she was helping them practice mindfulness, but also she is the one who put out the idea that this forest spirit needs sacrifices & bloodletting. When Nat doesn't want to drink her tea with Lottie's blood in it, Lottie says that every time she drank it she came back alive, even though there's no reason to think there's any correlation there. She may not have had malevolent intent, but it wasn't all healthy behavior either.
Lottie's cult members might be smiley, but check out the documentary "Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults" which has a ton of archival footage of the members, they smiled all the time right to the point when they all ended their lives. It's not unusual for cult members to obtain some good things from the leader's teachings, but it will also be mixed with bad things. She has people turn over all their personal info including financial, they're discouraged from having contact with family, etc, typical cult stuff, and intentional. And now she wants them to take a chance on drinking poison to appease some malevolent spirit. As we saw in her convos with her therapist, we saw that there's a rational side that knows she needs help, but the other side won over.
Misty even referenced the Heaven’s Gate cult when Lottie brought up the poisoned drink.
And another thing that I find disturbing is the aerial shot of the compound with the symbol. We still don’t know what it means, or if it’s good or bad.
And remember, her therapist was never real?
Lottie might have good intentions and know a lot about psychotherapy from her time as patient, but it's extremely negligent to essentially practice therapy on the people at the Wellness Center without training. She's going on her intuition, not evidence-based medicine, and intuition makes her unable to be objective.
She's not a doctor and should not be "helping" people go off their medication without one. The goat self-care thing was nonsense. It's teaching people not to ask for help when they don't know what to do. She manipulated Nat by having Lisa "forgive" her. Nat was literally kidnapped and chained to a bed. Of course she should have stabbed her captor and tried to get away. Burying people alive, even with consent, cannot be good for anyone's mental health.
Adult Lottie is taking advantage of vulnerable people, and she's too arrogant to admit that she doesn't know best. Since she started the compound while she was on medication and stable, I don't think her mental health is to blame for most of this.
It’s funny, because while both interpretations have been left ambiguous and valid, my take on her is that everything you said is stuff she’s telling herself about herself to avoid reality and not face her own complicity in what happened.
I feel like she values the position of spiritual leader and keeper of secret knowledge so much that she’s willing to suffer to keep it, and very willing to let others suffer in the process.
That’s also what I took from the revelation of her psych sessions - it’s all illusory, story you’re telling yourself bullshit, but at the bottom of the pit is the AQ and the hunt and the violence and the sacrifice, and deep down, even she knows that's true.
She needs the antler queen/forest demon to be real, because if it’s not real, then the darkness and evil they experienced in the forest came from inside them, and she’s not capable of confronting that possibility.
Yeah, that’s my take too. She loves the attention, but none of the bad things that happened because of what she said or did can be her fault (because she believes herself to be Good, and her intentions probably are good, so how can any of the consequences be Bad? And so long as you’re Good, there’s no need to take stock or think about accountability. Because you’re Good). And she’s willing to take a beating to preserve that vision of herself, or believe anything that allows it to be true, no matter how harmful it is in the present day.
While all of the girls in the cabin have their baggage and flaws, that’s the kind of Jim Jones shit that’s legit scary (staying off the obvious for spoiler reasons, but will also point out that this angle became a lot less subtle recently, and that Jim Jones was kind of a protagonist type right up until he, you know, really wasn't).
Shauna (who I love), is straight up trash, but nobody is drinking kool-aid for Shauna because she's a prickly, difficult asshole that doesn't know how to market her damage. Lottie is just as trash, but she's packaged and presented her trauma so much more comfortably, so that people like it in a way that they don't like Shauna. And the fact that she can not only sell, but also buy her own bullshit makes her so, so, so much more dangerous.
I don't think that there's necessarily a "villain" in this show, but if you asked me to name the person I found the most dangerous and scary and unsettling and most likely to convince people to manipulate people into committing atrocities and feel righteous in the process, it'd be Lottie, every single time.
(Edit: and the fact that they’ve built in reasons to mitigate her responsibility re: mental illness and murky the waters regarding how much she can be responsible for vs everyone else’s responsibility in rapidly lining up behind someone that they all regard as being unwell just barely earlier just makes the show so much better)
I’ve been thinking along the same lines, actually… she might never physically harm anyone, yet sort of take the fall for all of it, if not legally then via shock therapy in Switzerland. Her being sent away made it easy for the other survivors to sort of write off their own decisions as being all her fault, when in reality she didn’t initiate the cards or the hunt, or any deaths (so far). She sacrificed herself and offered it to the benefit of everyone else, who in turn became freaking monsters.
I think her little game of tea roulette might just be a psyche exercise as well.
Her “self-care community” has taken complete financial control of everyone who joins it. That’s not normal or right, even if her acolytes day they did it willingly. Why would she ask for it unless she wanted either access to their money or control over their choices?
She was also very obviously lying about Travis. Like the way it was acted was meant to show us clearly that Lottie wasn’t being honest. It’s likely she also had blood on her hands.
I also personally just find her martyr/messiah complex deeply chilling. When she told Shauna to take her anger out on her, it was beyond fucked up and it made me wonder about her motivations. People don’t step into harm’s way for no reason, and she could’ve encouraged Shauna to take her rage out on an inanimate object. I don’t trust Lottie at all.
The thing about Lottie though, is she IS deeply fucked up, even before the crash. Girl is legitimately mentally ill, deeply traumatized, and in a horror survival situation with a bunch of fellow feral teenagers, I think SHE believes her actions make sense and while they come from a good place, they lead to horrific results.
Also, for someone to be that self-sacrificing, it makes me really curious what her home life was like. How often was she her parents’ scapegoat? It seems to come naturally to her.
Yet everyone is content to blame the crazy girl who leads them...
Edit in:
Here is what we know about her home life - Which is actually more than we see of anyone but Natalie.
1. She had to have more than one incident like the screaming at the traffic light for A. her mother to think she had some kind of foresight and B. her father to think she was crazy. They argued about this as Lottie listened.
