This article contains mentions of graphic content and spoilers for all seasons of ‘Yellowjackets’.

Jackie Taylor was meant to be the sacrificial lamb from the very beginning. Her unintentional cruelty and self-centeredness, desire for leadership and her emotionally codependent relationship with Shauna Shipman all led to her unfortunate demise.

Throughout the series, told through Shipman’s point of view, their friendship seems to lead towards a deeper, more intimate narrative, one that could only be revealed through Taylor’s unfortunate death. Even Shipman’s last conversation with Taylor was indicative of something more intrinsic than I had pictured occurring between them when I began watching the first episode.

Initially, their relationship was highlighted as best friends, with a twinge of betrayal due to Shipman’s twisted actions with Jeff Sadecki, Taylor’s boyfriend — leading to Shipman’s secretive wilderness pregnancy.

The first to die at the hands of the Yellowjackets, though inadvertently, Taylor’s death was different from everyone else’s that followed. She was the only one not intentionally killed in the name of survivability. Her death signified a number of things — the death of innocence and humanity, the beginning of the team’s descent into apparent madness and the sacrifice of morality in pursuit of collective preservation.

Taylor’s death is far from the final time we see her, though. In fact, she becomes a part of each and every one of the team members — literally, and figuratively.

After weeks of being contained within the cold shed to avoid decomposition and following Shipman’s repeated hallucinations of faux conversations, she is put on a pyre to be cremated.

However, her sacrificial burning doesn’t go as planned when snow crashes onto her funeral pyre, effectively snuffing out any flames. Viewed as a sign of the team’s decomposing moral standing, they consume Taylor’s body in an act of desperate survival, solidifying her as the beginning flickers of diminishing humanity within the girls and the start of a new era of hopelessness in the boughs of winter.

Through the consumption of her body, Taylor becomes an everlasting part of the team’s souls — especially Shipman’s.

Taylor’s relationship with Shipman is revealed to be more and more complicated throughout the progression of the story, a development I found so strikingly interesting that I’ve been unable to think of anything else for weeks.

During Taylor and Shipman’s final argument in season one, Shipman accuses Taylor of forcing her to live in her shadow, leading to a tense moment between the two girls, where Taylor says she doesn’t even know who Shipman is anymore — something I believe to be a deep reflection of more complicated feelings.

Following Taylor’s insistence upon sleeping outside, her hallucination before passing away sheds even more light on this twisting, turning narrative of complicated emotions — where Taylor imagines Shipman bringing her inside, asking Taylor if she is aware of their close friendship.

Shipman is the first to find her body the next morning, frozen solid and covered in ice after passing in her sleep, her grief so powerful and raw I could feel it through the screen — much deeper than suffering from the loss of a friendship, no matter how close they had been with one another.

I had a suspicion that there was more to the two girls than just platonic feelings, considering Shipman’s expressions and closeness with Sadecki. I got the impression that Shipman was only with him as an attempt to feel closer to Taylor, a thought that would seem to be echoed in the third, and most recent, season.

By the second season, Shipman has suffered from the loss of her baby — and who is the person she seeks out first after burying the child? None other than Taylor. However, she doesn’t seem to be able to generate the hallucination, leaving her painfully alone in her grief.

Shipman’s desperate pleading for Taylor’s presence indicates a deeper connection between the two girls, something that once again exceeds friendship, or even the combination of their souls through cannibalism.

However, the most evident example of this closeness is exposed within the latest season of ‘Yellowjackets’, where Shipman fosters a relationship with a character only known as Melissa. The other members of the team begin to joke that Shipman forces Melissa to wear Taylor’s clothes when they’re together or call her “Shipman,” a nickname that was only ever spoken by Taylor.

Up until this point, I had believed Taylor’s haunting presence and words were simply a twisted form of her personality as believed by Shipman’s unreliable narration, but this seemed to imply something genuinely deeper than I had anticipated coming out of their relationship with one another.

What I found even more shocking, though, was the actual confirmation of their relationship as a mix between friendship and romance in season three, where Travis Martinez begins to discuss his recollection of memories and thoughts of those who have previously passed, saying his favorite ones to hear are Taylor’s. He goes on to describe Shipman and Taylor’s apparent slumber party makeouts, jealousy and betrayal.

The team’s connection to Taylor — especially Shipman’s — is no doubt a result of her being the first to pass and be consumed and the representation of her death as the beginnings of the loss of morality and humanity as they succumbed to the clutches of the wilderness.

Her death is the most important event to occur throughout the course of the entire series, not only because of her connection to Shipman’s narrative, but also her apparent line to the recollection of memories through Martinez and her significance as a direct manifestation of the sacrifice of innocence in the team’s pursuit of survival.

Her character’s intention from the beginning was to be a leader and profound voice of reason, as shown within the first season as she judges the other members of the team for beginning to worship and pray to the woods and their actions during the Doomcoming celebration episode.

She would’ve become the balance to Shipman’s twisted sense of justice later within the series and the voice against the team’s justification for needlessly cruel actions — an opposition the team viewed as unneeded, simply because it would have held them back from what they felt they needed to do to survive. Taylor was always meant to die because she would’ve been completely against everything the team would proceed to do after she was gone.

But, she would’ve especially been against Shipman’s actions.

The complicated development of their relationship with one another was so perfectly done, showing their true support and devotion to each other even amid the tension — something that was hard to discern within the initial seasons. After revealing their complicated past — Martinez’s words to Shipman in the final episode proving that they were always more than friends — it becomes clear that Taylor’s persistent presence is a direct result of Shipman’s intense feelings towards her.

So, in a way, the only narrative Taylor haunts is Shipman’s, something I believe she was always meant to do. To be destined to be the voice of reason and hold Shipman accountable. To care for her even from beyond the grave.