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One of the biggest questions heading into the Yellowjackets season one finale was: what happened to Jackie? We know she survived the 1996 plane crash (and did her best to bring the team together… until she went full Regina George), and that present-day Shauna, Jeff, and her parents act as if she’s dead. But how to explain her journal that cites several movies that hadn’t been released by the time of the crash, like Titanic (1997), American Beauty (1999), and Bring It On (2000)? Did she die in the time between the girls getting rescued and 2021, or is she in hiding? Or maybe she’s alive, and this was all one big, happy misunderstanding. First round of mimosas on me!

Never mind about the mimosas.

In last week’s episode, everyone on the team except Jackie got high on Misty’s mushrooms, including Shauna, who’s pregnant with Jackie’s boyfriend’s baby and, oh yeah, she nearly cut Travis’ throat. Also, Jackie had spiteful sex with Travis. You can see how things might be complicated. The tension between the one-time besties comes to a peak in the finale after Jackie reveals to everyone — including Coach Ben, can’t forget Coach Ben — that Shauna was “f*cking Jeff behind my back.” Jackie expects the team to be on her side, but that’s not the case. The Yellowjackets are Team Shauna, so Jackie storms out of the house… into an unexpected winter storm overnight.

No one thought to let Jackie back inside the house (the hot chocolate was a dream), and Jackie was too stubborn to come indoors, so she froze to death. One of the final things we see this season is Jackie’s icy corpse in the snow… followed quickly by adult Nat having her suicide attempt interrupted by a cult, possibly led by Lottie.

Yellowjackets can’t come back soon enough.

Welcome to the Yellowjackets finale, where revelations fold in on themselves to spark even more questions and a stronger desire, at once, to want to know where everything is going and also keep playing this game forever and ever.

If you are reading this and you somehow haven’t watched the Yellowjackets season finale, then I’m so jealous of you that I can hardly breathe. Not only are you not clocking sick Bette Midler references, but you have yet to watch this tremendous cap to a show that fastly and rightly became a widespread pop culture obsession. You should go do something about that, though, because we’re about to utterly spoil the whole thing in the name of calling out the big questions that remain. All in an effort to get people theorizing and chewing on something (eek) for the long, desolate winter without Nat, Shauna, Taissa, and yes, even Misty. Bring on season two!

So with warnings offered and consciences cleared, let’s dig in!

Will There Be Consequences For Adam’s Murder?

Never forget the clingy art boy and what he had to sacrifice for the sin of awakening Shauna’s dormant desires… and his own interest in a little light research. But will there be consequences for his murder and the bonding exercise that was his dismemberment?

Callie knows something is up. Are things with Shauna and Jeff really as hunky-dory as they appear? What about the assumption that, so long as you don’t have a head or fingertips, there’s no way to ID a body? Is that real? I’m not going to Google and get on a list, but that seems suspect, no?

Oh yeah, and y’all saw that camera next to Adam’s bed, right? Reddit sure did! At a minimum, someone is going to for real have ammo to blackmail the group. At minimum.

There’s also the lingering fan theory that Adam was Javi. So are we done with this guy, or are there more levels to be revealed?

Taissa’s Whole Situation

Taissa’s situation got a whole lot more complicated in the closing minutes of the finale. Not only did she surprisingly win the election, but the missing Biscuit thread has been resolved! Goddamn this is a messed-up show! Cannibalism is one thing, but can we not with the dogs? Anyway, Simone is going to be emotionally scarred, Sammy’s whole situation is gonna get more complex… it’s just a mess that threatens the already stressed life that Taissa has built for herself post-crash. But why is it all bubbling to the surface now? There are practical reasons, but is something else going on?

Have We Seen The Last Of Jackie?

What a heartbreaking end on a human and storytelling level. But also, what a total gut punch to anyone who thought we were going to see adult Jackie or, at the very least, see more of that intensifying situation between Jackie and teen Shauna before she was chased down, felled by a trap, and then bled out and eaten from that scene in the pilot. Clearly, that wasn’t her. (Okay, but who is it then?)

Still, while Jackie is definitively dead, the possibility certainly exists that we see more of Ella Purnell as Jackie, either through flashbacks that play with the timeline or as projections that feast on Shauna’s still lingering guilt over essentially casting her friend out of the warm confines of the cabin. Or, how about this: accepting Jackie’s dream as being the last gasps of consciousness before she froze to death, might we see more of Jackie from that realm? Be honest, as wild as this show has been (so wild), aren’t you somewhat curious to see if takes a major step into territory like the afterlife? Or is that a shark jump best reserved for later seasons when the writers start to run out of ideas?

Who Abducted Nat?