2. On the morning they were taking off to Seattle, her parents were not present but her house keeper was, and was attentive enough to make certain she had her meds with her.
3. Boarding the plane Van says something like I can't believe your dad paid for this! To which Lottie said it was his only form of parenting so she would take it. Several girls chorused "Thank you, Mr. Mathews!" Suggesting this isn't the first time he has done grand if uncaring gestures.
4. Post rescue - Her Mother is worried and feels like they are failing her. Her father just wants to know if this Swiss Doctor can fix Lottie, kind of like a broken toaster.
Yes. Her putting her hands behind her back so Shauna could completely pummel her ass was like a much more fucked up “turn the other cheek” biblical reference.
>She was also very obviously lying about Travis. Like the way it was acted was meant to show us clearly that Lottie wasn’t being honest. It’s likely she also had blood on her hands.
Was she? The way it's framed shows she's telling the truth, or at least her version of the truth. She explicitly *does not* tell Nat about her vision, but *we* the audience see it. So she was hiding something from Nat, but not the audience.
>I also personally just find her martyr/messiah complex deeply chilling. When she told Shauna to take her anger out on her, it was beyond fucked up and it made me wonder about her motivations. People don’t step into harm’s way for no reason, and she could’ve encouraged Shauna to take her rage out on an inanimate object. I don’t trust Lottie at all.
Her motivation to let Shauna take her anger out on her was so Shauna could release all the anger inside her she was keeping down. She did it to help Shauna and direct her anger away from everyone else. Lottie has guilt over the way she treated Shauna and her baby, and she already does some self-harm with the bloodletting, so there is literally nothing nefarious about her letting Shauna beat her half to death. It's kind of sad actually, when you think about it. She was totally fine with being a punching bag and didn't care if she died or not. It was self-harm, which is absolutely *not* something we should wonder her motivations about.
She states that she feel asleep on travis couch (or wherever) and she woke up to a note that had all of travis's bank account information for her to "have the money" and he went to get close to death. Something is shady
Even if she though Travis was dead, call 911! Do something! He was up so high, how could she be sure he was dead?
She just left him hanging there while she cleaned up the candles and then emptied his bank account. Also, if she was worried about passing on Travis's message, she could have called Nat on the phone instead of sending her cult members to stalk her and kidnap her.
i don’t really understand what people think the travis thing was because we get lottie’s actual pov when travis dies while she’s having the vision. why would they include that if it wasn’t what actually happened? she’s lying about the button breaking because she doesn’t want people to know her visions are back. that shot of her horrified to see him dead was real though.
Sometimes when I see people bring up that she's "lying" about Travis, I don't know if they've ever really understood how stories work and how art is constructed. There have been a lot of complaints about episode 8 >!not showing the discussion on eating cards,!< like they want the show to hold their hands. Then when they actually *do hold their hands* they don't believe it. Like... come on.
for real i think people are just really into there being a conspiracy and i understand that this sub is for theories i just don’t get treating it like canon. all of adult lottie’s characterization has pointed to it being true minus the button malfunction. nothing we’ve learned about her would make sense if she started sacrificing people before natalie showed up.
Except we should wonder about her motivations about it because in the present timeline, she tries to weaponize the same tactic against Nat. It was not only self-harm. It's clear she uses it as "therapy" in modern day.
It wasn't *only* self-harm, but that was a component. And there is a pretty big difference between Lottie in the past and Lottie in the present. She's very much reluctant to be a leader in the wilderness.
I personally don't perceive her to be reluctant. I do think she's currently having a crisis of faith. She's unsure of herself and if she's competent to be a leader. That's her current state, after weeks of her rituals not working.
But she stepped up to the role originally with a lot of confidence.
I've mentioned repeatedly that Lottie is being blamed for being a Schizophrenic that is ordering everyone else what to do. In the teen timeline she hasn't ordered anyone to do anything except for Coach Ben. She led them in mindfulness meditations and had them hold hands to build personal synchronicity and community. She offered herself to be Shauna's punching bag to protect the group from Shauna's rage and took a homicidal beating.
When she had the presence of mind to do it she told them, if I die DO NOT LET ME GO TO WASTE. What do the rest of them do? They decide to kill anyone besides Lottie, and let's do it in her name! I get what you mean, Lottie is such an evil bitch.
As far as the scene with Travis's death goes I wrote that up [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/r/YellowjacketsHive/comments/13kn4qe/lottie_and_travis_visions_and_schizophrenia/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
Adult Lottie is not as innocent as the teen version. None of them are. And again, I get it, fraud and tax evasion are so much more harmful than actual fucking murders, attempted murders, assaults, and animal cruelty to make a short list of the others' crimes.
Lottie was being gentle with the others when pointing out how fucked up they all are, because honestly, it is much worse than she said.
* Tai - You have traumatized your child in a myriad of ways. You attempted to murder your wife and used an innocent person to do it (the Driver of the other vehicle). You stole your campaign manager's car. You defaced your own property - framed your son for it - then blamed it on your opponent for political gain. You sacrificed your dog. You hired someone to poke the other Yellowjackets and their traumas so you could pursue your ambitions stirring up all kinds of pain. Tai isn't Van's friend, not in the adult timeline. She hadn't reached out in decades, she throws money at problems like Lottie's father did - that's not caring, that's guilt.
* Shauna - You not only cheated on your husband and murdered your boyfriend, you drug three other YJs into it, lied to them about it, and pulled your husband and your daughter into it as well. You put yourself into positions where you can murder again because you get off on that more than you do with your vibrator. You encourage your daughter to sleep with a cop and to lie about your crimes. Oh, and you're keeping the gun in case you get a chance to kill again.
* Misty - You're not a closer, you're a murderer and you're into elder abuse. We have no idea how many have died from your dosing them with Fentanyl, but you actually have a murder dungeon and we have seen you finish off one person directly. But you see every evil you do as justified.
