Ella Purnellhas survived the apocalypse. Well, in a way. The actress is the star of Prime Video’snew videogame-inspired series,Fallout, an action story set in a retro-futuristic world in which nuclear war has come to term.Purnell’s character, Lucy, is one of the few lucky vault-dwellers, or people that had access to vaults that protected them from the radioactive fallout that lends the show its title. To be the lead in one of the most anticipated shows of 2024 sure is a hell of a leap into stardom for a promising young actress who is so far best known for her role in ensemble casts such asMiss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’s or for playing younger versions of main characters in movies as varied asMaleficentandNever Let Me Go. However, this isn’t the first time Purnell has been at the center of a story. The actress has also drawn a lot of attention to herself as a member of a larger group of performers a few years back,when she appeared as Jackie in Showtime’sYellowjackets.
Again, in a way, this means thatFalloutis also not the first time Purnell has found herself as the survivor of a freak disaster. After all, inspired bythe tragedy of the Old Christians rugby team and Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, the show focuses on the story of a group of teenage girls whose plane falls in the woods as they are on their way to a soccer match against a rival school.Trapped in the wilderness for months on end, the Yellowjackets find themselves forced to resort to cannibalism. They also embrace a bizarre form of religion centered around one of their teammates and a distorted perception of nature as a being with its own wants and needs. Split into two timelines, one showing the girls as they’re lost to the world and the other devoted to a smaller group of survivors that made it to adulthood, the show not only asks us questions about what we would be willing to do to get through such a predicament, but also serves as an examination of social dynamics, particularly when we are talking about girls of high school age.
Yellowjackets
A wildly talented high school girls' soccer team become the unlucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the Canadian wilderness.
Ella Purnell’s ‘Yellowjackets’ Character Is Queen Bee
That’s where Purnell’s Jackie comes in. The most popular girl in their year, she’s just one kid in a larger cast of characters that also includes the rebel Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), the proto-psycho coach’s assistant Misty (Samantha Hanratty), the overachiever Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and, of course, Jackie’s self-erasing best friend, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse). Initially, though,Jackie’s role in her group is quickly established as the most important one: she’s the team captain, not because she’s a particularly good player, but because she has the social capital needed to keep everyone in check. She’s someone that the girls look up to, or at least this is whatCarlos Sanz’s Coach Martinez believes. In reality, things are a bit more complicated than that…
Jackie Quickly Loses Her Leader Status on ‘Yellowjackets’
Though some of them might envy Jackie’s place in the high school food chain, the girls don’t exactly respect her.This is obvious from the get-go, as Jackie is unable to comfort her teammates after one of them breaks a leg pretty nastily during practice, but it becomes even more evident in the wilderness. Having lost the social structure that kept her in power, Jackie immediately finds herself completely out of depth after the plane crash. She tries to make her voice heard, but all of her opinions are immediately discarded as being completely out of touch with their reality. And, you know what, most of them actuallyarequite out of touch. Come on, after days of being stranded with no sign of rescue, the best course of action is not tostay put while you starve to death!
Furthermore,Jackie has no actual skills to offer her party. As a soccer player, she’s not the fastest, nor the one that scores more goals. Likewise, in the wilderness, she can’t hunt, she has no medical knowledge, she has no idea which plants are poisonous, and even her leadership skills begin to dwindle, as there is no coach, no prom, no popularity contest to ensure her position as queen bee. Faster than it would have happened in real life, other girls begin to take over: Natalie is the best shot, Misty is the one with the guts and the skills to chop off limbs and treat rashes, and Akilah (Keeyah King) is the former girl scout who knows about plants and mushrooms. As for the leaders, Taissa soon stands out as the one capable of making decisions, while Lottie (Courtney Eaton), with a spirituality connected to amental illness that cannot be treated in the woods, becomes the guru to the girls' new religion. Constantly lost, useless, and cowardly, Jackie loses her footing. The only one that remains by her side is Shauna, but that friendship soon goes down the drain as well.
