The Pitch: When last we left the Wisyakok Yellowjackets, they were going through some shit in two different timelines, and things only escalate further in Season 2. In 1996, the stranded girls’ soccer team (and their scant few surviving male companions) were gearing up for a harsh winter in the wilderness in which they’ve been stranded, with little food stewing and brittle conflicts brewing.
Lottie (Courtney Eaton), running out of antipsychotic meds, has been seeing visions; what’s more, they’re coming true, leading many of the group to begin seeing her as a prophet. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is reeling from the freezing death of her former bestie, Jackie (Ella Purnell); Taissa’s (Jasmin Savoy Brown) sleepwalking has been getting worse, and the growing concerns about food and cold are driving the group to darker, more inhuman places — ever closer to the pelt-wearing cannibals teased in the opening minutes of the pilot.
It’s not much better for the survivors in the present day, either: Adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) struggles to keep her murder of her paramour Adam last season a secret, even as she ropes her desperate husband Jeff (Warren Kole) into the coverup.
Meanwhile, Misty (Christina Ricci) works to throw other citizen detectives off Shauna’s scent for Adam’s death, even as it puts her in the orbit of another amateur sleuth named Walter (Elijah Wood). Adult Taissa’s (Tawny Cypress) sleepwalking is getting her in trouble again, especially as the pressures of her recent election to State Senator start to pile up.
And Natalie (Juliette Lewis) finds herself kidnapped by adult Lottie’s (Simone Kessell) lavender-clad cult, sticking around to solve the mystery of fellow survivor Travis’ suicide from the first season — and to see whether Lottie’s seemingly preternatural insight means as much as it did back in the wilderness. Whether then or now, more heads will spin, and more blood will spill before we learn the truth (and ultimate fate) of these traumatized women’s stories.
No Return, No Reason: Showtime’s Yellowjackets became one of 2021’s surprise TV hits last season, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a combo of a few things, of course: Adult millennials pining for the ’90s and the stars we grew up watching (Lynskey, Ricci, Lewis), a pandemic-era acceptance of our apocalyptic times and a desire to find meaning in the ways COVID life has changed us.
Yellowjackets (Showtime)