Yellowjackets Season 3 Finally Reveals What’s in the Tape (And It’s Connected to the Team’s Return Home)

The season 3 premiere of Yellowjackets featured a mysterious cassette tape, delivered to Shauna’s (Melanie Lynskey) home by an unknown figure. The tape was intercepted by Callie (Sarah Desjardins), but the series hadn’t returned to this plot point until now. However, since then, Shauna’s car brakes failed and she got locked in a freezer, while Lottie (Simone Kessell) was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. All these events underline that someone is targeting Shauna and the other Yellowjackets survivors. Season 3, Episode 6, “Thanksgiving (Canada),” finally reveals the tape’s content and how it’s connected to the Yellowjackets survivors returning home from the woods.

WARNING: Spoilers below for Yellowjackets Season 3, Episode 6

In Episode 6, Shauna finally joins Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose) to listen to the cassette using Van’s DAT player. The recording begins innocuously with a woman’s voice testing the microphone: “Testing, testing. One, two, three. Oh my god, what is this?” The episode doesn’t allow fans to hear the whole tape, but the very ending of the recording is just the chaotic cacophonie of female voices screaming. The content of the tape clearly terrifies the survivors, with Van stating ominously that “the only people who even know about this are either us or dead.”

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The mystery is partially solved by the end of the episode. In the 1996 timeline, after Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) fulfills her promise to mercy-kill Coach Ben (Steven Krueger), the team holds a cannibalistic feast with his remains. During their frenzied celebration around the bonfire, with Lottie (Courtney Eaton) leading the group in eerie singing and dancing, they’re interrupted by the sudden appearance of two adult campers who stumble upon their ritual. The scream of the bonfire frenzy matches the scream captured on the tape, which means the tape was recorded by the woman who appears right at the final scene. This revelation also raises serious questions about how, and when, the Yellowjackets team returned to civilization.

Will Yellowjackets Season 3 Show the Team’s Return to Civilization?

Since the only people who identify the content of the tape are the surviving Yellowjackets, per Van’s words, it’s fair to assume the adult couple will die somehow. Most likely, the girls will kill the couple to protect their cannibalistic secret. Still, the fact that two adults just stroll into their camp means the girls now have a direct line with civilization. Unlike the empty cabin they discovered, these adults have a means of communication or transportation that could facilitate rescue. However, the horror evident on the man’s face upon witnessing their cannibalistic ritual suggests things will be complicated by what the campers have seen.

It’s also worth noting that Yellowjackets has already shown us the infamous “pit girl” scene from the first season, which takes place during deep winter and depicts the team hunting a person through the snow. The current timeline in the wilderness storyline is set in the Fall, indicating that despite the couple’s appearance, something must prevent or delay the team’s rescue for several more months, long enough for another winter to arrive. As Season 3 of Yellowjackets approaches its finale, the series must explain what role these new characters will play in the team’s eventual salvation.

This development also explains why the tape is such a powerful threat in the present timeline. If it contains audio evidence of their cannibalistic practices and possibly even what happened to the unwitting witnesses, the tape could destroy the carefully constructed lives the survivors have built in the decades since their rescue. The survivors’ immediate recognition of the tape’s significance suggests they know precisely what happened next — and it likely wasn’t a simple, heartwarming rescue story.

New Yellowjackets Season 3 episodes premiere Fridays on Paramount+.

What do you think will happen with the camper couple? Will Season 3 of Yellowjackets explain how the team returns home? Share your theories with us in the comments!