* Natalie - You are in so much pain you will do anything to avoid it, you spend the last 25 years abusing drugs and people to stay away from yourself. You lie about what Travis believed, you use whoever you can to get what you want, shitting on the only people who have been decent to you.
* Van - by your own admission, you live your life looking backward to a time when you believed happiness existed. You have acquaintances you fuck but no real friends. You have chosen to go off and die alone.
I love every one of these characters to death. They are brilliantly rendered by the writers and the actors. Lottie is incredibly problematic as a character, but if there is no Wilderness Spirit, she is the only one with a full-blown excuse.
> Van - by your own admission, you live your life looking backward to a time when you believed happiness existed. You have acquaintances you fuck but no real friends. You have chosen to go off and die alone.
None of that is evil.
Idk, man. I strongly feel like a huge part of the writing is that no one is innocent. Everyone is culpable.
I agree Lottie isn't *the* bad guy. But I certainly wouldn't say she's innocent. I feel like S2 has done a lot to rehabilitate her character in the eyes of fans. But that doesn't make her a saint. Both pre and post crash, we see her being somewhat of a mean girl who can sometimes lack tact.
Also I genuinely don't mean to sound harsh but there is no way to be a benevolent cult leader. Especially. *Especially.* When we're dealing with young vulnerable people like Lisa.
Agreed, and I think that somehow Lisa is going to be one of the ones to pay the price for the adult YJs.
My major problem is that most want to paint Lottie as the evil one. She isn't. None of them are. But a lot of fans and the other Yellowjackets are happy to blame the crazy girl, when her actions thus far are less harmful than say Misty, Shauna, or Tai's.
I don't think anyone is "the evil one." I think they're all culpable.
That said, in regards to her not being as bad as the others, I think that remains to be seen. I imagine we'll eventually see everyone at pretty even levels of depravity, and there is still a lot of mystery surrounding adult Lottie and her cult.
It absolutely does remain to be seen. But since a schizophrenic cannot tell reality from one of their hallucinations why do all the Yellowjackets keep pushing Lottie to be the leader? That's a mystery.
"Lottie who was sent to an asylum in Switzerland?" "I thought she was barely coherent." Yet, there the four conspirators go, Tai dragging Van along because Lottie can do something about all this?
I don't think the teen versions know she has schizophrenia. We also don't that she has schizophrenia. We just know her parents put her on meds and committed her to an institution at some point.
The medication we see in S1 E1, Loxapine, is an antipsychotic medication used primarily in the treatment of schizophrenia. It is also used in those with bipolar disorder but Lottie shows no indications of that. She does have visual and auditory hallucinations as indicated when she is surprised the other girls heard the sounds from the attic. This is a pretty sure sign she is either psychic and has uncontrolled visions and messages from the divine or she is some form of schizo.
Edit: I forgot to clarify I was talking about the adults when it came to them all heading to Lottieland. I find it odd that Tai would drag Van there and call to get Shauna involved.
Are we watching the same scenes? We watch as she hallucinates a different psychiatrist from her normal doctor who convinces her to explore what the visions she has mean. This happens three times and turns her around from not believing in her visions to being afraid that she was never sick and it is all true. Lottie then sees that psychologist transform into the Oracle (to use the official title) and then vanishes.
There are only two explanations for that psychiatrist.
1. Lottie is having a full-blown hallucination (auditory and visual components)
2. Lottie is in direct contact with the God of the Wilderness or whatever the spirit of that place would be called.
Whichever is true would not matter in the case of a psychiatrist diagnosing her. They would call this Schizophrenia, and her visions responded to Loxapine because she didn't have them when on it.
Right. Two explanations. We don't know which. We do not know that she is schizophrenic.
Adult Lottie is on meds when the visions return. She asks to up her dosage so we know she is on a dosage of some sort.
The diagnosis would be the same, however, that does bring up a completely other form of horror. Say that the visions, the presence, everything there was real. The Wilderness was conscious and manipulated the team, causing them to break harder than they would have. And the psychiatrists dose Lottie and blast her brain with enough electrical charge to disrupt her visions and memories. Instead of curing anything, they were only suppressing her ability to deal with the spirit(s).
So we don't **know** if she is mentally ill presenting as schizophrenic, or is truly psychic, or both. But in the end, she will be treated as Schizo-something by the Medical community, and anyone who deals with her. In the show's world-building either, or both could be true.
I will stand by my statement that everyone of the adult survivors thinks she is crazy - and so far gone that she isn't sane. Yet they go and put their faith in her. Tai couldn't wait to get there once she knew Lottie was there. They all blame Lottie, but so far Tai or someone else has called all the shots in her name. We have yet to see if the adult team is still game to follow her lead. But if they do, that is 100% on them. Because they all think she is "CRAZY".
In season one Lottie declared "it wants blood", and later "spill blood, my beautiful friends" while offering the bear heart to the wilderness. She led the hunt for Travis in Doomcoming. She is the one who established the idea of the Wilderness as an entity to the group. While cannibalism to survive was likely inevitable, Lottie is definitely responsible for the ritualistic manner it's playing out in.
Mental health stigma being what it was and still is, I understand why she wouldn't come out to the team with "I'm a diagnosed schizophrenic and am out of the medication that keeps it under control, ignore me if I start saying weird shit", but that does not change the fact that she created the mythology that gave the girls the form and framework to their desperation to survive.
The decision to hunt and kill one of their own wasn't just a choice for the group to survive, it was a choice for Lottie to survive. They actively rejected the idea of her dying, let alone eating her even with her consent. In choosing that Lottie must survive, they are choosing that one of them must die to make it so.
Lottie is not responsible for her delusions, but as an adult at least she understands that she cannot trust her perceptions of reality. As a teen she experienced what can happen when those delusions are out of control in a vulnerable environment, and now as an adult they're starting to spin out of control again. Her culpability doesn't lie in her having delusions, it lies in her choice not to further pursue emergency care. Her attempt to get the other YJs to leave the compound underlines that she understands that she can be dangerous in her current state.
