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The script’s description of Nat’s emotions in this scene really stands out to me. A lifetime’s worth of humiliation and rage…

In this moment, after years of swallowing her rage, shrinking herself to survive, and living under the suffocating control of her father, something finally ruptures. For perhaps the first time in her life, Natalie allows her anger to move outward instead of inward. She is willing and intending to kill her father in this scene. We are shown without a shadow of a doubt in this scene that beneath Natalie’s restraint exists a capacity for direct, lethal violence that emerges when enough fear, humiliation, and fury have been forced to accumulate past the point of containment.

However, there are immediate consequences for Natalie’s first true outward expression of rage. Although she doesn’t kill her father directly, he still dies as an indirect result of her actions. Nat immediately freezes and withdraws back into herself, carrying the guilt and shame of the one moment where she lost control of her anger, and it’s disastrous consequences.

From that point forward, Natalie internalizes the belief that some part of her is fundamentally monstrous, violent, and dangerous in the same way her father was. Much of her life becomes an attempt to outrun and disprove that possibility. She clings desperately to compassion, gentleness, and morality, trying to become the kind of person her father never could be. Because she associates direct expressions of anger with harm, her violence and self-preservation find other ways to appear. They take form through passivity, manipulation, displacement, and/or self-destruction rather than open aggression. She has brief moments of conflict (with Jackie and Lottie especially), but even in these scenes you can feel the tension of her holding herself back.

But by the end of Season 3, I think we can see the tide beginning to shift for Nat. Under Shauna’s reign, she is once again placed in an environment defined by coercive control, silencing, and repeated humiliation. These dynamics echo the psychological captivity she experienced under her father growing up. In scene after scene, you can see Nat’s anger straining beneath the surface. She’s practically vibrating with restrained rage, as though the effort of keeping it buried is becoming physically unbearable.

I think all of these scenes are showing us that Nat is a ticking time bomb, and with each of Shauna’s actions that further strip her of her autonomy, she gets closer and closer to snapping. I think it’s only a matter of time before Nat’s resolve snaps again and she lashes out, and I think she will have one final moment of direct violence that she will once again carry the guilt of for the rest of her life.

And that is the cycle at the center of Natalie’s character. She internalizes her anger for as long as possible because she is terrified of what will happen if she lets it out and believes she deserves that anger being directed at herself instead. But the repression only causes that anger to intensify until it eventually erupts in one catastrophic, impulsive moment. The consequences of that explosion then fill her with guilt and self-loathing, convincing her that her anger is inherently monstrous and dangerous, which causes her to internalize it even more afterward, building to the point that it will inevitably explode again one day. And in doing so, she unknowingly begins the cycle all over again.

It’s no coincidence that these are the very first words we hear Nat speak in the entire series:

She’s likely referring to Shauna, yes, but I think she’s also referring to herself; and the more dangerous, volatile parts of herself and Shauna (and all of survivors) that she has learned need to be kept under control.

I love that they both get teary-eyed in this scene. To me, it just shows how much care and respect is behind that anger. You can see the betrayal on Tai's face, she trusted Nat, had faith in her, and she can’t believe she would lie to her. And the moment Tai exposes her and raises her voice, Nat bursts into tears. She knows she has disappointed Tai, someone she deeply respects, and she’s feeling the weight of having let her down.

This is the same girl who, when she felt Travis pulling away and drifting toward something she didn’t understand or agree with, staged his little brother’s death just to force him into grief and pull him back toward her. Then she slept with Travis immediately afterward while covering up the leg wound she used to stage Javi’s death. She allowed Javi to die in her place and used the Wilderness as an excuse (“the Wilderness chose”) even though she had never expressed belief in it before. She lied to the group for months about Coach Ben’s whereabouts. She helped capture Coach Ben, was the one to suggest how he should be executed, and couldn’t even meet his eyes while he begged her to help him.

As an adult, she committed insurance fraud and likely a range of other cons to support her drug habits, assaulted and blackmailed her former sponsor, and deliberately inserted herself back into Travis’s life the moment she learned he was finally stable and happy with another woman, with the clear intent to ruin it. When he cut off contact with her, she tracked him down and broke into his house. She stalked Misty, broke into her house with a rifle, and then later exploited Misty’s need for validation to get her help covering up a murder.

