'Yellowjackets' star Christina Ricci shoots down one of the darkest & most popular fan theories

Yellowjackets is a show deliberately packed with mystery. The Showtime survival horror series, which became one of the breakout TV hits of 2021, uses its two timelines to invite viewers to keep guessing over what actually happened to a high school soccer team out in the wilderness in the 1990s, and how those events have affected them in the present day even as new mysteries come to light.

In short, it's a series tailor-made for fan theories, but at least one of them has been debunked by one of Yellowjackets' biggest stars. 

Christina Ricci, who plays the adult version of the ever-resourceful survivor Misty on the show, stopped by The Tonight Show Thursday night on NBC, and host Jimmy Fallon couldn't help but bring up the many theories surrounding Yellowjackets. Fallon came prepared with a list of some of his favorites for Ricci to react to, but before he could even start reading she asked: "Is the baby one on there? Because that's the worst."

"The baby one," as Ricci put it, refers to the mystery of what happens to Shauna's (Sophie Nelisse in the past, Melanie Lynskey in the present) baby out in the wilderness in the 1990s. Midway through Season 1, the show reveals that Shauna is pregnant from her last sexual encounter with Jeff (Jack Depew in the past, Warren Kole in the present), her eventual husband who happened to be dating her best friend Jackie (Ella Purnell) at the time. The pregnancy is, of course, a big problem for Shauna out in the middle of nowhere, and while she considers terminating it in Season 1, she doesn't go through with it, leaving the mystery of what actually happens to the baby intact for Season 2. Because Shauna's daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) is too young to be the kid, fans have begun theorizing that the Yellowjackets eventually eat the child during their turn to cannibalism to survive. 

When Ricci read that particular theory, she was apparently so disturbed by it that she went to co-creator Ashley Lyle to make sure it wasn't true. 

"And I was like, 'Why would we eat the baby?' And then I thought, 'Well, we are really ashamed. Everybody is really haunted by what they did so maybe we do eat the baby,'" Ricci told Fallon. "So I had to ask the writers, 'We don't eat Shauna's baby, do we?' And she said, 'No.' Nobody's eating any babies."

But of course, that's far from the only fan theory still floating around out in Yellowjackets world. After addressing "the baby one," Ricci let Fallon take her through the theory that Misty is an active serial killer in the present (she thinks Misty has killed someone at least once before), that Jackie is somehow still alive ("I don't see how that one is possible."), Misty caused the plane to crash ("she seemed genuinely shocked"), Misty's been working with Lottie this whole time ("that's interesting") and more. 

Yellowjackets has already been renewed for a second season, and writing for the next round of episode is already well underway, so hopefully we'll get more answers soon. If you want to watch the full interview with Ricci, you can find new episodes of The Tonight Show on Peacock.