Mirroring the pilot episode, Season 3 of Showtime’s “Yellowjackets” starts out by following a dark-haired teenage girl as she runs through the woods to escape unseen pursuers. But unlike the enigmatic introduction to the series, by the time viewers reach this scene in Season 3, the grisly rules of the hunt have become disturbingly clear: Kill or be eaten.
Regrettably, that rule still remains one of the few clear things about the darkly delightful “Yellowjackets,” as Season 3 continues the series’ frustrating habit of spooling out seemingly endless new mysteries without providing answers to the creepy mythology at its core.
Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and originally premiering in 2021, “Yellowjackets” may be best described as a ’90s survival drama and modern-day mystery stacked together in a trenchcoat. The series follows the members of a 1996 high school girls’ soccer team — mascot, the Yellowjackets — on their way to Nationals. But the girls never reach their destination; their plane goes down somewhere over Canada. With no idea where they are, the team is forced to figure out a way to survive until help comes — a rescue that won’t arrive for 19 long months.
Half the series unfolds in the modern day, where the surviving members of the team are now in their forties and have mostly moved on with their lives — until the events of the past begin to creep their way back into the present. The other half follows the teenage Yellowjackets in the aftermath of the crash, as they struggle to withstand the harsh conditions of the Canadian wilderness.
Or perhaps, that should be Wilderness, with a capital W.
The first time the Yellowjackets cannibalize one of their own, in Season 2, it’s less a conscious decision than it is a capitulation to hunger and circumstance; when team captain Jackie (Ella Purnell) succumbs to the elements, her flaming funeral pyre is doused by snow, resulting in her body getting slow-roasted instead of incinerated. Her starving teammates can’t help themselves, and don’t seem to realize what they’ve done until after Jackie is already digesting in their bellies. But by Season 3, the girls have embraced the supernatural ideology Lottie (Courtney Eaton) uses to justify feasting on the corpse of their former friend: the Wilderness is choosing members of their group to “sacrifice” in order to sustain the rest.
In Season 3, we rejoin the team following the destruction of the abandoned cabin they’d been living in since the crash. The cabin went up in flames in the Season 2 finale, and although the girls managed to escape with their lives, the fire fuels their suspicions that someone is out to kill them.
Their lead suspect? Coach Ben Scott (Steven Krueger), the only adult to survive the crash long enough to make it to the cabin. In Season 2, Ben abandons the group soon after they decide to fully lean into hunting one another for food, taking up residence in an underground cave and leaving the girls to their own devices.
Unfortunately for Coach Ben, some of the Yellowjackets — now led by Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) after the Wilderness “decided” to spare her life — are not so willing to let bygones be bygones. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) in particular is convinced that Ben is to blame for the fire, and she won’t rest until she gets her pound of flesh — literally.
Meanwhile, in the present day (where, at least by the end of Season 2, no one has uttered a word about Coach Ben), the adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is preparing for Natalie’s (Juliette Lewis) funeral. Natalie perished in the Season 2 finale, after being accidentally injected with a lethal dose of phenobarbital by Misty (Christina Ricci). Not only are Shauna, Misty and their fellow Yellowjackets Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose) still reeling from Natalie’s death, they’re also wrestling with Lottie’s (Simone Kessell in the modern timeline) assertion that the Wilderness is not finished with them yet, and that it once again demands sacrifice.
But is that really what’s happening? Or are they being haunted by ghosts of their own making?
Sadly, the four Season 3 episodes available for review don’t provide much in the way of answers, either to the series’ big existential questions or its smaller tactical ones. As each episode delves deeper into a plot that has no shortage of twists, it can get a bit tiring to still have no idea of the destination. By this point, it’s fair to wonder if the series has one in mind, or if it’s navigating by vibes alone.
Still, for viewers who are able to trust the process, there’s a lot to enjoy in “Yellowjackets” Season 3. After losing the cabin, it’s clear that the girls are struggling to hold on to any semblance of civilization, so they play at justice with the same determined enthusiasm that they once applied to soccer, even going so far as to stage an entire courtroom trial to assuage their guilty consciences. They need to know they’re doing things “right,” even if they don’t really know what that means anymore.
In contrast, the women in the present-day narrative are becoming increasingly disillusioned with societal norms and niceties, embracing the ruthless abandon of the wilderness a little more with each passing day. They bend and even break the rules, thrilling in the allure of the forbidden, and chafe when outsiders remind them that their choices may come with consequences. The girls who were terrified to admit that they’d given themselves over to the Wilderness grow into women who can’t seem to stop welcoming it in — and leaving dead bodies in their wake.
And yes, that’s bodies, plural. The flowers from Natalie’s sparsely attended funeral have barely begun to wilt before the next victim falls, and the Wilderness — allegedly — doesn’t stop collecting its dues there. But don’t worry; there are always more Yellowjackets waiting on the sidelines, ready to step in for a fallen teammate. (It’s worth mentioning that Hillary Swank, who joins the cast in a recurring role for Season 3, doesn’t make an appearance in the first four episodes, but if she plays another grown-up Yellowjacket, it’s easy to make an educated guess about who she’ll play).
As always, the young actors portraying the teenage Yellowjackets deliver incredible performances, with Thatcher, Nélisse and Samantha Hanratty (who plays teenage Misty) in particular getting a chance to flex their dramatic muscles. The longer they’re left to fend for themselves, the more feral the girls become, giving into impulses and instincts that would’ve been unthinkable to them just a few months before, and giving the cast plenty of meaty material to sink their teeth into. Krueger, too, has some excellent moments in the first half of the season as the increasingly frustrated and horrified Coach Ben, as he realizes his fate may be determined by obscure signs from deities of a faith he doesn’t believe in.
And of course, it’s no surprise that the adult actors, many of whom first came to fame as teenagers in the ‘90s, continue to shine. While the modern-day storyline doesn’t feel quite as compelling in Season 3 as in the previous two seasons — despite the chemistry between Cypress and Ambrose, their romance feels a little over-simplified (Taissa’s estranged wife and young son are not even mentioned); Shauna’s grudges against both Misty and Lottie are starting to go a bit stale; and the various murders committed in the first two seasons, including Natalie’s, don’t appear to have many lingering consequences — the performers embody their characters with enough depth to make a meal out of fairly sparse ingredients. Lynskey and Ricci, in particular, possess an impressive knack for getting the audience to continue rooting for them long past the point where their characters stopped deserving it.
And that’s the rub of “Yellowjackets.” Three seasons in, the series is beginning to feel a little unearned. Questions continue piling up without much indication that answers are forthcoming. No series can be expected to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’, but it would be nice to have some indication by now that the writers know where they’re headed. While the Yellowjackets have no choice but to make the best of their uncertainty in the wilderness, viewers are under no obligation to do the same.
On the other hand, “Yellowjackets” Season 3 continues to be an eminently watchable series, delivering surprising storylines, fascinating characters, and a consistently stellar cast. Perhaps that should be enough. After all, “Yellowjackets” may not yet be a very satisfying series, but it’s always been a fun one. And as Lottie would say, “Is there a difference?”
“Yellowjackets” Season 3 premieres Friday, Feb. 14, on Paramount+ with Showtime.