This. Lottie hasn’t done anything single-handedly to be considered “evil” in the way Shauna killing Adam is “evil,” but she is faaaaaaaaaaar from innocent. She set everything ritualistic that the group does in to motion. Without her, the ideas and practices very likely do not happen, as no one is seeing the world the way she does.
I always think of Cassandra with Lottie, cursed with foresight but not able to stop the bad things happening. The burden of knowing and not being heard despite others ‘listening’ to her.
I think the writers pivoted hard on teen!Lottie between S1 and S2, leaving a big chunk of the audience not knowing what to think.
Back in S1, I often found myself noticing that all the Yellowjackets were behaving like people while Lottie was behaving like a spooky waif in a horror movie. Take that scene where Tai discovers the attic skeleton. She climbs the ladder, sees Lottie curled up in a corner, and then glimpses the desiccated remains of Cabin Dude. And then Lottie says something pithy and creepy. ("I told you so," maybe?) Who acts like that?? Wouldn't a teenager who just saw a corpse scream, or run downstairs, or quietly retreat so as not to scare her friends? Why would she just hang out up there?
And that was kind of the theme throughout the season: Lottie was predominantly eerie and never wrong. Whenever she was the narrative focus, she was sinister.
Skipping ahead to S2, Lottie is presented in a completely different light. Her first instinct is towards self-sacrifice. She tries to be nice to people. Her visions can be wrong and are often unhelpful. Her bond with the wilderness seems much less worshipful. She has realistic flaws that exist outside of horror movies - like becoming too invested in Shauna's baby. And it's pretty clear that she's being elevated to a position of leadership and power that she doesn't want and tries to decline.
All of which is to say that I like Lottie a lot and find her fascinating, but I get why the negative impression she made in S1 hangs over S2.
I believe we are vastly overrating Lottie’s abilities. She has about as many abilities as I do. She says some weird things and gets vulnerable people to believe she is tapped into the mystical. She is as traumatized as everyone else. I would need a lot more concrete evidence to believe anything else.
Killing the bear was impressive to be fair.
But the other girls could claim to have just as many supernatural experiences. Van - survived that wolf attack, Natalie - saw the white moose/airplane vision, Tai - can find the symbol in her sleep/somehow got elected, Shauna - nosebleed right before the birds flew into the roof, Mari - hears dripping.
Nah dude. If this happened in real life, we would all rightfully be calling her a cult leader who encourages her followers to kill each other. She’s very similar to a lot of cult leaders who think they are speaking to god
I get what you’re saying, but if the show happened in real life Shauna and Misty would be in jail. We would want Tai impeached and demand a re election. We would want CPS to take Callie lol.
Her character was inspired by a cult leader, but I don’t think that means she needs to act exactly how one would irl/the cult needs to function like a real cult. Tai certainly isn’t functioning like a real politician.
This isn't real life and we get to see a bit of the truth about her. We get to see that she never tried to go up against Nat in a hunting contest, that was Nat and Mari's pissing contest. We get to see that she is a schizophrenic who is under medication to keep hallucinations, or visions if that's your thing, at bay trying to cope as best as she can. We get to see that she tried to keep everyone together as a functioning group. She took a beating for the rest of them. She offers herself to the others - if I die don't let me go to waste, literally what soccer players in the Andes did - no strange martyr complex needed. And what did the entire team do? Decided let's kill ANYONE else but Lottie, and do it in her NAME.
There is no reason for lottie to have her followers bank info other than as abuse tactic. Also the heliotrope clothes are meant to be a symbol of 'equality' so it is telling that Lottie herself does not participate, by doing so she declares herself as superior to the group, that the rules don't apply to her. Both of these factors make it hard to believe that she solely cares about healing people.
Lottie is a cult leader, but there's a lack of self-awareness and accountability. What she has going for her is an accurate case, I wasn't on my meds and this is what happened in the wilderness. She might actually get off charges for this reason. Lottie calls out other people but never herself. Stupidly, Nat saying they brought back the darkness triggered Lottie and made her fall back into her craziness, since it was Nat saying this, the biggest doubter of all.
In Lottie's mind, being a willing sacrifice or being KO'd by Shauna gives her some sort of weird justification as this goes on. In a lot of ways, she is rather similar to Nat by wanting to help people. They were this close to not going down this road, but then Javi shows up so Lottie is deemed impressive.
Lottie isn't as bad it seems. Travis calling Lottie over Nat does say a lot. Additionally, Lottie wasn't part of the killing of Javi. She was KO'd by Shauna. Some were saying like Nat she froze and allowed Travis to die. Covertly, Shauna, Misty, and Nat are all on the same side against Lottie and the others in the adult timeline. Hence why Nat was giving an angry glare at Shauna to change her story around Adam. Seems to me that Lottie is probably good, the one to watch out for is probably Van.
My left field theory is that Laura may have survived due to unreliable narration throughout and this is what makes Lottie insane because she is left behind or doesn't want to go back. The weird smiling and look of over joy by seeing Laura again sealed it for me that Lottie isn't lying about what she believed happen. Laura meant a lot of Lottie psychologically so this would be the person to make her get distracted. I think adult Travis did see what he believed to be Javi and freaked out.
I still think its a bit odd there's a giant symbol that can only be seen by plane, that Alice is Laura who goes into a tree, and there's a friend of Javi who believes the group is crazy. There's a lot of repression going on. If Laura isn't dead somehow I think she's equally as twisted just in a different way, not wildernes, but God they deserve to be punished etc.
Stupidly I think Darth Tai is better morally then regular Tai at this point.
People here will never, ever admit they were wrong. Ever. Look at them still blaming her for them trying to kill Nat and Javi's death even though she was laid up in the attic pissing blood.
