I like that you're broken, broken like me; maybe that makes me a fool

User Name/Nick: Iddy
User DW: corknut
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: Ihdreniel
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Tiffany Doggett | tucky

Character Name: Misty Quigley
Series: Yellowjackets
Age: Early forties
From When?: post-1x10, "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" (2021 timeline). She has no canon death, nor anything close to it, so I'm just going to go the "generic car accident" route!

Inmate Justification: Misty is a bubbly self-styled #TeamMom whose desire for friendship and connection far outpaces both her social acuity and her moral compass. She's not malicious as a baseline (though she is very much capable of maliciousness, even seriously harmful maliciousness, depending on the circumstance), but her actions are so inappropriate that this barely even matters; she pulls a lot of creepy, overstepping, harmful bullshit out of a genuine belief that she's looking out for the people in her life and being a good friend.

Arrival: Brought in against her will.

Abilities/Powers: n/a; she's a baseline human.

Inmate Information:
Misty started out life as a lonely, socially awkward, bullied kid who wanted desperately to be liked and have friends, but had absolutely no idea how to go about making that happen. In some ways, things probably would have been easier for her if she'd been shy or introverted, but she wasn't: she was outgoing as fuck, and pushy, and needy, and overbearing. And if she'd gotten some intervention on that when she was still young, she might have turned out kind of okay. Alas, what happened instead was that she survived a plane crash and was stranded in the wilderness for 19 months with a group of other teenagers, during which time she honed some old bad habits, picked up some exciting new ones, and eventually went back to society having learned that, hey, if people find you off-putting and don't want to spend time with you because of it, then manipulating or outright forcing them into doing so anyway is a totally valid life choice that will absolutely get you what you want!

Misty genuinely enjoyed her Wilderness Survival Adventure, and looks back on it as the highlight of her life - even after the [mumble mumble still indeterminate] horrors that they all went through, and even twenty-five years after the event took place. In the woods, her first aid training earned her the role of de facto doctor, something that she'd reveled in and that ultimately kick-started a lifelong obsession with trying to care for and nurture others (as an adult, she feeds this need by working as a care assistant at a nursing home, where she gets into shitty, possibly one-sided one-upmanship battles with patients she views as uncooperative or insufficiently grateful for her care). She sees herself as closely bonded with the other survivors (a high school soccer team that she, a fellow student, was essentially the water girl for), despite the fact that none of them have shown much interest in reconnecting with her (or, for the most part, with each other) or in reminiscing about their ordeal. When some of the survivors start receive ominous, anonymous postcards alluding to what happened, fellow survivor Natalie Scatorccio immediately suspects Misty of having sent them, and responds by breaking into her house and confronting her with a gun. Misty, completely unbothered by this and genuinely delighted to see her ✨✨✨good friend Natalie✨✨✨ again, immediately uses it as an in to start to try to worm her way into her life. Natalie (who is prime inmate material in her own right, honestly) is annoyed by this, and sometimes tries to thwart it; other times, she finds Misty's dedication useful and harnesses it. The two end up spending much of the season together, attempting to mystery-solve the death of another survivor: the official conclusion is that it was a suicide, Natalie is convinced that it was a murder, and Misty is the only one who believes her and is willing to help her try to find the killer. Misty's relationship with Natalie is really where we get the best view of how maladaptive she is socially, because holy god. Over the course of approximately two weeks, she:

1. Spends time texting at least one person while pretending to be Natalie, in an effort to score Natalie a date;


2. Does damage to Natalie's car so that Natalie will be forced to rely on her for rides;


3. Follows Natalie around town after being told to fuck off;


4. Gives Natalie a knick-knack outfitted with a secret recording device, so that she can keep tabs on her activities during the aforementioned "Misty, fuck off" periods;

and


5. Kidnaps and later murders a journalist who she believes poses a threat to the other survivors.

And this only covers the actions she spearheaded herself; it does not take into account the various other crimes and poor choices she took part in at Natalie's behest (which included more stalking, breaking and entering, theft of police property, and threats towards others of grievous bodily injury).