Purnell embodies this complex and complicated character with ease. Her big eyes express all the weight of being a teen whose place in the world is threatened by something you can’t even begin to grasp. Her Jackie is not difficult to hate. Sure, our collective memory of high school helps a lot when it comes to making queen bee characters detestable, butPurnell’s performance infuses Jackie with a sense of entitlement and righteousnessthat we soon find ourselves happy to see her lose everything. At the same time, however,there is a blatant insecurity and a certain despair Jackie has that forces us to sympathize with her character, to feel sad for the promising teenage girl whose life is completely wrecked by chance.
‘Yellowjackets’ Jackie Is a Tragic Character
Combined with the expert writing byshowrunnersAshley LyleandBrat Nickerson, Purnell’s performance helps build a seamless study of howhigh school hierarchycan be subverted by a change in circumstances. It also helps create one heck of a tragic character whose fate could be no other than death and cannibalization. You see, Jackie’s insecurities do not come out of the blue. Though the show never states in words, it is pretty well accepted that she and Shauna have unresolved feelings for one another… feelings that prove to be disastrous for their friendship. Caught between wanting tobeJackie and wanting to bewithher, Shauna sleeps with her best friend’s boyfriend and becomes pregnant with his child. When Jackie finds that out, well,there isn’t much Shauna can doto protect herself from her rage. Except, in the wilderness, Jackie’s rage doesn’t really mean anything.
The Yellowjackets Should Just Eat Coach Ben Already
It’s time for Coach Ben to take one for the team. And by “one,” we mean a fork to his thigh.
During their stay in the woods, the girls find shelter in an abandoned cabin. As winter approaches, this proves to be essential. Cast away from her group after a nasty fight with Shauna,Jackie freezes to death right outside the cabin, and her body is found the following morning in a particularly emotional scene. It’s a death that we all saw coming, and not just because Jackie eventually becomesutterly useless in the Yellowjackets group. No, it is a death that also makes sense; a perfect conclusion to a storyline that has come full circle. After all, Jackie has already experienced a kind of social death, and it only makes sense for her body to meet its fate as well.
But, furthermore,Yellowjacketsmakes it clear from its first episode that the girls are going to devolve into cannibalism as they spend more and more time in the woods. And who better for them toeat first than Jackie? Remember a few paragraphs earlier, when we talked about her being at the top of the food chain? Well, with this food chain completely subverted in the woods,what else can the girls do but consume Jackie’s flesh?What better way to represent not just the complete upheaval of the pecking order, but also to symbolize how all the Yellowjackets wanted a piece of Jackie for themselves?
Jackie Haunts Shauna in ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2
Jackie’s death takes place in the final episode ofthe show’s first season, and the feast that followstakes place early in Season 2. Before it happens, though, the show turns Jackie into a creepy character for the books, transforming her into a talking corpse. Okay, not literally, of course. After finding her friend frozen outside the cabin, Shauna takes to keeping her decaying body pretty and preserved, applying make-up to her face and talking to her. Once again, Purnell excels at her job in these scenes. Not as Jackie’s corpse,which is actually a doll, but as the ghost that Shauna sees as she’s talking to her dead friend.The distinction between the real Jackie and the post-mortem one is palpable, with Purnell infusing this new/old character with an extra layer of rage, as she represents the resentful Jackie that lives inside Shauna’s mind.
But Shauna can’t keep on preserving Jackie’s body forever. Eventually, the girls decide to burn it, and the smell of burning flesh is just too much for their empty stomachs to handle. It’s a remarkable scene, complete with a dreamlike atmosphere and Ancient Greece-inspired outfits, that serves as a breaking point for the Yellowjackets: they are no longer the girls that they were before the disaster. It is also the best conclusion possible for Purnell’s character story arc:having been at the center of the show for so long, it is only logical for her conclusion to announce the beginning of a new chapter in the story.
Yellowjacketsis available to watch on Paramount+ in the U.S.
Watch on Paramount+
