Its all about how one reacts to change, fight it or largely go with the flow. Either approach can be done out of despair but both can also have survival benefits. There's an obvious gender juxtaposition with the fates of the female and male teams. The most androgynous girl was a confrontation lesbian who got the most gruesome on camera death. The guy found in the indoor pool resisted with the crude surgery and probably suffered the most out of all of them. The physicist/wrist cutter girl figures out that all forms of information within the area e.g. light, radio-waves, genes etc are getting refracted/bent so she just goes with it leading to a supposed peaceful death as her self inflicted wounds turn into flowers. Jason Leigh took on the alien thing head on because she's going to die anyway so she gets consumed by it, a sort of literal "gaze long into the abyss and the abyss gazes back into you".

Portman took a stand during the right circumstance when she kills the crocodile but ultimately she follows the physicist girl's example of bend don't break. During the finale she's matched and overpowered at every move by some agendaless and insurmountable force of nature but then she synchronizes herself to the alien thing, allowing her to maneuver her way out of there. Oscar Issac resisted, lost his mind, and went out with a bang. Issac "survives" but he's despondent post-Shimmer whereas Portman survives better as she retains more of her wits and personality even though she's still lost a lot of herself along with getting partially mutated i.e. the final shot and the alien morphing into her before it blows up. As her self hatred from her affair kept creeping up throughout the story she became more open to being destroyed. Self destruction leading to more self destruction although in her case it ultimately helped in her self preservation.

There's probably something to the whole females being more fluid e.g. more female bisexuals but the extent of that is all still pretty hazy. I don't appreciate the female version of the 2001: A Space Odyssey EeeeEEEeeeeeEEEeee soundtrack during the alien sequence, it really wasn't earned. Maybe my reaction has something to do with the fact that I saw The Passion of Joan of Arc the other night, which is pretty similar thematically but goes in the opposite direction in favor of resistance and its just a lot better.

appeared to have it until they kill her off which I knew they were first because she was the least known actress.

the bear scene. I don't know why but I found that scene somewhat funny because the way it looked and Sheppard's voice coming out of it.

That was Kane's double and at first I thought it was Lena's double but the more I think about it I think that was the real Lena who was contaminated by the being. That's something we won't know for sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

The point is that Portman's DNA embodies the Ship of Theseus. So much of Portman's DNA is dividing with Shimmer-infused DNA it's ambiguous how much of the "original" Lena is actually the original "Lena" anymore.