Natalie, in point of fact, is annoyed by Misty's Mistyness but not frightened or terrorized by it - but the sad truth is that, even if she had been frightened or terrorized, Misty probably wouldn't have done that much differently, and that's because she lives in a fantasy world where all her actions are (at worst) kind of crappy but ultimately still justified, and (at best) hallmarks of true friendship. She has a normal emotional range, but seems to have a low capacity for empathy, which enables her to do a lot of truly alarming things either without fully realizing how alarming they are, or by taking a "the end justifies the means" approach ("the end" in this case being "I have friends and I love them and they appreciate me and I take care of them and they're thankful to me and everything is JUST GREAT"). On some level, she does know that her actions are inappropriate, but doesn't quite seem to get how or why or to what extent. Multiple times when she's called out on her behavior, she reacts with genuine surprise or confusion over the level of anger directed at her; generally she'll get that what she did wasn't optimal and she'll anticipate some level of annoyance, but she'll be blindsided by anything more severe than that. She also admits to some of her misdeeds far more easily than one would expect from someone who fully understood how warped they are: she cheerfully tells Natalie that she's been texting people while pretending to be her, for example, and casually tells another person about how she's been spying on Natalie. As a kid, she desperately wished to be "normal", and as an adult there's a part of her that still wishes for that - but by now, she's also accepted that she isn't. This acceptance has given her a level of self-possession that she didn't have when she was young, but it also means that rather than trying to gain the connection she craves by working to make herself into the sort of person that people want to be around, she instead leans hard into the things that she feels worked for her while stranded in the woods: namely, fostering useful skills that other people will need to rely on, zeroing in on (and in some cases, even exacerbating) people's weaknesses so that she can make herself feel wanted by soothing and comforting and caring for them, and engineering scenarios that will force people to spend time with her. The end result is that she's become a highly manipulative person, even though she doesn't necessarily see herself that way.

By this point in her life, Misty's overwhelming desire to care for people stems from a deep-rooted, unfulfilled desire to feel wanted, appreciated, and vital. She does seem to have limits (ex. she'll inconvenience or lightly harm someone so that she can swoop in to help, but won't purposefully provoke serious pain or anguish in someone she truly cares about, even in situations where she easily could), and sometimes healthy concern wins out over toxicity (ex. she actively tries to prevent Natalie from relapsing back into drug addiction, even though a strung-out Natalie would presumably provide her with a wealth of potential caretaking opportunities), but it's still a selfish and maladaptive trait. Ultimately, it probably started out as an innocently enough: in her very early flashback scenes, we see her doing what she can to help scared and injured people with no apparent motive beyond a simple desire to make sure that they're okay. But once she realized that she had something no one else had (i.e. first aid skills) that made her a hot commodity among her fellow plane crash survivors, and that taking advantage of this was a great way to make people want to keep her close to them, she wildly spun out from there, twisting that formerly innocent instinct into something much more complicated and dark.

As stated above, Misty is perfectly capable of deep emotion and caring. She uses manipulation not to fake feelings that don't exist, but to work in service of genuinely-felt feelings in incredibly inappropriate ways - and one of those feelings is an intense loyalty towards those she feels bonded to. Unfortunately, Misty's devotion is not at all contingent on the people she fixates on reciprocating it, or even wanting it, which means that she pretty much always comes on way too strong. She'll also go to extreme, dangerous lengths to please or protect them, both when it's asked for (see: her going along with every single one of Natalie's terrible ideas) and when it isn't (see: killing pushy journalists). And while she couldn't ever be called a selfless person - her motives are too complicated for that - she's even willing to risk harm to herself or derail her own schemes in the name of this dark loyalty. A quintessential example of both (cw: drug abuse/addiction) is when, via her spycam, she spots on-again off-again drug addict Natalie risking relapse by buying cocaine. Misty immediately flies over in a panic, barges in (without taking the time to knock, call, or come up with a plausible cover story for why she's there, which she surely would have done if she prioritized maintaining the secrecy of her spycam over keeping Natalie from taking the drugs), and, in an impulsive effort to get the cocaine out of Natalie's hands as quickly as possible, shoves her out of the way and snorts the entire line herself so that Natalie can't (as opposed to taking a few extra seconds to, you know, run it into the bathroom and flush it). It's an absolutely ridiculous scene, but also a very telling one.