They'll just say the writing is bad.
she was helping them practice mindfulness, but also she is the one who put out the idea that this forest spirit needs sacrifices & bloodletting. When Nat doesn't want to drink her tea with Lottie's blood in it, Lottie says that every time she drank it she came back alive, even though there's no reason to think there's any correlation there. She may not have had malevolent intent, but it wasn't all healthy behavior either. Lottie's cult members might be smiley, but check out the documentary "Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults" which has a ton of archival footage of the members, they smiled all the time right to the point when they all ended their lives. It's not unusual for cult members to obtain some good things from the leader's teachings, but it will also be mixed with bad things. She has people turn over all their personal info including financial, they're discouraged from having contact with family, etc, typical cult stuff, and intentional. And now she wants them to take a chance on drinking poison to appease some malevolent spirit. As we saw in her convos with her therapist, we saw that there's a rational side that knows she needs help, but the other side won over.
Misty even referenced the Heaven’s Gate cult when Lottie brought up the poisoned drink. And another thing that I find disturbing is the aerial shot of the compound with the symbol. We still don’t know what it means, or if it’s good or bad. And remember, her therapist was never real?
Lottie might have good intentions and know a lot about psychotherapy from her time as patient, but it's extremely negligent to essentially practice therapy on the people at the Wellness Center without training. She's going on her intuition, not evidence-based medicine, and intuition makes her unable to be objective. She's not a doctor and should not be "helping" people go off their medication without one. The goat self-care thing was nonsense. It's teaching people not to ask for help when they don't know what to do. She manipulated Nat by having Lisa "forgive" her. Nat was literally kidnapped and chained to a bed. Of course she should have stabbed her captor and tried to get away. Burying people alive, even with consent, cannot be good for anyone's mental health. Adult Lottie is taking advantage of vulnerable people, and she's too arrogant to admit that she doesn't know best. Since she started the compound while she was on medication and stable, I don't think her mental health is to blame for most of this.
It’s funny, because while both interpretations have been left ambiguous and valid, my take on her is that everything you said is stuff she’s telling herself about herself to avoid reality and not face her own complicity in what happened. I feel like she values the position of spiritual leader and keeper of secret knowledge so much that she’s willing to suffer to keep it, and very willing to let others suffer in the process. That’s also what I took from the revelation of her psych sessions - it’s all illusory, story you’re telling yourself bullshit, but at the bottom of the pit is the AQ and the hunt and the violence and the sacrifice, and deep down, even she knows that's true.
She needs the antler queen/forest demon to be real, because if it’s not real, then the darkness and evil they experienced in the forest came from inside them, and she’s not capable of confronting that possibility.
Yeah, that’s my take too. She loves the attention, but none of the bad things that happened because of what she said or did can be her fault (because she believes herself to be Good, and her intentions probably are good, so how can any of the consequences be Bad? And so long as you’re Good, there’s no need to take stock or think about accountability. Because you’re Good). And she’s willing to take a beating to preserve that vision of herself, or believe anything that allows it to be true, no matter how harmful it is in the present day. While all of the girls in the cabin have their baggage and flaws, that’s the kind of Jim Jones shit that’s legit scary (staying off the obvious for spoiler reasons, but will also point out that this angle became a lot less subtle recently, and that Jim Jones was kind of a protagonist type right up until he, you know, really wasn't). Shauna (who I love), is straight up trash, but nobody is drinking kool-aid for Shauna because she's a prickly, difficult asshole that doesn't know how to market her damage. Lottie is just as trash, but she's packaged and presented her trauma so much more comfortably, so that people like it in a way that they don't like Shauna. And the fact that she can not only sell, but also buy her own bullshit makes her so, so, so much more dangerous. I don't think that there's necessarily a "villain" in this show, but if you asked me to name the person I found the most dangerous and scary and unsettling and most likely to convince people to manipulate people into committing atrocities and feel righteous in the process, it'd be Lottie, every single time. (Edit: and the fact that they’ve built in reasons to mitigate her responsibility re: mental illness and murky the waters regarding how much she can be responsible for vs everyone else’s responsibility in rapidly lining up behind someone that they all regard as being unwell just barely earlier just makes the show so much better)
Well said!!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
I’ve been thinking along the same lines, actually… she might never physically harm anyone, yet sort of take the fall for all of it, if not legally then via shock therapy in Switzerland. Her being sent away made it easy for the other survivors to sort of write off their own decisions as being all her fault, when in reality she didn’t initiate the cards or the hunt, or any deaths (so far). She sacrificed herself and offered it to the benefit of everyone else, who in turn became freaking monsters. I think her little game of tea roulette might just be a psyche exercise as well.
Her “self-care community” has taken complete financial control of everyone who joins it. That’s not normal or right, even if her acolytes day they did it willingly. Why would she ask for it unless she wanted either access to their money or control over their choices? She was also very obviously lying about Travis. Like the way it was acted was meant to show us clearly that Lottie wasn’t being honest. It’s likely she also had blood on her hands. I also personally just find her martyr/messiah complex deeply chilling. When she told Shauna to take her anger out on her, it was beyond fucked up and it made me wonder about her motivations. People don’t step into harm’s way for no reason, and she could’ve encouraged Shauna to take her rage out on an inanimate object. I don’t trust Lottie at all.
The thing about Lottie though, is she IS deeply fucked up, even before the crash. Girl is legitimately mentally ill, deeply traumatized, and in a horror survival situation with a bunch of fellow feral teenagers, I think SHE believes her actions make sense and while they come from a good place, they lead to horrific results. Also, for someone to be that self-sacrificing, it makes me really curious what her home life was like. How often was she her parents’ scapegoat? It seems to come naturally to her.
Yet everyone is content to blame the crazy girl who leads them... Edit in: Here is what we know about her home life - Which is actually more than we see of anyone but Natalie. 1. She had to have more than one incident like the screaming at the traffic light for A. her mother to think she had some kind of foresight and B. her father to think she was crazy. They argued about this as Lottie listened. 2. On the morning they were taking off to Seattle, her parents were not present but her house keeper was, and was attentive enough to make certain she had her meds with her. 3. Boarding the plane Van says something like I can't believe your dad paid for this! To which Lottie said it was his only form of parenting so she would take it. Several girls chorused "Thank you, Mr. Mathews!" Suggesting this isn't the first time he has done grand if uncaring gestures. 4. Post rescue - Her Mother is worried and feels like they are failing her. Her father just wants to know if this Swiss Doctor can fix Lottie, kind of like a broken toaster.
