Yellowjackets Writers Did Barbecue Research for Big Cannibalism Scene

To survive in the remote wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, many Yellowjackets audiences assumed that the titular soccer team would have to resort to cannibalism to survive, with this week’s episode fully delivering on that theory. While last week’s Season 2 premiere offered our first tease of cannibalism, writer of this week’s episode Jonathan Lisco reflected on how, despite being a fictional series with supernatural elements, his team did the appropriate research to learn more about the cooking methods they showcased in the series. New episodes of Yellowjackets hit the Showtime app on Fridays and new episodes air on Showtime on Sundays.

WARNING: Major spoilers below for Season 2, Episode 2 of Yellowjackets, “Edible Complex”

The Season 1 finale showed that Jackie (Ella Purnell) died of exposure to the elements, with her body being kept relatively preserved in the freezing temperatures in the time since her death. The survivors began a cremation process to say goodbye to their former teammate, though after being burned significantly, a large chunk of snow landed on the burning body, smothering the flames and seemingly perfectly “cooking” Jackie.

The smell of the cooked corpse awakens the rest of the survivors and, consumed by their hunger, then they go on to consume Jackie.

When asked by Vulture about whether the writing team did research into this cooking method, Lisco confirmed, “Heck yeah we did! There is a line here where we’re playing with the supernatural, like we always do, and whether or not this could be physically feasible in the world, or whether there was some other dark force at work. But it is conceivable. Go back to Jack London’s ‘To Build a Fire,’ where the snow falls and it smothers the fire. If it’s big enough and the snow is hard-packed enough, then could this actually happen? We’re probably all going to get arrested at some point for the research that we do: ‘How do you cook a body?’” 

He continued, “But one of the references was the film by Peter Greenaway The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. As a punishment, one of the bodies is cooked by this chef. Then he turns to the quivering person who can’t believe what he’s seeing and says, ‘Try the c-ck.’ It’s all laid out there, and nothing is hidden. It’s this perfectly browned body. We felt, ‘Could the wilderness serve that up?’”

With Jackie having died accidentally, the survivors were making good use of the body, though now that they’ve crossed that threshold, fans will surely wonder if this is just the beginning of their cannibalistic ways.

New episodes of Yellowjackets hit the Showtime app on Fridays and new episodes air on Showtime on Sundays.

What did you think of the episode? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!