Casual acquaintances are probably where most people should want to be with Misty, because while earning her love means dealing with her obsessive, clingy smothering, earning her ire has its own dangers. She won't jump straight to murder or serious harm (though she is capable of both, given the right circumstances), but she can be petty and spiteful as fuck, and we see her doing things like withholding pain medication from a patient that she finds unpleasant and briefly switching off another patient's life support monitor in order to scare a couple of rude kids. She's not exactly sadistic, because it's not other people's pain that she enjoys - it's the opportunity to deliver payback and retribution for wrongs both real and perceived, as well as a way to make herself feel powerful and cool. In early conversations with the reporter she kidnaps, she comes off like a cross between a tough-as-nails, doesn't-play-by-the-rules cop from a TV drama and a wannabe supervillain, both of which she was probably purposefully emulating. She loves to indulge in opportunities to feel badass, in large part because there's not much else about her besides her ruthlessness that lets her come off that way. Notably, those she views as close to her seem largely exempt from this behavior: when any of her fellow crash survivors react to her with anger, distaste, or rejection, she "forgives" them, because they're her "friends". The most angry she gets at any of them is when she destroys Natalie's cocaine stash and reveals the hidden camera she'd planted, and Natalie is angry rather than grateful; Misty yells at her, but instead of lashing out further she goes home and cries about it. She'll do shitty, manipulative, boundary-crossing things to her in-group in service of trying to help them, protect them, or keep them close to her, but they're at least safe from purposeful cruelty.

For all her neediness and desperation, Misty isn't indiscriminate: she gloms onto and craves approval from a specific, curated list of people, not from absolutely anyone who will give her the time of day. That said, when we see her interacting with people outside the core Yellowjackets team, her baseline is still a cheerful (over-)friendliness, she frequently attempts chatty smalltalk with her coworkers and patients, and she's strongly hinted to have an active (if probably shallow) social life online. She also just plain loves to have a good time, and she doesn't let little things like completely inappropriate circumstances keep her from doing so. She takes the time to pick out the perfect mood music before heading out to kidnap someone. She enjoys getting arrested because it means she gets to see what the inside of a jail looks like. She's positively gleeful when walking the other women through how to dispose of a dead body. And she has her fair share of more innocuous interests, too: she loves musical theater, she's really into true crime shows and podcasts, and she's a good pet parent to her bird (an African Grey parrot, which is a notoriously difficult species to properly care for), all of which she'll happily expound upon at length and/or attempt to engage others in. This "coworker" category is probably where most Bargizens would fit by default, at least at first - and, unless they enjoy frequent headaches, that's probably where they'll want to stay.

Path to Redemption:
Bottom line: one of the worst things her warden could do would be to feel too sorry for her. It’s okay for them to feel sorry for her a little bit! She is, in many ways, a pitiable person. But she's also going to need a lot more intervention than a pat on the head and assurances that, yes, she is deserving of the love and friendship and connection that she craves. It would probably be good for her warden to be able to genuinely like her as a person, but they absolutely should not be someone who would find her obsessive behavior even a little bit cute or endearing. Standard strictness probably wouldn't be the best approach for her, but being monitored closely and kept on a short leash would be; additionally, a warden who could model healthy attachment styles would be excellent. A good match for her will acknowledge the sincerity and validity of her feelings ("I love my friends and want them to be safe"), while never letting that overshadow the multitude of terrible ways in which she expresses those feelings (i.e. never letting "I see you want to be a good friend" morph into "You are a good friend", because she 10000% isn't and she needs to realize that). They'd also do well to keep an eye on the relationships she forms onboard the Barge to make sure she's not repeating patterns from home: this means paying attention to how she talks about people and looking for signs that she's starting to unhealthily obsess over anybody, as well as making sure that nobody too terrible is earning her loyalty (and thereby earning the right to use her as a lackey for whatever misdeeds they might get up to).