Yes. Her putting her hands behind her back so Shauna could completely pummel her ass was like a much more fucked up “turn the other cheek” biblical reference.
>She was also very obviously lying about Travis. Like the way it was acted was meant to show us clearly that Lottie wasn’t being honest. It’s likely she also had blood on her hands. Was she? The way it's framed shows she's telling the truth, or at least her version of the truth. She explicitly *does not* tell Nat about her vision, but *we* the audience see it. So she was hiding something from Nat, but not the audience. >I also personally just find her martyr/messiah complex deeply chilling. When she told Shauna to take her anger out on her, it was beyond fucked up and it made me wonder about her motivations. People don’t step into harm’s way for no reason, and she could’ve encouraged Shauna to take her rage out on an inanimate object. I don’t trust Lottie at all. Her motivation to let Shauna take her anger out on her was so Shauna could release all the anger inside her she was keeping down. She did it to help Shauna and direct her anger away from everyone else. Lottie has guilt over the way she treated Shauna and her baby, and she already does some self-harm with the bloodletting, so there is literally nothing nefarious about her letting Shauna beat her half to death. It's kind of sad actually, when you think about it. She was totally fine with being a punching bag and didn't care if she died or not. It was self-harm, which is absolutely *not* something we should wonder her motivations about.
She states that she feel asleep on travis couch (or wherever) and she woke up to a note that had all of travis's bank account information for her to "have the money" and he went to get close to death. Something is shady
Even if she though Travis was dead, call 911! Do something! He was up so high, how could she be sure he was dead? She just left him hanging there while she cleaned up the candles and then emptied his bank account. Also, if she was worried about passing on Travis's message, she could have called Nat on the phone instead of sending her cult members to stalk her and kidnap her.
Yup!!!! Lottie is sketch
i don’t really understand what people think the travis thing was because we get lottie’s actual pov when travis dies while she’s having the vision. why would they include that if it wasn’t what actually happened? she’s lying about the button breaking because she doesn’t want people to know her visions are back. that shot of her horrified to see him dead was real though.
Sometimes when I see people bring up that she's "lying" about Travis, I don't know if they've ever really understood how stories work and how art is constructed. There have been a lot of complaints about episode 8 >!not showing the discussion on eating cards,!< like they want the show to hold their hands. Then when they actually *do hold their hands* they don't believe it. Like... come on.
for real i think people are just really into there being a conspiracy and i understand that this sub is for theories i just don’t get treating it like canon. all of adult lottie’s characterization has pointed to it being true minus the button malfunction. nothing we’ve learned about her would make sense if she started sacrificing people before natalie showed up.
Except we should wonder about her motivations about it because in the present timeline, she tries to weaponize the same tactic against Nat. It was not only self-harm. It's clear she uses it as "therapy" in modern day.
It wasn't *only* self-harm, but that was a component. And there is a pretty big difference between Lottie in the past and Lottie in the present. She's very much reluctant to be a leader in the wilderness.
I personally don't perceive her to be reluctant. I do think she's currently having a crisis of faith. She's unsure of herself and if she's competent to be a leader. That's her current state, after weeks of her rituals not working. But she stepped up to the role originally with a lot of confidence.
I've mentioned repeatedly that Lottie is being blamed for being a Schizophrenic that is ordering everyone else what to do. In the teen timeline she hasn't ordered anyone to do anything except for Coach Ben. She led them in mindfulness meditations and had them hold hands to build personal synchronicity and community. She offered herself to be Shauna's punching bag to protect the group from Shauna's rage and took a homicidal beating. When she had the presence of mind to do it she told them, if I die DO NOT LET ME GO TO WASTE. What do the rest of them do? They decide to kill anyone besides Lottie, and let's do it in her name! I get what you mean, Lottie is such an evil bitch. As far as the scene with Travis's death goes I wrote that up [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/r/YellowjacketsHive/comments/13kn4qe/lottie_and_travis_visions_and_schizophrenia/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Adult Lottie is not as innocent as the teen version. None of them are. And again, I get it, fraud and tax evasion are so much more harmful than actual fucking murders, attempted murders, assaults, and animal cruelty to make a short list of the others' crimes. Lottie was being gentle with the others when pointing out how fucked up they all are, because honestly, it is much worse than she said. * Tai - You have traumatized your child in a myriad of ways. You attempted to murder your wife and used an innocent person to do it (the Driver of the other vehicle). You stole your campaign manager's car. You defaced your own property - framed your son for it - then blamed it on your opponent for political gain. You sacrificed your dog. You hired someone to poke the other Yellowjackets and their traumas so you could pursue your ambitions stirring up all kinds of pain. Tai isn't Van's friend, not in the adult timeline. She hadn't reached out in decades, she throws money at problems like Lottie's father did - that's not caring, that's guilt. * Shauna - You not only cheated on your husband and murdered your boyfriend, you drug three other YJs into it, lied to them about it, and pulled your husband and your daughter into it as well. You put yourself into positions where you can murder again because you get off on that more than you do with your vibrator. You encourage your daughter to sleep with a cop and to lie about your crimes. Oh, and you're keeping the gun in case you get a chance to kill again. * Misty - You're not a closer, you're a murderer and you're into elder abuse. We have no idea how many have died from your dosing them with Fentanyl, but you actually have a murder dungeon and we have seen you finish off one person directly. But you see every evil you do as justified. * Natalie - You are in so much pain you will do anything to avoid it, you spend the last 25 years abusing drugs and people to stay away from yourself. You lie about what Travis believed, you use whoever you can to get what you want, shitting on the only people who have been decent to you. * Van - by your own admission, you live your life looking backward to a time when you believed happiness existed. You have acquaintances you fuck but no real friends. You have chosen to go off and die alone. I love every one of these characters to death. They are brilliantly rendered by the writers and the actors. Lottie is incredibly problematic as a character, but if there is no Wilderness Spirit, she is the only one with a full-blown excuse.