She manipulated Kevyn’s lingering feelings for her to access confidential police information, slept with him, stole his gun while he was asleep, and used it in a reckless heist in which she nearly killed someone on suspicion alone. And when Lottie was hesitant to let the other survivors stay at her compound, fearing the dangerous mental state she was beginning to spiral into, Nat convinced her to let them stay and “stop resisting” in order to continue to fuel her own path toward something that felt like healing to her. AND SO ON.

im not doing anything wrong and no one is mad at me

there must be a place for me in this world because here i am

my art doesnt suck

(Inspired by an ask sent by beloved moot @crimsonprose about some misunderstandings people often have about Nat's character)

We all love Nat as the moral compass and the closest thing we have to a "hero" in this story. She's kind-hearted and compassionate. She tries her best to do the "right thing." But, in the same way many people get caught up in the two-dimensional view of Shauna as an "evil villain," I think some people get caught up in portraying Nat as a purely well-intentioned and innocent saint, which doesn't feel like a holistic view of her character and is challenged even in canon by other characters (thinking of Travis and Shauna's lines about Natalie's "saint" act). There are two contradictory motivations for almost every one of Nat's actions on the show: the compassionate need to do what's right and protect the people she loves, and the wounded instinct to shield herself and tend to her own unmet needs. These motivations coexist simultaneously, causing Nat to constantly be at war with herself, which in turn increases her lifelong guilt.

Natalie fakes Javi's death to provide Travis with the closure he needs to grieve (which is well-intentioned, even if her method of doing so was questionable), but she's also doing it because she's lonely and misses her connection with him, which has been disrupted by his desperation to find Javi. It's no coincidence that Nat grabs Javi's pants and stuffs them in her backpack the moment after she watches that intimate moment between Lottie and Travis from the cabin window. She's worried about the danger of Travis's growing connection to Lottie (and Travis's connection to Lottie is clearly not healthy or safe for him). But she's also jealous. She's human, she's a teenage girl. Travis's withdrawal from Nat is due to her telling him his brother is dead, while his gravitation towards Lottie is due her offering him the hope of assuring him his brother is alive. So Nat’s choice to fake Javi's death is both a selfless and selfish act, to care for Travis but also to pull him back into her orbit.

This duality is also shown when Natalie challenges Lottie's leadership in Season 2 both because she knows the direction Lottie is taking the group in is dangerous and deadly and because she is envious of the validation, appreciation, and connection Lottie is receiving from the group (which Coach Ben calls her out on in 2x08). Nat is the hunter of the group; she busts her ass every day hiking for miles through several feet of snow in subzero temperatures to provide for the group. The group would quite literally die without her. And yet, Lottie is being heralded as the savior of the group. Lottie is being given all of the credit for the group's survival, while Nat is criticized for not doing enough and is outright blamed for the group's lack of food (by Mari). So she suggests a competition with Lottie, which is a selfish act done purely to fuel her own ego and prove herself to the group (which ends up nearly killing them both).

And when Nat is coronated as leader, we see a lot of what was underneath her resentment towards Lottie. She breaks down into happy tears as she's showered with the praise, devotion, and appreciation she has been watching Lottie receive all this time. Nat has been ostracized and unloved for her entire life, and while she pretends to be apathetic about it, she actually longs for validation and connection. So Nat's behavior towards Lottie in Season 2 stems from both a selfless care for the well-being of the group, as well as a selfish resentment towards her for receiving the praise she secretly yearns for.

Even her choice to be a hunter in the first place is both because she wants to provide for the group/feels her worth lies in what she gives to others and because she enjoys the accolades it initially gets her (look at her smile listening to the group's cheers when she wins the can-shooting competition and when she brings back a deer for the first time, and everyone is clapping for her). This is something she never received in her childhood finally being granted to her; proof that she's not useless like her father told her.

Nat allows Javi to die for her because she wants to live and has a very sudden change of heart about her belief in the Wilderness, as she tells Travis "the Wilderness chose" Javi as a sacrifice. This very abrupt change of heart is tied to her resolve and sanity finally cracking at the major trauma she just endured, but it's also a coping mechanism to relieve herself of the immense guilt of allowing this young boy to die in her place (the same coping mechanism the rest of the group has been using to justify their actions in the wilderness).

In Season 3, Nat helps capture Coach Ben, turns away when the group moves to execute him (after suggesting the method herself), allows them to maim him, and participates in keeping him imprisoned despite how deeply this violates her own values and her bond with him. Every part of this is rooted in self-preservation. Nat is profoundly conflict-avoidant, and she stays silent because she knows that speaking up could get her hurt or killed. Her passivity during these moments mirrors her broader pattern throughout the series of positioning herself as a bystander to the group’s violence in order to sidestep both the danger and the crushing guilt that comes with these actions. She lets others carry the moral weight and the responsibility, even as she benefits from the violence that ultimately protects her survival.

After the rescue, Nat spends her life conning and manipulating people for her own financial and personal gain. Identity fraud, blackmail, it's clear that her Porsche and designer clothing has been obtained through morally questionable methods. She manipulates Kevyn's feelings for her to get answers and she manipulates Misty's idolization of her to get her to help bury Adam's body.

Nat is dead-set on solving Travis's death both because she wants justice for him and because she feels betrayed by him breaking their pact and desperately needs to prove that he didn't do so, as her own will to live hangs in the balance.