Misty is generally very good at keeping a cool head in tough situations, but even so, the Barge will be a bit much for her. She'll be unlikely to panic, but she might very well get overwhelmed sometimes; chatting with other non-superpowered earthlings about how they've adjusted would be good for her. She will very much enjoy the concept of pairings, both temporary and permanent; regrettably, she'll enjoy them because she'll see a warden as a built-in friend who is being forced by the Admiral to hang out with her. Enforcing boundaries will be a must.

And, lastly, an important but probably not completely comprehensive list of things she needs to learn in order to graduate:

• It's tough being awkward and bad at reading social situations! But if someone looks you in the eye and says "I do not want you to do the thing", there is no excuse for doing the thing anyway, even if it's "for their own good". Also, if an idea sounds wacky or unorthodox or extreme, ask before going ahead with it. Say "I care about you and I don't like that you shut me out sometimes, so can I put a spycam in your house?", and then listen to them when they inevitably say no.



• Wanting to help and take care of people is admirable. Being fixated on the idea of helping and caring for people, hinging your entire sense of self worth on your (real or perceived) role as Caretaker, and using other people as pawns to fill a bottomless well of needing to be needed is fucked up.



• It's much harder to love someone who's creepy than it is to love someone who's awkward. Luckily, creepiness can be unlearned with effort, and the first step is paying attention when people tell you you're being creepy and remembering that for later!



• Growing a moral compass from scratch is very, very hard, and possibly even impossible; luckily, following the law will usually help guide you in this. No more kidnapping. No more murdering journalists. No more stealing meds and supplies from work.



• Girl, none of this even worked well for you in the woods, even though you think it did. It definitely isn't working well for you in suburban New Jersey.



• I don't care how much you love Natalie, stop committing crimes for her. Yes, even when she asks you to.

Obviously this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, and she's not going to get there by committing a list like this to memory. Her redemption is likely going to take a lot of trial and error, particularly since she is convinced she is in the right with most of the things she does, and the things she knows she's in the wrong about she considers to have been worth doing regardless. She will probably spend quite a while assuming that she's here solely because she kidnapped and murdered the journalist (by far the biggest, baddest crime she commits). Even the lessons that seem extremely obvious (spycams = bad) will need to be drilled into her head over and over again, with the consequences of her actions directly pointed out. Ultimately, a warden probably won't be able to fully fix her skewed moral compass or instill her with a fully-functional sense of empathy, but developing a good rapport with one can still help her examine why she does what she does, and help her learn how to achieve the same goals (connection, social ties, recognition and admiration) in much healthier ways.

History: Link to one I wrote myself because I like doing my own, though there is also a wiki. Pick your poison; this show is absolutely nuts either way.

Sample Network Entry: Network TDM top level

Sample RP: Log TDM thread

Special Notes: If accepted, I will of course put together an extensive permissions post for everything that she chooses to be, which will include both opt-ins and opt-outs for various things, as well as an opt-out of threading her entirely. Basically, this, but with stalking instead of bigotry.

As a kid, Misty was a killer combo of socially awkward but not the least bit shy - meaning that rather than compensating for her lack of social skills by trying to stay under the radar, she never stopped putting herself out there and trying to join in socially, even though it rarely went well for her. Long since seen as annoying and overbearing, Misty eventually found a perceived sense of community and social purpose by becoming the equipment manager for her high school's girls' soccer team. Though the players never really saw her as one of them, Misty didn't let that slow her roll: she became their self-appointed, one-person cheerleading squad, and she watched them at games and pep rallies with a pride and joy that was almost rapturous. On some level, she knew that "her team" didn't love her as much as she loved them, but she thought the solution to that was just to try harder and push more: she had no real idea how to make friends, but she hoped that if she was omnipresent and enthusiastic enough, they'd eventually come around.