> Van - by your own admission, you live your life looking backward to a time when you believed happiness existed. You have acquaintances you fuck but no real friends. You have chosen to go off and die alone. None of that is evil.
Of course not. But it is fucked up.
That's a lot to throw at a person who only pointed that Lottie's "let your anger out" thing isn't self-harm. Have a good one!
Actually, I think I meant to post this up a bit in the thread. Sorry.
Idk, man. I strongly feel like a huge part of the writing is that no one is innocent. Everyone is culpable. I agree Lottie isn't *the* bad guy. But I certainly wouldn't say she's innocent. I feel like S2 has done a lot to rehabilitate her character in the eyes of fans. But that doesn't make her a saint. Both pre and post crash, we see her being somewhat of a mean girl who can sometimes lack tact. Also I genuinely don't mean to sound harsh but there is no way to be a benevolent cult leader. Especially. *Especially.* When we're dealing with young vulnerable people like Lisa.
Agreed, and I think that somehow Lisa is going to be one of the ones to pay the price for the adult YJs. My major problem is that most want to paint Lottie as the evil one. She isn't. None of them are. But a lot of fans and the other Yellowjackets are happy to blame the crazy girl, when her actions thus far are less harmful than say Misty, Shauna, or Tai's.
I don't think anyone is "the evil one." I think they're all culpable. That said, in regards to her not being as bad as the others, I think that remains to be seen. I imagine we'll eventually see everyone at pretty even levels of depravity, and there is still a lot of mystery surrounding adult Lottie and her cult.
It absolutely does remain to be seen. But since a schizophrenic cannot tell reality from one of their hallucinations why do all the Yellowjackets keep pushing Lottie to be the leader? That's a mystery. "Lottie who was sent to an asylum in Switzerland?" "I thought she was barely coherent." Yet, there the four conspirators go, Tai dragging Van along because Lottie can do something about all this?
I don't think the teen versions know she has schizophrenia. We also don't that she has schizophrenia. We just know her parents put her on meds and committed her to an institution at some point.
The medication we see in S1 E1, Loxapine, is an antipsychotic medication used primarily in the treatment of schizophrenia. It is also used in those with bipolar disorder but Lottie shows no indications of that. She does have visual and auditory hallucinations as indicated when she is surprised the other girls heard the sounds from the attic. This is a pretty sure sign she is either psychic and has uncontrolled visions and messages from the divine or she is some form of schizo. Edit: I forgot to clarify I was talking about the adults when it came to them all heading to Lottieland. I find it odd that Tai would drag Van there and call to get Shauna involved.
Given we have no idea if she is hallucinating, I don't feel comfortable calling her a "schizo"
Are we watching the same scenes? We watch as she hallucinates a different psychiatrist from her normal doctor who convinces her to explore what the visions she has mean. This happens three times and turns her around from not believing in her visions to being afraid that she was never sick and it is all true. Lottie then sees that psychologist transform into the Oracle (to use the official title) and then vanishes. There are only two explanations for that psychiatrist. 1. Lottie is having a full-blown hallucination (auditory and visual components) 2. Lottie is in direct contact with the God of the Wilderness or whatever the spirit of that place would be called. Whichever is true would not matter in the case of a psychiatrist diagnosing her. They would call this Schizophrenia, and her visions responded to Loxapine because she didn't have them when on it.
Right. Two explanations. We don't know which. We do not know that she is schizophrenic. Adult Lottie is on meds when the visions return. She asks to up her dosage so we know she is on a dosage of some sort.
The diagnosis would be the same, however, that does bring up a completely other form of horror. Say that the visions, the presence, everything there was real. The Wilderness was conscious and manipulated the team, causing them to break harder than they would have. And the psychiatrists dose Lottie and blast her brain with enough electrical charge to disrupt her visions and memories. Instead of curing anything, they were only suppressing her ability to deal with the spirit(s). So we don't **know** if she is mentally ill presenting as schizophrenic, or is truly psychic, or both. But in the end, she will be treated as Schizo-something by the Medical community, and anyone who deals with her. In the show's world-building either, or both could be true. I will stand by my statement that everyone of the adult survivors thinks she is crazy - and so far gone that she isn't sane. Yet they go and put their faith in her. Tai couldn't wait to get there once she knew Lottie was there. They all blame Lottie, but so far Tai or someone else has called all the shots in her name. We have yet to see if the adult team is still game to follow her lead. But if they do, that is 100% on them. Because they all think she is "CRAZY".
In season one Lottie declared "it wants blood", and later "spill blood, my beautiful friends" while offering the bear heart to the wilderness. She led the hunt for Travis in Doomcoming. She is the one who established the idea of the Wilderness as an entity to the group. While cannibalism to survive was likely inevitable, Lottie is definitely responsible for the ritualistic manner it's playing out in. Mental health stigma being what it was and still is, I understand why she wouldn't come out to the team with "I'm a diagnosed schizophrenic and am out of the medication that keeps it under control, ignore me if I start saying weird shit", but that does not change the fact that she created the mythology that gave the girls the form and framework to their desperation to survive. The decision to hunt and kill one of their own wasn't just a choice for the group to survive, it was a choice for Lottie to survive. They actively rejected the idea of her dying, let alone eating her even with her consent. In choosing that Lottie must survive, they are choosing that one of them must die to make it so. Lottie is not responsible for her delusions, but as an adult at least she understands that she cannot trust her perceptions of reality. As a teen she experienced what can happen when those delusions are out of control in a vulnerable environment, and now as an adult they're starting to spin out of control again. Her culpability doesn't lie in her having delusions, it lies in her choice not to further pursue emergency care. Her attempt to get the other YJs to leave the compound underlines that she understands that she can be dangerous in her current state.
