SPOILER ALERT: This column contains potential spoilers about “Yellowjackets.”
From the very first couple of seconds of the show, “Yellowjackets” immediately pulls you in. There aren’t many better openings than seeing a nameless and faceless girl run through the woods, barefoot and bleeding in the snow. You start to feel for her, sympathy growing as animalistic sounds are heard around her, all for it to not matter when she runs to an unassuming plot of land just for the ground to give out, revealing itself to be a spike-filled pit that kills the girl immediately.
Throughout the pilot, the audience is introduced to the Yellowjackets, a New Jersey high school girls soccer team who just won the 1996 New Jersey state championship. The team is shown at their highest as they excitedly prepare for their journey for the national competition. These high moments are jarringly contrasted as the team is shown at their lowest, as they are eventually revealed to be the same savage hunters who killed the girl and ate her, that we now can infer was their teammate.
From its introduction, “Yellowjackets” doesn’t shy away from showing its audience what type of a show it really is. It’s brutal, bloody and barbaric. In its three seasons so far, “Yellowjackets” has kept at least that consistent.
In the first season of the show, “Yellowjackets” killed off seven of its characters, although only four of those were ones that had significant time to be introduced to the audience. In its second season, the show killed off five, all of which were significant to the show. In the third season, which finished premiering April 11, the show killed six characters, which left its fanbase and actors outraged. For a show that has a much more finite number of characters (it’s hard to organically introduce new characters to a show where the entire premise is based on its characters being stranded), the “Yellowjackets” writing team clearly has no qualms about killing important characters off.
What makes “Yellowjackets” different from previous stranded/survivalist dramas like “Lost” and “The Wilds,” is its usage of two timelines throughout the series. The audience is led through the horrific situations the soccer team is put through at the expense of their survival in the 1996 timeline just to be shown the survivors’ cushy suburban lives in the “modern” timeline — the modern timeline is still 2021 because that was the year the first season was made, although the specific year of the modern timeline rarely comes up.
This differs from shows like “Lost,” which also utilized multiple timelines. In “Lost,” the audience is shown what is happening in the stranded timeline and is then shown what happened in the character’s past, rather than their future, as a device to show parallels in character’s actions across time.
This change is what makes “Yellowjackets” so unique. The audience isn’t (entirely) on the edge of their seat during the show, hoping their favorite teen survives the 19 months spent in the wilderness. Four survivors are revealed in the modern timeline in the pilot episode, but the show eventually confirms eight survivors in total, leaving it unrevealed on if that number will continue to grow.
Instead of the nail-biting mystery and anticipation that accompanies shows like “Lost,” “Yellowjackets” is much more interested in the resulting impact of trauma on a person’s psyche. Though the survivors appear well-adjusted at their first introduction, it is revealed through the seasons that the ritualistic hunting and cannibalism of their friends may have actually been more psychologically damaging than originally thought.
A common complaint of fans throughout the seasons, especially in the third, was the growing disconnect between the girls' wilderness actions and their modern-day relationships. As audiences learned more about what truly happened in the wild, the survivors' friendly dynamic in the present timeline became increasingly confusing. This is excellently explained in the season three finale when the audience learns that most of the survivors’ memories of their time stranded in the wilderness was blocked off in a trauma response, essentially putting the survivors on the same level of knowledge as the audience.
“Yellowjackets” is a show that is far from perfect. It killed off a fan favorite who acted as a foil to its growing antagonist seemingly out of nowhere. Fans are divided on decisions like this made by the writers. The common argument by fans who defend the writers is that a five season plan has been developed ever since the show was first pitched in 2019.
While the writers likely did have such a plan, it is far more plausible that it only covered a basic timeline with key events being put in place instead of an episode-by-episode outline. The show has already proven that the writers can be swayed. One character was supposed to be killed off in the first season, but their actor proved to be so likeable, that the character remained and even got an adult counterpart in the next season.
This can even be seen in the season three finale, which shows the iconic “pit girl” scene, as fans have referred to it, in a new light. It directly contradicts the brutish and feral portrayal of the girls in the pilot scene. Only one of the characters wanted to hunt and kill someone in that episode, and many nuances which weren’t revealed to the audience in the pilot become known.
There is no definite answer about whether this was planned from the start or was a change introduced as the show’s popularity has grown. Nevertheless, “Yellowjackets” continues to be a show that doesn’t pander to its audience’s desires, almost apathetically crushing the audience’s hopes every episode.
The show hasn’t yet been renewed for its fourth season, but its fans and actors remain confident that it will.
“Yellowjackets” is every bit of the gruesome thriller it is marketed as, and its confidence in itself and its concept is the reason the show’s fanbase is as large and passionate as it is. The writers obviously have a story to tell, and the audience is just along for the ride.
Every season of “Yellowjackets” can be watched on Paramount+ and the first season of the show can also be watched on Netflix.