After qualifying for the national championship, the team jetted off across the country in a private plane hired for them by one of the player's ultra-wealthy parents. Unfortunately, en route from New Jersey to Washington state, they crashed in the Canadian Rockies. Immediately post-crash, Misty stood out by being the only survivor to both keep a cool head and have a working knowledge of first aid, and she immediately jumped into action, running around tending to injuries big and small. The other girls were suitably surprised and impressed, and Misty, surprised herself that this was what it took to finally earn their respect and admiration, relished the upgrade to her Team Caretaker role. When she stumbled across the plane's emergency locator beacon in the woods, she impulsively destroyed it, not wanting her newfound place in the group to come to an end just yet.

In the end, they were out there for nineteen months - very likely much longer than Misty had expected when she destroyed the beacon, but a duration of time that was still, ultimately, her fault. While surviving in the woods and waiting for rescue, Misty continued to make herself useful as the go-to girl for any medical issues. As time went on, this primarily meant caring for the team's assistant coach, who lost a leg in the crash and who was the only surviving adult. Things were complicated by the fact that Misty had a long-standing crush on the coach: and while she wouldn't be the first seventeen-year-old to immaturely believe that she had A Real Chance with a cute twenty-something guy, she took things to dark extremes. Not only did she hover and smother and pamper him beyond what was really necessary (and against his express wishes), believing that this would eventually endear her to him, she began lightly poisoning him with wild mushrooms when he started to get stronger, wanting to keep him weak and dependent on her.

Plenty of other things clearly happened before they were rescued: faction-forming and survival cannibalism are heavily hinted at, and one of the other girls is seen starting a quasi-religious cult that several of the others, Misty included, appear to join in on. Unfortunately, the audience won't find out more details about this until at least season 2, so for now we have to...

... Fast forward twenty-five years. Misty still lives in New Jersey, in roughly the same area she grew up in, and works as a care assistant at a nursing home, where she gets to feed her toxic caretaking addiction and get into shitty one-upmanship battles with residents she views as uncooperative or insufficiently grateful for her care. She lives alone with her African Grey parrot (a species that requires a ton of care and attention, and the perfect pet for someone addicted to feeling needed), and spends a good deal of time online, chatting on a true crime/cold case discussion forum called Citizen Detectives. Though she's seen trying socialize with her coworkers and going on dead-end dates, she doesn't have much of an offline social life; it turns out she hasn't grown into her own as far as social skills go, and people still find her as off-putting and inappropriate now as they did when she was a kid. What's more, in all those years, she doesn't seem to have found a new social role that fulfills her in the way that being the soccer team's equipment manager/the crash survivors' medical caretaker had, and she clearly longs for the good old days of both high school and wilderness survival.

One evening, upon coming home from an awkward date and wheedling the guy into coming into the house with her, she's greeted by a surprise: Natalie Scatorccio, a former member of the soccer team and fellow plane crash survivor, is sitting in her living room pointing a rifle at her. Misty's date sees this and very wisely chooses to peace out, but Misty couldn't give less of a fuck at this point; a member of ✨✨✨her team✨✨✨ is here, and that's all that she cares about. Apparently, Natalie has received a mysterious postcard in the mail that contains references to the team's time in the woods; she suspects Misty of having sent it, and demands to know what she's playing it. Misty denies having done so, revealing that she received one too; what's more, she's put her Citizen Detective^TM hat on and has been doing research into its potential origins. Cheerfully uncaring about the fact that Natalie broke into her house and threatened her with a gun, she invites her to stay for tea and to swap theories; instead, Natalie suggests they head out to a local bar and talk there.

