thanksgiving (Canada)”, Natalie was persuaded to alleviate his misery, even though she believes he is innocent and many others think he holds the key to their rescue.

But I no longer believe that Coach is the one who set the fires, and even though his mental faculties were clearly frayed, he never really lost hold of his logic and empathy. So what if someone else in the group was responsible for the fire? Someone who, for instance, has been emotionally erratic, unpredictable, and very much guilty of other misdeeds and untruths? The trauma-drenched Travis is the only remaining male left in the group, and he’s really starting to fit into the villain mold.

Travis Hasn’t Ever Really Been A “Good Guy,” So To Speak

Right from the start, it was evident that Travis had no interest in joining his father and the soccer team on their trip, and the way he acted in the days right after the accident was thoughtless, harsh, and showed a lack of compassion – especially when dealing with his grieving brother Javi. The resentment Travis held towards the juvenile nickname “Flex” didn’t make things better.

His early bond with Natalie was shattered in part whenever he backout out of having sex with her, only to soon get caught getting rowdy with Jackie. That illicit act (itself influenced by Lottie drugging the group) led to Travis nearly getting raped and/or killed, and was also the catalyst for events that led to the ousted Jackie freezing to death.

Don’t get me wrong. I get that Jackie’s death and cannibalized corpse likely fucked Travis up in newly dreadful ways that were only compounded by Javi’s disappearance, and that there was likely no coming back from watching his brother suffer the same fate as Jackie, regardless of who was to blame. Yet in Season 3, the Yellowjackets creative team has continued to expand Travis’ patterns of both experiencing and causing suffering.

Travis’ Lies About His Visions Sparked A Terrible Domino Effect

In this series, Lottie exerts a significant control over Travis and is often perceived as the main antagonist of Yellowjackets. However, she believes she’s assisting others despite her actions suggesting otherwise. Her diagnosed mental health issues further blur the lines between good and evil.

So she’s certainly to blame for coercing Travis into repeatedly ingesting her psychoactive tincture, believing him to have a pure psychic connection with the surrounding Wilderness. However, it’s Travis who chose to lie and sic Lottie on Akilah by claiming the Wilderness chose her. Sure, his initial attempts to get Courtney Eaton’s character to back off didnt’ work, but potentially dooming the entire group should have been the “Break Glass For Emergency” option.

While it’s certainly plausible that Akilah is experiencing genuine premonitions, she’s likely seeing distorted versions that don’t necessarily reflect reality. Which, if true, means that the aftermath of Coach’s trial — from the unsuccessful firing squad to Shauna slicing his tendon to starving himself near his rotting food — was all for nothing, and his suffering should have ended far earlier.

And if this cycle of chaos continues unbroken, I can only imagine that Akilah will become one of the next Yellowjackets characters to die, and in a way where Travis will be unable to escape feeling responsible for his doom-causing actions. He’s already had several chances to come clean, and made a vague attempt at dissuading Lottie’s faith in Akilah during the latest episode, but all while falling short of telling the truth. That’s villain behavior, people!

I Think Travis Burned The Cabin Down

Despite the lack of concrete evidence linking Travis directly to the cabin fire, I find it plausible that he could have been the culprit. His guilt-ridden expressions since the beginning of Season 3 suggest as much, predating Lottie’s therapy sessions involving hallucinations. Although it is possible that his emotional turmoil stems from consuming his brother’s heart, I believe there are strong indications pointing towards his involvement in the incident.

It appears that after Travis displayed such terrifying actions, the area of his brain that had been swollen with rage due to Javi’s death may have completely fractured, leading his violent impulses to control him, perhaps without him fully realizing what was transpiring. This phenomenon has also occurred with Taissa, both in her younger years and as an adult. While it seems closely tied to her being haunted by the No-Eyes Man, it might simply be a result of the influence of the wilderness.

I don’t believe Travis would have ever resorted to such destructive actions before Javi’s death, even after the heartbreaking discovery that Natalie lied about the clothes she found. Because I think he truly felt responsible for his little brother’s safety, despite being a douchebag in the immediate aftermath of the crash. But once Javi was dead and no longer a viable target for familial doting, Travis lost the only thing still connecting him to his pre-Wilderness life.

I think attempting to murder a group of teenagers, even if the attempt was unsuccessful, is enough excess baggage on top of everything else Travis has suffered that would help drive a lifetime of trauma, guilt, and substance abuse.

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Obviously, lots of fucked up moments are yet to come as Yellowjackets fills out both of its mystery-driven timelines, and I can only imagine how heavily the two surprise arrivals (as portrayed by Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton) will factor into it. But I just think viewers should be reminded that for all the villainy that Shauna and Misty display at times, Travis may just the most dangerous antagonist of either timeline, even if he doesn’t mean to be.

Perhaps the fresh faces could be reality TV producers, hinting that the teenagers are actually participants in an extended reality television experiment. Now, isn’t that intriguing?

On Fridays, you can catch the latest episodes of Yellowjackets streaming on Paramount+, while every Sunday evening at 8:00 p.m. ET, the series continues its run on Showtime.

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2025-03-17 04:10