The panicked voicemail from Suzie paired with the abduction (slash impromptu rescue) of a suicidal Nat by a group of seeming cultists would indicate that Lottie definitely survived the island and gained a little bit of a following. What does she want and who else is with her are, for sure, going to be key parts of season two. But while we don’t know if something finally managed to take Van out (a plane crash, a wolf attack, and being set on fire twice couldn’t do it), it is noteworthy that Misty was right by Lottie’s side when she made the bear heart tribute. Same as she happily participated in the aforementioned bloodletting and implied person feast in the pilot. The only reason you wouldn’t think Misty is in cahoots with Lottie would be because, as the show’s most devious and dangerous character, it might seem a little on the nose to have her be working against the group (to a larger degree than was evident). But Christina Ricci is playing the hell out of this character, and having her go full big bad would be a feast in and of itself.

[Gestures Wildly] All Of It!?

There are a lot of other questions to ponder – is Randy going to be a problem? What happened to Shauna’s mountain baby? Why did a teddy bear spontaneously combust? Will there be a book club in season two? – but the biggest question may be a bit all-encompassing in that we know so little about what actually happened in the Canadian Rockies besides a few terrifying glimpses.

Clearly, we’re on the precipice of full-on chaos at the end of season one, but getting concrete answers about what happened to those who objected (very concerned about Coach Ben right now), the full significance of the man with no eyes and shadow guy from the credits (and was that the same guy at the end in Jackie’s seeming death hallucination?) and how, exactly, did it take 19 months for the group to be rescued… these would be helpful things to know. (Were there other attempts? Was something cloaking their existence or keeping them there? The questions are endless!) The producers know this, of course, and so we’re sure season two is going to give us just enough to keep us riveted to our screens. As it should be!

In the meantime, got some questions of your own or theories about the above? Let’s chop it up in the comments and on social. With no new episodes immediately on the horizon, we’ve got nothing but time and a clear understanding of what happens when you’re bored and starved for sustenance.

The Dallas Cowboys had a brutal Sunday at home, and you can pick one of just about a dozen reasons they lost to the 49ers, despite San Francisco not playing its best game and making some bizarre decisions of their own.

There were drops due to the sun coming through the giant windows at AT&T Stadium, painfully conservative decision-making on punts and field goals, failing to properly execute their set-up play for a game-winning touchdown and letting the clock run out after a QB draw with 14 seconds left, and some other brutal penalties at awful times throughout the game.

On that latter note, the Cowboys and their fans were not happy with a number of the calls, but for the most part the general consensus among impartial observers was that it was an incredible lack of discipline from the Cowboys that led to 14 flags on them throughout the game. After the game, fans were throwing bottles as the team came off the field, and some thought it was aimed at the players, but that was also when the referees were leaving the field and it seemed more likely that was who was the target.

In his postgame presser, Dak Prescott was asked about that, and after initially admonishing fans for throwing things at the players, he did a 180 and said it was a “credit to them” when informed it was likely aimed at the referees, before ripping into the officials further.

That will obviously lead to a fine for Prescott, but it’s also pretty terrible to advocate for fans to throw things at anyone, no matter your frustrations with the officiating. It was a lot of flags, for sure, but Dallas also led the league in penalties this season with 127, so it wasn’t exactly uncharacteristic for them. Given the officiating debacle in Cincinnati on Saturday and the widespread agreement on that being just flat out bad (on both sides), the lack of such outcry generally about the Dallas game seems to speak volumes about where the issues really were for the Cowboys.

Prescott and the Cowboys seemed most upset about their inability to get the snap off before trying to clock the ball at the end of the game, but that was, as Tony Romo explained in the booth, also an issue of Dallas not executing that situation properly, because it’s not a new rule that the ball has to be set by the umpire and they tried to give the ball to the center to put it down instead of finding the umpire and letting him set it, creating the chaotic final sequence.

The Los Angeles Lakers reached a new low point on Saturday night in Denver, as they lost by 37 to the Nuggets to fall to 21-22, currently 7th in the West and in a play-in position.

It’s far from where L.A. planned on being at this point, and while Anthony Davis’ eventual return from a sprained knee will provide a boost, there’s not an awful lot of optimism among Lakers fans right now. For many, the focal point of L.A.’s struggles has been the Russell Westbrook trade, which was always a gamble on talent versus depth, and to this point it appears that has not paid off, with Westbrook struggling to impact winning in the way he has on teams in the past — particularly the Wizards late season run to the playoffs a year ago.

Westbrook’s struggles, coupled with struggles from much of the rest of the roster that was brought in to replace those that were traded out, have set the scene for some trade deadline anxiety, and with a few weeks before, famously optimistic franchise legend Magic Johnson ripped the team’s effort to apply further pressure. While Westbrook shrugged it off when asked about Johnson’s tweet, LeBron James seemed to see a need to issue a message direct to the fans on Sunday.