At the bar, Misty shows Natalie the clues she's been gathering, which includes a truly alarming amount of info about, among other things, what their fellow survivors have been up to since their return to society. Misty is mostly interested in talking about Jessica Roberts, a reporter who claims to be writing a book about the crash but who Misty believes is actually up to something far more sinister; Natalie, on the other hand, is more focused on the fact that Misty has info on Travis, the head coach's son who'd been on the plane with them and who Natalie has been in tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship with ever since. Currently, Travis has gone no-contact with her, and Natalie has no interest in respecting that; seeing that Misty has somehow tracked down his current phone number and address, Natalie pockets the info. At this point they're approached by Kevyn, an old friend of Natalie's who's now a police officer; he leaves an uninterested Natalie his business card in case she wants to reconnect. Natalie leaves soon after, taking Travis's info with her and leaving behind a dejected Misty, who's clearly disappointed that she didn't get the combo gal pal reunion/mystery-solving brainstorming session she'd been hoping for. Seeing that Natalie also left behind Kevyn's card, she nabs it.

Later that night, Misty makes two spectacularly bad decisions. First, she starts texting Kevyn while pretending to be Natalie, relishing in the idea of roleplaying the cool gives-no-fucks outsider she wishes she could be. Second, she secretly follows Natalie over to the motel where she's staying, breaks into her car, and steals her battery cable. Natalie is probably going to want to drive out to pay Travis a visit, she reasons, and she wants to come along for the ride - but she figures that if she asks, Natalie will tell her to fuck off. The only way to solve that problem is to make it so that Natalie can't go on her own; that way, Misty can roll up and save the day! And that's just what she does: while Natalie is struggling to get her car going the next morning, Misty arrives very inconspicuously (read: not inconspicuously at all; it's very obvious that she planned a dramatic entrance), notes Natalie's car trouble, and offers her a ride to wherever she's going. Oh, she's planning to take a road trip to see Travis? In New Hampshire? Which is six hours away? That's fine, she has the next couple of days off from work! She'd be happy to spend literally all of that time hanging with her buddy Natalie! She's a helper!

Natalie is not exactly pleased with this development, but since she she loves forcibly inserting herself into Travis's life every bit as much as Misty now loves forcibly inserting herself into hers, she accepts the offer, and off they go. When they arrive at Travis's house, he's not home, so Natalie promptly breaks in and starts going through his things. Misty is cool with a little B&E as a bonding exercise, and jumps in to help. They discover a pay stub with the address of his workplace (a ranch outside of town), but before they can do anything else, a sheriff's deputy shows up to arrest them for the break-in. Natalie is annoyed. Misty has a ball.

When they're given the opportunity to make phone calls, Misty calls Kevyn and tells him that Natalie needs his help, and somehow he pulls some strings to spring them. Rather than heading for home, though, Natalie gets Misty to drive her to the ranch where Travis works... where they find Travis's body, swinging from the barn rafters. Misty attempts to hold Natalie back to keep her from seeing, but Natalie pushes past her, collapsing in grief. Misty gets her up, hustles her to the car, and takes her home.

The next day, Misty calls to check up on Natalie, worried about how she's coping. She speaks to her while reading directly from a webpage about how to comfort someone grieving a suicide death, but Natalie brushes off the platitudes, insisting that Travis would never have killed himself and that someone must have murdered him and framed it to look like a suicide. Misty immediately offers to help (she loves murder investigations!), but Natalie again brushes her off, saying that she already has plans to meet with someone else and making it clear that Misty isn't invited. Determined both to help Natalie and to involve herself in a real-life juicy crime drama, Misty follows her, and discovers that she's meeting Kevyn for dinner at a restaurant in hopes of wheedling him into helping her get her hands on Travis's autopsy report. While she's watching Natalie from across the dining room, Misty is alarmed to see that Jessica Roberts - the reporter who she's suspicious of - is also watching her. Hurriedly, Misty texts Natalie to warn her, then calls when she ignores the text, then huffily continues to keep an eye on the situation when she ignores the call. Eventually, Natalie spots her and storms over to ask her what the fuck she's doing. Misty, genuinely flummoxed by Natalie's anger, says that she's trying to have her back, and again warns her about the reporter who's spying on her ("And what are you doing?" Natalie quite reasonably asks). Natalie makes it clear that she has zero interest in being a crime-solving duo with Misty, and tells her to go home and stop puppy-dogging after her.

