One of the zanier moments in "Yellowjackets" season 2 sees Misty Quigley (Christina Ricci) entering a sensory deprivation tank, where she experiences visions of dancing African gray parrots, led by an anthropomorphic version of her pet Caligula, played by John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and the Angry Itch"). Misty's will-they-or-won't-they new flame Walter (Elijah Wood) is also there in a top hat and coattails, and he does some dancing, too, but Misty herself is relegated to watching all the fun play out from the sidelines.
Seated against a backdrop of red curtains, it's as if Misty and "Yellowjackets" have momentarily entered the trippy Red Room from "Twin Peaks." No one is talking backward, but Caligula does spout lyrics like, "We'll tumble through the tulips, and dance on the graves of any motherf***er who gets in your way."
Like most of us with the "Yellowjackets" season 2 soundtrack, Misty can only smile and bob along with the music, but if Ricci were a better dancer, she might have been right out there busting a move with Caligula and Walter. In a "Yellowjackets" season 2 post-mortem, Ricci suggested to Variety that her own dancing contributions weren't up to snuff for episode 7:
"Originally I did some dancing, too! I joined them on stage, and they didn't use any of that, so I must have been really bad — which isn't surprising. I don't know very much about musicals, and I don't consider myself someone who enjoys dancing or singing. So it's not surprising that I was cut out of that!"
Happier Times With Caligula
As "Yellowjackets" wraps up its second season, the finale is sure to leave viewers as shocked as the show's actors were. Without getting into spoilers, it's enough to say: things take a dark turn for Misty, a character who's already killed people both intentionally and unintentionally. First, there was Jessica Roberts (Rekha Sharma), who had the temerity to threaten Caligula in her ploy to escape Misty's basement. Then, there was Crystal (Nuha Jes Izman), teen Misty's new best friend, who shared her love of musicals right up until Misty accidentally backed her off a cliff in the wilderness.
In the real world, at least Samantha Hanratty, who plays teen Misty in flashbacks, is a better friend to writers, having joined the picket lines of the ongoing WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike in Hollywood. Since studios currently refuse to make a fair deal with the WGA, there's no end in sight to the strike, and "Yellowjackets" season 3 is just one of the many film and television productions that have halted as a result. This means we're about to settle into what could be a longer TV winter than usual, with no new episodes of "Yellowjackets" to provide a weekly fix anytime soon.
In the interim, people will just have to content themselves with revisiting old episodes, starting with the series premiere, which foreshadowed how one character would eventually become the "angel of death" for another in the season 2 finale. (Both were helmed by Karyn Kusama, who knows a thing or two about death cults, having also directed "The Invitation.")
On a lighter note, there's also Misty and her dancing Caligula visions, which you can see in the video above. "Yellowjackets" season 2 is now streaming in its entirety on Showtime.
Read this next: Every Yellowjackets Main Character, Ranked
The post Yellowjackets Cut Christina Ricci Out Of Season 2's Dance Number appeared first on /Film.