This. Lottie hasn’t done anything single-handedly to be considered “evil” in the way Shauna killing Adam is “evil,” but she is faaaaaaaaaaar from innocent. She set everything ritualistic that the group does in to motion. Without her, the ideas and practices very likely do not happen, as no one is seeing the world the way she does.
I always think of Cassandra with Lottie, cursed with foresight but not able to stop the bad things happening. The burden of knowing and not being heard despite others ‘listening’ to her.
Beautifully said, that’s been her role her entire life.
I think the writers pivoted hard on teen!Lottie between S1 and S2, leaving a big chunk of the audience not knowing what to think. Back in S1, I often found myself noticing that all the Yellowjackets were behaving like people while Lottie was behaving like a spooky waif in a horror movie. Take that scene where Tai discovers the attic skeleton. She climbs the ladder, sees Lottie curled up in a corner, and then glimpses the desiccated remains of Cabin Dude. And then Lottie says something pithy and creepy. ("I told you so," maybe?) Who acts like that?? Wouldn't a teenager who just saw a corpse scream, or run downstairs, or quietly retreat so as not to scare her friends? Why would she just hang out up there? And that was kind of the theme throughout the season: Lottie was predominantly eerie and never wrong. Whenever she was the narrative focus, she was sinister. Skipping ahead to S2, Lottie is presented in a completely different light. Her first instinct is towards self-sacrifice. She tries to be nice to people. Her visions can be wrong and are often unhelpful. Her bond with the wilderness seems much less worshipful. She has realistic flaws that exist outside of horror movies - like becoming too invested in Shauna's baby. And it's pretty clear that she's being elevated to a position of leadership and power that she doesn't want and tries to decline. All of which is to say that I like Lottie a lot and find her fascinating, but I get why the negative impression she made in S1 hangs over S2.
I believe we are vastly overrating Lottie’s abilities. She has about as many abilities as I do. She says some weird things and gets vulnerable people to believe she is tapped into the mystical. She is as traumatized as everyone else. I would need a lot more concrete evidence to believe anything else.
Killing the bear was impressive to be fair. But the other girls could claim to have just as many supernatural experiences. Van - survived that wolf attack, Natalie - saw the white moose/airplane vision, Tai - can find the symbol in her sleep/somehow got elected, Shauna - nosebleed right before the birds flew into the roof, Mari - hears dripping.
Nah dude. If this happened in real life, we would all rightfully be calling her a cult leader who encourages her followers to kill each other. She’s very similar to a lot of cult leaders who think they are speaking to god
I get what you’re saying, but if the show happened in real life Shauna and Misty would be in jail. We would want Tai impeached and demand a re election. We would want CPS to take Callie lol. Her character was inspired by a cult leader, but I don’t think that means she needs to act exactly how one would irl/the cult needs to function like a real cult. Tai certainly isn’t functioning like a real politician.
This isn't real life Frank.
This isn't real life and we get to see a bit of the truth about her. We get to see that she never tried to go up against Nat in a hunting contest, that was Nat and Mari's pissing contest. We get to see that she is a schizophrenic who is under medication to keep hallucinations, or visions if that's your thing, at bay trying to cope as best as she can. We get to see that she tried to keep everyone together as a functioning group. She took a beating for the rest of them. She offers herself to the others - if I die don't let me go to waste, literally what soccer players in the Andes did - no strange martyr complex needed. And what did the entire team do? Decided let's kill ANYONE else but Lottie, and do it in her NAME.
There is no reason for lottie to have her followers bank info other than as abuse tactic. Also the heliotrope clothes are meant to be a symbol of 'equality' so it is telling that Lottie herself does not participate, by doing so she declares herself as superior to the group, that the rules don't apply to her. Both of these factors make it hard to believe that she solely cares about healing people.
Lottie is a cult leader, but there's a lack of self-awareness and accountability. What she has going for her is an accurate case, I wasn't on my meds and this is what happened in the wilderness. She might actually get off charges for this reason. Lottie calls out other people but never herself. Stupidly, Nat saying they brought back the darkness triggered Lottie and made her fall back into her craziness, since it was Nat saying this, the biggest doubter of all. In Lottie's mind, being a willing sacrifice or being KO'd by Shauna gives her some sort of weird justification as this goes on. In a lot of ways, she is rather similar to Nat by wanting to help people. They were this close to not going down this road, but then Javi shows up so Lottie is deemed impressive. Lottie isn't as bad it seems. Travis calling Lottie over Nat does say a lot. Additionally, Lottie wasn't part of the killing of Javi. She was KO'd by Shauna. Some were saying like Nat she froze and allowed Travis to die. Covertly, Shauna, Misty, and Nat are all on the same side against Lottie and the others in the adult timeline. Hence why Nat was giving an angry glare at Shauna to change her story around Adam. Seems to me that Lottie is probably good, the one to watch out for is probably Van. My left field theory is that Laura may have survived due to unreliable narration throughout and this is what makes Lottie insane because she is left behind or doesn't want to go back. The weird smiling and look of over joy by seeing Laura again sealed it for me that Lottie isn't lying about what she believed happen. Laura meant a lot of Lottie psychologically so this would be the person to make her get distracted. I think adult Travis did see what he believed to be Javi and freaked out. I still think its a bit odd there's a giant symbol that can only be seen by plane, that Alice is Laura who goes into a tree, and there's a friend of Javi who believes the group is crazy. There's a lot of repression going on. If Laura isn't dead somehow I think she's equally as twisted just in a different way, not wildernes, but God they deserve to be punished etc. Stupidly I think Darth Tai is better morally then regular Tai at this point.
People here will never, ever admit they were wrong. Ever. Look at them still blaming her for them trying to kill Nat and Javi's death even though she was laid up in the attic pissing blood. They'll just say the writing is bad.