Several days later, after exhausting all the leads she'd been following on her own (turns out Kevyn is a responsible cop who won't just dig up autopsy reports from other jurisdictions and hand them out to random civilians), Natalie finally gives in and calls Misty. She remembers that Misty had mentioned having an internet buddy who could probably hack into Travis's email, and wonders if he could possibly also hack into a police database. Misty initially plays aloof and miffed, but caves very quickly, promising to get her guy on the case. They meet at Natalie's motel room, where Misty gifts her with an aroma diffuser ("Subtropical floral scents are very uplifting") and says that unfortunately, while her internet contact was indeed able to access the autopsy report, he's being stingy about sharing it and wants some heavy compensation first. He's also local, and wants to meet up in person to discuss the trade rather than just sending them the file electronically. Natalie comes up with an unhinged plan to splash gas on him, and then threaten him with a lit match if he doesn't hand it over immediately; Misty is fine with this idea, and it goes off without a hitch. Welcome to Yellowjackets, where every single character is fucked up!

Back in Natalie's hotel room, they pour over the autopsy report and crime scene photos together, noting that, though Travis's death was officially ruled a suicide, there are wax marks arranged in a pattern under his body, indicating that candles had been placed on the barn floor. Though the audience is largely kept in the dark about what this means, it clearly disturbs Natalie and Misty, and is reminiscent of something Bad And Mysterious that happened to them all while they were in the woods; this is, to them, proof that not only was Travis murdered, but that they and the other survivors are potentially in danger, too.

The next day, Natalie reaches out to Taissa, another local survivor who she's on cautiously friendly terms with, and warns her about what she and Misty found; Taissa in turn reaches out to Shauna, yet another survivor. The three of them meet in Natalie's hotel room and discuss Travis's death (Shauna and Taissa are both very skeptical about the murder theory), the mysterious postcards, and some extortion messages that both Natalie and Taissa have received, again related to Mysterious Awful Things that they'd done while stranded. They all readily agree to make whatever payments are asked for in order to keep their secrets secret, and discuss whether or not they should call up Misty and loop her in; Natalie says yes, Taissa says absolutely fucking not, and Shauna appears undecided. In the end, they decide to keep Misty in the dark, but that doesn't end up mattering because, uh, it turns out that Misty is actually watching all this go down in real time. That aroma diffuser she gave Natalie contained a hidden camera, so that she could keep tabs on what Natalie was up to even when Natalie shut her out. #JustNormalFriendThings. Taissa, Natalie, and Shauna decide to deliver the extortionist's money as requested, but then secretly hang out nearby and watch to see who picks it up. Misty is presumably sent into an apoplexy of jealousy seeing this being planned out and knowing that she's missing out on getting to participate in a sting.

But it's fine, because she has her own thing going on. Misty is still convinced that Jessica Roberts, who's continually been trying to talk to her and the other survivors, is involved with the extortion scheme somehow, and also possibly had a hand in Travis's death; Natalie is starting to wonder about the possibility too (likely thanks to Misty constantly talking about it), though when she impulsively declares that she's going to meet up with her and make her talk, Shauna and Taissa (who are both their own special brand of fucked up, but are at least less openly reckless than Natalie and Misty) talk her down. Misty, who is secretly watching this exchange go down via diffuser-cam, uses it as an impetus to do what she does next: if no one else is going to take Jessica seriously as a threat, then she'll damn well handle her herself. She puts together an extra bedroom in her basement, complete with a few sinister additions: namely, handcuffs on the bed and extra bolt locks on the door. Then she calls Jessica up, tells her she wants to arrange a secret meeting to talk and that she'll come pick her up... and then as soon as she gets Jessica in her car, she stabs her with a seditive-filled hypodermic needle she's filched from work, knocking her out. She dramatically plays the overture from The Phantom of the Opera over her car speakers as she does all this, because she is ridiculous.

