“Yellowjackets” fans will have to wait a little bit longer for Season 2 of the Emmy-nominated addictive series to hit Showtime. Showrunners and co-creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson told TheWrap on Tuesday that production begins at the end of August, so we can’t expect the series to return until early 2023 at the earliest.
The first season, which has received seven Emmy nominations including Best Drama Series, Best Lead Actress (Melanie Lynskey) and Best Supporting Actress (Christina Ricci), premiered in November 2021.
“We’re looking into the first quarter of 2023,” says Lyle of a “Yellowjackets” Season 2 premiere date, who is hard at work with Nickerson and co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco. “We are on a very similar production track in terms of time as we were last season, although of course, we have to shoot an additional episode because we had already shot the pilot the last time. I believe that we are going to finish shooting in about February and we’ll be airing sometime shortly after that.”
Nickerson adds that getting all of the details right for the drama, which is set in two different timelines, is “a very slow process.”
Lyle knows that fans are champing at the bit to dig back into the series’ mysteries, such as what happened to Natalie (Juliette Lewis) and to meet the grown-up Lottie, a role that has been cast but not yet been announced.
“Nobody wanted to get back on the air quickly more than we did. But we really rolled directly from finishing up Season 1 into Season 2,” Lyle said. “It’s a deeply serialized story, and we wanted to make sure we didn’t rush it, and that we got it right. And so this was the earliest we could accomplish that.”
“One thing about the show doing really well, that maybe I hadn’t anticipated, was how much responsibility Ashley and I and Jonathan and the whole team feel to earn the level of affection the audience is showing,” Nickerson added. “The idea of delivering something that wasn’t as good as the first season was just too much to bear. So I said, ‘I think that we should take a little more time with this and just make sure it’s really good.’”
Look for more from our full interview with the “Yellowjackets” showrunners about the making of Season 1 on TheWrap soon.