There are plenty of people reading into this as James hinting at changes coming to the roster before the deadline, as it is widely accepted that James has a not-so-insignificant amount of sway in personnel decisions. We’ll find out if that’s the case in the next month, but if nothing else, it’s been awhile since LeBron went to the motivational tweet move — the most famous, of course, being “fit in or fit out” directed at Kevin Love in his first season in Cleveland.

It remains to be seen what more James himself can do, as he’s been putting up monster numbers (28.9 points, 7.5 rebounds, 6.5 assists on 51.9/36.2/76.7 shooting) this season and all the Lakers have been able to do is tread water near .500. The onus will be on the rest of the roster to raise its level, or else the pressure for changes is only going to grow.

The Dallas Cowboys had a regular season so full of promise, but as we’ve seen so many times with them over the years, the team failed to win a playoff game. Despite playing host to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday afternoon, the high-flying Cowboys offense could not get off the ground and their defense couldn’t keep the Niners out of the end zone enough. As a result, San Francisco won, 23-17, while Dallas gets to start its offseason quite a bit earlier than they anticipated.

The end of the game was the cherry on top of a horrific afternoon for the Cowboys, as the team opted for a QB draw with 12 seconds left and no timeouts. Because Dak Prescott went down inbounds, the clock kept ticking, only Dallas needed to wait for the referee to set the ball. He got there, moved the ball back from where they set it by one yard, and before Prescott could spike it, the clock hit zero.

For folks who hate the Cowboys, it was dang near the funniest possible way for their season to end. Perhaps no one fits that description better than Stephen A. Smith, and in the immediate aftermath of the game, the ESPN personality — who has been sidelined with COVID recently but says he will be back on First Take on Monday — recorded himself reacting to the whole thing. As you can guess, he was in a good mood.

“Didn’t I tell ya?” Smith asked after laughing very hard. “Didn’t I tell ya? All year long, when everybody was raving about those boys in Big D, what did ya boy Stephen A. say? They ain’t gonna even win a playoff game. And sure enough, right on schedule, right when it really really counts, they crashed like a cheap tent in inclement weather. All I gotta say is two things: How ’bout them Cowboys? And see you on First Take tomorrow. Ya boy is back, right on time. Hehehehehehehe hehehehehahaha hahahahahahaha.”

Congratulations to the biggest winner in the Niners’ upset of the Cowboys: Stephen A. Smith.

The Cowboys and 49ers played in one of the dumbest NFL playoff games in recent memory on Sunday, as neither team seemed to want to win a game filled with penalties and bizarre coaching decisions.

After trailing by as many as 23-7 in the third quarter, the Cowboys rallied back to be down just six late, but a defensive holding penalty on a run play by Randy Gregory extended the Niners drive to, seemingly, set them up to run out a win. However, a Deebo Samuel reverse came up a literal inch short of the first down and from there, chaos ensued.

First, the Niners succeeded on a quarterback sneak to end the game, only for it to come back on a false start after they ran left tackle Trent Williams in motion and snapped the ball before he was set.

From there, the Niners’ punt bounded into the end zone and gave Dallas 38 seconds to go 80 yards for the win. After a pretty hook and lateral and a couple passes to the sidelines, the Cowboys got the ball beyond midfield with 14 seconds to play. Rather than trying to throw to the sidelines again or taking a shot to the end zone, they decided they had enough time to run a quarterback draw with Dak Prescott and spike the ball to set up one throw to the end zone. What happened after Prescott slid down was, fittingly, an absolute mess, with the Cowboys failing to get the ball to the umpire, who by rule has to touch the ball to set it, and instead crashed into Prescott and the line, moved it back, and the clock ran out before the Cowboys could snap it.

After the play, Tony Romo explained why it was a mistake from the Cowboys trying to just give the ball to the center rather than finding the umpire and having him spot it, as precious seconds ticked off the clock in the mad scramble to get set.

It really was a perfect ending to a game that included the Cowboys running a successful fake punt, then leaving the punt unit on the field to try and force a timeout from San Francisco, only to run the offense back on the field late and get a delay of game because they didn’t leave enough time for the Niners to match their mass substitution. In a game that was a comedy of errors, one last one proved to be the dagger, and Dallas will enter the offseason kicking themselves for not taking a game the Niners tried to serve them up on a platter on a few occasions.

Over on the Nickelodeon broadcast, Mike McCarthy got slimed after one of the most disastrous coaching performances in recent memory.

The Golden State Warriors have cooled off of late, going 5-5 in their last 10 games and all five of those losses have come with Draymond Green not playing. Green’s presence is obviously critical for the Golden State defense, but he’s also huge as a creator and connector offensively to help ease the burden on Golden State’s guards.