So! Misty now has her very own captive journalist. She informs Jessica that she knows she's the extortionist and that she killed Travis, and says that she's kidnapped her to protect Natalie, Taissa, and Shauna from coming to harm next. Jessica (who, Misty notes, isn't panicking as much as she would have expected; Jessica retorts that she's worked stories in very dangerous places, and this isn't her first time being held hostage) denies having anything to do with Travis's death, but says that she does believe he was murdered, and that she has useful knowledge to share. Misty remains suspicious of her, but is also intrigued by what Jessica might know. Jessica is, obviously, reluctant to give up any info without first securing her freedom, but after Misty threatens to send Fentanyl-laced chocolates to her father, Jessica opens up, sharing details of her own investigations that Misty then plans to pass on to Natalie.

Worried that Jessica will go to the police if she lets her go, Misty hangs onto her hostage. It's the start of a massively weird dynamic: Misty is clearly having a blast indulging in her crime-solving (... and crime-committing) fantasties, but she also seems to legitimately enjoy Jessica's company, and Jessica plays into that, acting chummy and social. Misty cooks for her, and they eat meals together; she brings a TV down and they watch movies together; she brings her pet parrot down for visits and they all hang out together. However, it never stops being a highly dangerous, precarious situation for Jessica. Misty may crave connection, and may even get some sort of twisted enjoyment out of having a "friend" who literally has to spend time with her - but nothing and nobody matters more to her than "her teammates", the girls she cheered for and cared for and survived the woods with, and she's still not convinced that Jessica isn't a liability to them.

For the next few days, the two circle around each other, sizing each other up. Jessica makes one desperate bid for freedom by getting ahold of Misty's parrot and threatening to strangle him if Misty doesn't let her go; instead, Misty freaks the fuck out, screaming and physically attacking her (notably the first and only time we ever see her do something like this; she loves that bird), causing Jessica to lose her grip at set the little guy free. For the most part, though, Jessica plays the Stockholm Syndrome card: expressing concern and sympathy when Misty gets teary over a big fight with Natalie, telling her it's clear that she's a good friend and that the others just don't appreciate her, and telling her that she could get attention and appreciation from the whole world if she took her up on her offer to write a tell-all book about what the plane crash survivors did to each other in the woods. Misty seems to genuinely be taken in by the sympathy angle, but the tell-all offer is where it's clear that Jessica has misjudged her - because Misty has never cared about fame and public attention, at least not when weighed against personal attention from those she knows and cares about. Capturing the public eye might sound nice in theory, but "her team" matters infinitely more to her than a bunch of strangers, and the idea of selling them out and capitalizing on their secrets is unthinkable to her. Still, she toys with Jessica, faking interest in the plan in an effort to keep info-gathering, and in this way the two continue to both manipulate and be manipulated by each other.

Though they've been feuding, Natalie eventually finds herself back at Misty's door, once again in need of her help and willing to use shameless flattery to get it. She calls Misty pretty, she calls Misty knowledgeable and useful, she tells Misty she's really been there for her in a way that no one else has... and she tells Misty that Shauna's killed a guy who they're pretty sure is their extortionist, and they need Misty to use her true crime knowledge to help them dispose of his body without getting caught. It's this last bit that really wins her over ("I've been waiting my whole life for this!!!", her expression says), and she agrees to help, but on one condition: their twenty-fifth high school reunion is that night, and she wants Natalie to go with her. Natalie agrees, and they head off to make Misty's CSI dreams come true. After successfully dismembering and disposing of the body together (which Misty 100% treats as a fun group activity they get to bond over rather than a horrific experience), Misty, Natalie, Taissa, and Shauna meet up at the reunion, where Misty spends a rapturous evening metaphorically hanging off Natalie's arm and doing tequila shots with her buds. The next morning, she tells Jessica she'll let her go if she super-duper pinky-swear promises not to go to the police, and Jessica agrees... only to pass out a short while after regaining her freedom. Whoopsie! Turns out that Misty still thinks that this woman, with her digging and her prying and her interest in tell-alls, is a big enough potential threat to warrant permanent disposal, and she'd injected Fentanyl into her cigarettes before cutting her loose. Lesson learned: don't underestimate Misty's dark dedication to protecting her friends. It can be deadly.

boom.