WARNING: The following contains SPOILERS for Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8.
Yellowjackets season 2 sees another strange vision from Lottie while she is looking at her gratitude cards: a Queen of Hearts with its eyes scratched out — and its true meaning has finally been revealed. The source of Lottie's visions, either being a symptom of her early onset schizophrenia or proof of her supernatural power, has been one of the more debated Yellowjackets plot threads. Adult Lottie initially believes they are a product of the former when she goes to visit her psychiatrist and requests her medication dose increased, but accepts that it's the latter when it turns out she's never been meeting with her psychiatrist at all.
In the past Yellowjackets timeline, Lottie has accepted that her visions are a gift of the metaphysical, thanks to coercion from Laura Lee and a fair few strange events that have proved her mind's eye correct. While she read gratitude cards in the present, she encounters a Queen of Hearts card with the eyes scratched out. She tries to shake it off, but then sees it again. This prompts her to go to an altar on the compound and cut her hand open as she lets her blood fall to the ground. It wasn't revealed until season 2, episode 8, what the Queen of Hearts actually means.
Yellowjackets' Queen Of Hearts Card Ritual Explained
In order to comprehend Lottie's vision, the nature of the Queen of Hearts in the sacrificial cannibalism ritual in the 1996 timeline must be understood. With teen Lottie nearly on her deathbed and the rest of the girls dying from starvation, Taissa makes a stand for their survival and the group determines that someone must be sacrificed to feed the others. In the ritual, the survivors gather in a circle and present offerings to the wilderness, before Van shuffles the cards (normally used for chores) and Misty holds them while the girls pick. Whoever chooses the Queen of Hearts card with its eyes scratched out is the next victim.
The victim is then marked with Jackie's necklace, hunted by the rest of the group, killed, and eaten. This wholly explains a number of major Yellowjackets mysteries, such as why the pit girl was wearing Jackie's necklace, but it namely justifies why Lottie is so terrified by her Queen of Hearts vision. The vision is a stark reminder of the horrific ritual that the team developed in the wilderness and their descent into madness as they hunted and consumed their own. Armed with the knowledge of the true meaning of the Queen of Hearts, this also leads audiences to question Lottie's safety in the present.
Will The Wilderness Sacrifice Lottie Next?
Now that Lottie has drawn the fateful Queen of Hearts in the present timeline, it's natural to wonder if that means that the wilderness is marking her for death. Toward the end of Yellowjackets season 2, episode 8, Lottie confirmed to the rest of the survivors that the wilderness wants to take one of their lives. In preparation for letting the wilderness "choose" its victim, she presents several cups to the adult survivor group, with one of them being laced with a phenobarbital concoction. To prove she's not making a Heaven's Gate cult leader move, she even offers to choose last.
Whether the girls go through with this new ritual will be revealed in Yellowjackets season 2's penultimate episode, but Lottie seeing the Queen of Hearts could mean that the wilderness entity has already chosen her. Lottie's bee vision suggested earlier on in the season that one of the adult survivors would die, and it's possible that she's been pre-selected. However, season 2, episode 8 also proved that the Queen of Hearts isn't necessarily the final word. When the girls established the ritual in the past, Natalie chose the card, and they chased her down — but Javi died during the chase, so he was the victim instead.
Yellowjackets' Queen Of Hearts Connects To Lottie's Cannibalistic Past
With the revelation of how the Queen of Hearts is so deeply connected to the sacrificial cannibalism ritual, it's been made evident that Lottie was so afraid of her vision because of how it connects to her past as the leader of a cannibalistic cult. Lottie's current cult does share some similarities to the cult set up in 1996. This was evidenced when she told acolyte Lisa to enact violence against Natalie for stabbing her with a fork during a group therapy session if she felt compelled to. While Lisa didn't go through with it, it's clear that violence is not something that Lottie fears in her adult life.
Rather, she sees it as part of the natural order, further proven by her queen bee speech. That being said, there's a difference between what Lottie suggested to Lisa and ritualized sacrifice and cannibalism. Her current cult is more about self-actualization and finding power from within, and her Queen of Hearts vision suggests that she's fearful that her current predicament could lead her to turn it into something else entirely and something more reminiscent of her past. The past coming back to haunt the Yellowjackets survivors has been a major revelation of season 2, and Lottie's Queen of Hearts vision is one more facet of that.
How Lottie's Queen Of Hearts Vision Connects To The Wilderness
Since adult Travis claimed that the wilderness is coming back to haunt the survivors, Lottie's Queen of Hearts vision proves that the wilderness does indeed want another death from the survivors. Adult Lottie in Yellowjackets revealed a lot more than was said when she went to her psychiatrist, who turned out the be the antler queen in disguise. She clearly blames her past visions for the trajectory that the girls found themselves on in 1996, and wants to do everything in her power to make sure that it doesn't happen again with her new tribe of followers, now that she feels she is "helping people."
However, Lottie realized that she can't deny her past, neither can the rest of the group, and she can't deny the wilderness' wishes. As she said, she's bargained with, and she's tried to will it away. Despite this, all the adult survivors are being negatively affected by the wilderness entity, and the only way to stop its continued influence is to give in to what it wants and one of them must die. Yellowjackets has made it clear that the wilderness entity has the final say on who lives and who dies, and the season 2 finale will reveal if another survivor bites the dust.