Starting to get obsessed with the fact that they were in the wilderness for nineteen months: aka, time enough to encompass the length of TWO pregnancies. (With, admittedly, a little change. Still.) There are no timestamps in the flashbacks; we measure it primarily by how far along Shauna is. The first nine months are about fear, survival and hope: hope of rescue, of Javi's survival, of the baby coming -- it's not totally bleak, and the cannibalism happens in a justifiable, well-she-was-dead-already sort of way. Crystal's death is still pretty much an accident. No-one has been flat-out murdered. The lines crossed aren't irrevocable.
But we're warned at the start of the season: things are getting kind of gross. And also: can't stop what's coming, can't stop what is on its way.
The winter marks one turning point -- the landscape transformed, made unrecognisable. Shauna's baby dying marks another. The almost-halfway point. The remaining time will be about the gestation of a god: the one they discover, or *make*, in the wilderness. And it's interesting that Lottie -- its creator? priestess? -- is not only styled as rival-queen to Nat... but also, rival-mother in opposition to Shauna.