In the Canadian wilderness where the namesake soccer team of “Yellowjackets” has been stranded for months, it’s finally summer. Snow has melted; there are leaves on the trees; the abandoned cabin that burned to ash in the Season 2 finale has given way to a makeshift village of wooden lean-tos. For a group so exposed to the natural world, the change in weather marks a profound shift in the status quo, and for fans of the Showtime drama, the fresh air is both literal and metaphorical.
In the modern-day timeline that takes up half of the series’ screen time, eerily little has changed. Season 2 culminated in the first major death among the adult survivors of a 1990s plane crash and the extended isolation that followed. Just as the younger version of Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) was appointed leader of her impromptu tribe, her older self (Juliette Lewis) fell victim to a syringe of fentanyl. Natalie’s compatriot Misty (Christina Ricci) may have dealt the killing blow, but to true believers like Lottie (Simone Kessell), she was a human sacrifice to “It,” the spirit of the wilderness that may have followed them back into civilization.
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The offscreen death of her ex-boyfriend Travis (played in the past by Kevin Alves) may have been the series’ inciting incident, but Natalie’s fate still represents a drastic escalation of the Yellowjackets’ plight. Or at least, it should — but apart from a perfunctory funeral in the premiere, the contemporary scenes of Season 3 feel oddly business as usual. The grown women are still scattered to the four winds, with most attempts to pair them off feeling forced, and they still lack an imperative as urgent as their younger selves’ need to stay alive. The return of “Yellowjackets,” which last aired in May of 2023, was delayed by the Hollywood strikes, but the four episodes provided to critics only exacerbate the defining flaw of Season 2: a widening gap between the story’s two halves, with the flashbacks far outpacing their more diffuse, less purposeful counterparts.
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The good news is that the former plot has maintained its momentum. With the threat of imminent starvation or death by exposure somewhat eased, the Yellowjackets can start to work their way up the hierarchy of needs. After nearly a year, the crash site has developed into something like a real community. There are celebrations, like a solstice game of capture the (animal, presumably) bone. There’s a miniature farm of rabbits and ducks. And as a result, there isn’t any more cannibalism — for now, at least. As of Season 2, the Yellowjackets had progressed from devouring a frozen corpse to hunting targets chosen by drawing cards, but they haven’t gone any further. Yet.
Tensions still run high. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) has been traumatized by her baby’s stillbirth, making her angrier and more hostile than ever. Adherents to a quasi-religion that treats the woods like a sentient being have hardened into a faction with an increasingly built-out cosmology. And Coach Scott (Steven Kreuger), an amputee increasingly appalled by the girls’ feral turn, remains at large after disappearing in the wake of the cabin fire. The paranoia, occult inclinations and regular old teen drama form a combustible powder keg that delivers some of the series’ best scenes to date. What “Yellowjackets” willingly sacrifices in practical realism — like an entire courtroom magically rustled up by production designer Margot Ready from the wreckage, complete with judge’s robes and a jerry-rigged gavel — it makes up for in psychological insight.
The show retains a tight grip on what has always been its greatest strength: depicting how the brutality, and maybe spirituality, of untamed nature brings out what’s already within adolescent girls. “You were annoyingly fucking relentless,” one character observes of the ruthlessly competitive players, and it’s at once funny, touching and scary to witness flashes of normalcy amid extreme circumstances. An injured Yellowjacket calms herself by riffing on Right Said Fred (“I’m…too sexy for this cave”), while another dreams of normal ‘90s stuff like snap bracelets in the thick of a harrowing shared hallucination. What the wilderness brings out in them versus what it instills is never easy to sort out.
In the 2020s, the sole source of teenage petulance is Callie (Sarah Desjardins), the daughter of a now middle-aged Shauna (Melanie Lynskey). Callie is a much-improved character since she’s been brought in on her parents’ indiscretions — “murder, attempted murder and accomplice to murder,” she helpfully itemizes — and the way Shauna sees long-buried parts of herself, both good and bad, in her child is a rewarding dynamic. So is the rekindled romance between Tai (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose), in which the former’s breakdown and the latter’s cancer diagnosis creates an openness to ex-lovers and the supernatural alike.
The uniting factor of these relationships is an organic, pre-existing bond, which is more than one can say for awkward attempts to keep Lottie and Misty in the loop. After spending most of Season 2 mired in a murder cover-up, one can understand why “Yellowjackets” wants to yadda-yadda, or maybe just put off, the fallout from poisoning a police officer or Natalie’s death having witnesses. But the storylines pursued in their stead fail to gather momentum a mid-season twist seems intended to kick-start.
Though “Yellowjackets” still has its open questions, the rough contours of what happened in the woods and what’s transpiring in New Jersey are clear enough. Whether “It” is real or a collective delusion, an ambiguity the show will likely never clear up, the force nudged them on the path to eating human flesh, creating a guilt that now haunts them. “Yellowjackets” is never better than when it dispenses with mystery to focus on individual experience, and never weaker than when it buries that experience beneath distractions that aren’t nearly as interesting as what they obscure.
The first two episodes of “Yellowjackets” Season 3 are now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime, and will air on Showtime on Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. ET. Remaining episodes will stream weekly on Fridays and air weekly on Sundays.
