Is Jeff The Blackmailer On 'Yellowjackets,' Or Just A Someone Trying To Do Good?

- Yellowjackets -
Is Jeff The Blackmailer On 'Yellowjackets,' Or Just A Someone Trying To Do Good?

It's hard to trust any of the characters on Yellowjackets. After all, the survivors are all harboring a secret so intense, they're being blackmailed for $50,000 in order for their anonymous stalker to keep quiet. Yet the identity of that stalker may be closer than we think. See: Shauna's husband Jeff, who is perhaps the blackmailer. Or is Yellowjackets just trying to throw us off the trail of the real culprit?

In Episode 7, titled "No Compass," Shauna, Taissa, and Natalie hatch a plan to catch the person taunting them with those postcards (and that cryptic symbol). They'll deliver the $50,000 to the blackmailer with a tracker inside, so that they can finally unmask the person who has been wreaking havoc on their lives. Of course, the plan doesn't work: The blackmailer tosses the tracker out of the bag and takes the money, leaving their identity as one more mystery for Yellowjackets to unravel at a later date. The women go home, defeated.

When Shauna arrives home, however, her husband Jeff isn't there. He returns home in the morning, claiming that he slept at the store due to an early morning delivery. Shauna assumes he's having an affair (she's having one of her own, so really, how mad can she be?) but the show seems to tease a different possibility. If Jeff was MIA, couldn't he be the person blackmailing the grown-up Yellowjackets?

Images: Showtime

It makes some sense. For one thing, while Shauna was quick to assume Jeff was sleeping with someone else (she followed him to a hotel to find him hanging out with a blonde woman) we don't know that for sure. There's a real possibility that Jeff's odd behavior has nothing to do with who he's sleeping with, and everything to do with trying to find out the truth about his wife's time in the wilderness.

Jeff has plenty of reason to be invested in what happened in the woods. He was sleeping with Shauna before the plane crash, and got her pregnant — a fact that we're not sure he knows about, but very well might. We don't know what happened to the baby, but given what we do know about the situation in the woods, it probably wasn't great. We also know that Jeff cared about Shauna's BFF Jackie, who was his girlfriend before the plane went down. We have no idea what happened to Jackie either, and while it's possible she's still alive and in hiding, it's also a possibility that she died in the wilderness, and that Jeff never really got closure as to what happened there.

Maybe Jeff recently learned of some terrible truth that connected him to what happened to Shauna and the other girls in the woods — like, say, that Jackie was murdered by Shauna, or met some other horrific fate. That could be enough for Jeff to snap, and attempt to make the Yellowjackets pay for what they did — whatever that is, of course.

Yet it all sounds a little too easy. It seems that the show is setting up Jeff as a bad guy, but he's also shown some surprising kindness in recent episodes, like when he stood up to Jackie's parents who passive aggressively put Shauna down. One kind act does not mean Jeff can't be the show's villain, but it also could hint that the audience — and Shauna — misjudged his intentions. Shauna is clearly resentful of Jeff for many reasons (likely stemming from the fact that she only married him after he dated Jackie first) and that may be clouding the truth of who Jeff is.

One theory from Reddit? That Jeff isn't the blackmailer, but is trying to protect Shauna from the person who is. We know that Shauna is the only living Yellowjacket "on the grid" who didn't receive the blackmailer's postcard. Reddit user ToasterShelf suspects that may be because Jeff intercepted the mail in order to protect Shauna, and has been working in secret to make sure the situation is handled without his wife needing to be any wiser. It would definitely throw Shauna into an emotional crisis: How would Shauna feel if she knew that the husband she's spent weeks cheating on was actually trying to save her from future pain?

One thing is certain: We can't trust anyone on Yellowjackets, and that means Jeff doesn't get a free pass, either. Still, I'm not buying that he's the blackmailer just yet.

Join For Free
Sign up for a free account on our new, female-founded site to personalize your feed and get access to our community and conversations.

Discover More