The show’s follow-up chapter is losing its way.
By introducing two primary timelines – a girls’ football team stranded in the wilderness in 1996 and the surviving members as adults in 2021 – Yellowjackets season 1 established the show’s central mystery: why are they still haunted by what happened all these years later? What really happened out there?
Throughout the first instalment, supernatural elements encouraged fans to speculate: viewers saw an anonymous figure hunted and killed for their flesh by a tribe donning animal skins; there were mysterious etchings in the woods and in the cabin; and Lottie had visions suggesting a supernatural entity was demanding bloodshed. But it was never entirely clear what was fuelling the “paranormal force” in the wilderness.
The occult was just one strand of the show’s ambitious array of styles, which include horror, coming-of-age drama, dark comedy and survivalist epic.
This enabled Yellowjackets to stay focused on what really matters – the complicated relationships between the girls, now women, and the brutality of their social circle, which ultimately proved to be so much worse than any of the external threats they faced. Jackie froze to death because of a petty argument with Shauna, Van was mauled by wolves because Taissa wanted to be leader of the pack, and adult Misty drugged and murdered a journalist to protect her former teammates (when it comes to Misty, the list is endless).
How disappointing, then, that Yellowjackets’ hotly-anticipated second season, which is just over halfway through its run, has decided to lean further into the supernatural. From Lottie’s visions – namely that Travis’s brother Javi was alive – starting to come true and Taissa sleepwalking directly to the mysterious symbols carved into the trees, to a supernatural force appearing to cook Jackie’s body and lure the group out of the cabin to eat her, the ’90s timeline is saturated with mystical overtones which ultimately lead to, well, nothing.
Dead-end supernatural threats dominate the adult Yellowjackets’ storylines, too. Taissa is forced to seek Van’s help as her feral alter-ego begins to take over, and we’re left wondering whether something eerie is going on at Lottie’s mental health retreat due to her increasingly violent visions demanding bloodshed (one of which features the Antler Queen – the leader of the cannibals we first saw in season 1).
It’s also where Natalie – during a hypnosis session with Lottie – revisits a strange vision she previously had when she overdosed, which showed the crashed plane and on it, the Yellowjackets burned to a crisp.
While their visions could once again be explained by logical causes – Natalie’s drug-induced state, Taissa’s stress and Lottie’s schizophrenia diagnosis – the show is definitely pushing us further to entertain supernatural possibilities in season 2.
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It’s easy to understand why the series is travelling down that road. With Yellowjackets already renewed for season 3 – and the producers having previously spoken of a five-part story plan – this chapter has to expand on the central mystery and maintain suspense without giving too much away – and hints at the occult provide a great way of doing exactly that.
But the problem is that they risk derailing the show, which is at its least convincing when it’s inviting questions about an evil force in the wilderness, especially if the writers have no intention of resolving them (and are just going to give us another Lost). The potentially supernatural plot lines in the present day timeline in particular feel like filler added in to drive fan speculation.
Rather than ramping up that strand of its storytelling, the show should get back to doing what it does best: grounding its plot developments in realistic adolescent emotion. There have been glimmers of this so far in season 2, such as when Misty tells Crystal she destroyed the plane’s emergency transmitter and then kills her when she doesn’t sympathise with her incentive (which is to be needed by her teammates), starving and grieving Shauna biting into Jackie’s ear, or coach Ben shuddering as the gang devour Jackie because he knows he is rock bottom of the social hierarchy – and therefore could be their next victim.
Refuse to do that and Yellowjackets risks becoming lost in the wilderness.
Yellowjackets continues on Paramount Plus on Friday 28th April – get Paramount Plus for no extra cost on Sky, or get a seven-day free trial of Paramount Plus on Amazon Prime Video.
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