Warning: Contains spoilers for Yellowjackets episode 3.
In Yellowjackets episode 3, Taissa sees a man with no eyes in a mirror while at her grandmother’s bedside. While the scene is memorable within Taissa’s story and seems relevant to other events, the meaning of the man with no eyes is not immediately clear. While Yellowjackets’ first two episodes remained grounded concretely in reality, the man with no eyes is given significant importance in the episode which implies that he is more than just a symbol.
At the beginning of Yellowjackets episode 3, “The Dollhouse,” the Yellowjackets are burying those who died in the plane crash and Taissa appears to have a flashback to her grandmother’s death. Alone at her bedside, Taissa saw her grandmother stare at a mirror and tell someone not to come closer before uttering the phrase “the man with no eyes” at which point Taissa sees the faint image of a pale man with long hair and no eyes in the mirror. Eyes come up three more times in the episode as young Taissa pokes at her grandmother’s eyes at the funeral, the teen Taissa finds an eyeless corpse in the cabin in the woods, and the adult Taissa finds her son’s doll in the basement with one eye removed.
There are several reasons to suspect that the man with no eyes is the start of a fully supernatural turn for Yellowjackets and that the man with no eyes really exists in this world. It is possible that the man with no eyes is intended as a specter of death and Taissa first encountered him as a young child before meeting him again in the woods as a teenager. However, it is likely that he has a more direct connection and action on the world given the situation with Taissa’s son, Sammy. A brief image of the man with no eyes can be seen in the opening credits of Yellowjackets episode 3, suggesting that he will make recurring appearances.
In Yellowjackets episode 2, Sammy starts acting out, says that he is being watched, and is revealed to have covered his window with creepy drawings that feature disembodied eyes as well as several eyeless figures. Taken purely by themselves these instances might seem to have a normal psychological explanation or family illness (complicated by the fact that Sammy is potentially adopted). However, when combined with the movement of Manny, Sammy’s doll from a high cabinet he couldn’t have reached the basement where it was broken, it is implied that Sammy is in some way haunted by the same being that followed Taissa.
While in the moment the sudden move for Yellowjackets from strict, grim reality to including a supernatural haunting or demonic impression might seem strange. However, there are reasons why it makes a good amount of narrative sense. Without a supernatural element, the storyline around Sammy does not make good sense, and Yellowjackets and its promotional materials have focused heavily on the importance of strange symbols and ritual activities in the woods. There is clearly a larger mystery to what happened in the wilderness beyond the cannibalism that allowed them to survive as that is revealed in the very first episode. If Yellowjackets is introducing a supernatural element and a being that could be either benevolent or benign, the show is setting itself up to have a more satisfying conclusion.
Yellowjackets releases new episodes Sundays on Showtime.