Unfortunately for Golden State, Green, who has been dealing with calf tightness, will miss at least two weeks as the Warriors medical staff has discovered that the root of his calf issue is actually a disc injury in his lower back. The team announced on Sunday that he’ll miss two weeks and then be re-evaluated, which does not guarantee a return at that point.

The two-week timetable would mean Green will miss at least eight games, including Sunday’s tilt with the Timberwolves in which they’ll also be without Stephen Curry, who injured his hand late last week and will skip the final game of this road trip. The Warriors are currently second in the West at 31-11, 2.5 games ahead of the Grizzlies and three games ahead of the Jazz in the four-team breakaway atop the West. Navigating this stretch of schedule without Draymond as they continue to work Klay Thompson back into the rotation could end up important for seeding, but in the grand scheme, Golden State knows the most important thing will be ensuring this back issue doesn’t linger and trying to get Green healthy for the stretch run and playoffs.

The Dallas Cowboys played host to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in the late afternoon window of Super Wild Card Weekend, and as happens often in afternoon kicks in Dallas, the sun began to wreak havoc in AT&T Stadium because, for whatever reason, they built it with giant windows that face west.

As the sun gets lower, the glare on the field gets worse and in the late second quarter the Cowboys were on the wrong end of the sun issue on an important 3rd and 20 at midfield, trailing 16-7 in the final minute. Dak Prescott was trying to find Cedric Wilson over the middle in order to get into field goal range to make it a one-possession game before the half. Instead, the ball went whistling just over Wilson’s helmet because when the receiver turned back to find the ball he got hit with a face full of sun and never saw the ball, ducking out of fear of taking a pass to the facemask, unsure where the pass was.

It could prove to be costly, as it would’ve set up a long Greg Zuerlein field goal attempt, which while not automatic, would’ve given Dallas a chance for back-to-back scores to take the lead as they get the ball back to start the second half. Instead, they punted to the Niners who ran out the clock in the half and went to the locker room up 9 as the Cowboys offense has had its struggles with execution, a really talented San Francisco defense, and even the damn sun, which Twitter found rather hilarious.

The Bay Area has given plenty to the hip-hop world, whether it be certified legends like E-40 and Too Short, who competed in a Verzuz at the end of 2020, or more modern acts like Saweetie, Mozzy, Guapdad 4000, and Larry June. Add genre-influencing acts like the late Drakeo The Ruler and it’s clear that the region is more than worthy of recognition. Now there’s female rap duo Su’Lan, who have impressed many with their releases over the past couple of months.

One of them includes “We Talking Sh*t Again,” which recently received the music video treatment. The video captures the duo’s menacing approach, both with the performers’ aggressive demeanors and the militant support they receive from their crew. Su’Lan also delivers several cut-throat bars that aim to deliver the highest dose of disrespect possible towards their opponents. The track appears on their EP Free Su’Lan, which they released at the end of 2021. The album is also home to their single “Blue Cheese,” which also received a music video.

Prior to Free Su’LanBaby Glock Gang in 2020 and Tia & Tamera in 2019.

You can watch the video for “We Talking Sh*t Again” above.

Free Su’Lan is out now via Special Sounds. Get it here.

Many of us spend whatever money we have unwisely. Then there’s Mike Lindell. For the last year-plus, he’s dropped lord knows how much on pure nonsense, which is to say the baseless belief that the 2020 election was stolen from incumbent Donald J. Trump. A recent report claimed that he’s dropping at least $1 million a month on right-wing groups, who are still fruitlessly trying to get the failed blogger back in the White House. Then there’s that billion dollar lawsuit. Now he’s allegedly run into even more money problems.

As per Newsweek, Lindell went on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, where he claimed that, on top of being banned on parts of social media due to his yen for spreading misinformation, he’s also being cancelled by two of the banks with which he does business. He alleged that Heartland Financial and Minnesota Bank and Trust were both trying to “de-bank” him. Lindell played a recording he said was from a bank official, who told the MyPillow guy that they were reluctant to be connected with someone who arouse the suspicion of the feds, especially considering his ties to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“[W]hat if somebody came in and said, ‘You know what, we are gonna subpoena all his account records…and then also we make the news,’” the person in the recording told Lindell, likely alluding to the House select committee investigating that fatefuld ay. “So it’s more of a reputation risk.”

Lindell then claimed they’d told him he has 30 days to shutter his accounts with them. But he refused. “I said, ‘I am not being part of this. I’m not leaving. So you’re going to have to throw me out of your bank,’” Lindell said. “Where does it end everybody? Where does it end?”

If true, it’s yet another financial blow to someone who made a fortune selling pricey pillows and who has been squandering it on such activities as a Thanksgiving marathon of bonkers conspiracy theories that no one watches. He’s even losing money due to that bizarre and untrue claim that he was dating actress Jane Krakowski. So things are not on the up-and-up for a guy who wants to imprison over 300 million people.

(Via Newsweek)