Yellowjackets Season Three Review

I was mixed on season two of Showtime’s Yellowjackets, which was hit or miss in its sophomore season after a strong debut. In my season two post mortem, I had a couple of hopes for the series’ third season – namely that the “modern” half of the series would tighten things up from a narrative angle, allowing the remaining Yellowjackets the chance to actually work together rather than spend their time siloed in their own individual arcs – and while there are some very promising pieces in the four episodes provided for critics, I’m still worried that Yellowjackets doesn’t have the focus and crisp storytelling this time around to keep things moving forward.

For starters, both the 1996 and present-day story arcs include minor time jumps to start off the season. Our teens aren’t slogging through the remainder of winter without their cabin shelter (which, you may recall, was burnt to the ground at the close of season two – with Coach Ben the suspected arsonist). Rather, they’ve survived and thrived in the time since we last saw them and it’s now the Summer Solstice. As for the adults, it’s been six weeks since Natalie’s death and everyone is coping about as well as you’d expect – in that none of them seem to care all that much about what happened at Lottie’s lake and they aren’t willing to even broach their emotions surrounding the loss of one of their crew (that is, if they even have any real emotional reaction – but more on that in a minute). The only person who appears to be actively working to suppress her deep pain? Well, that would be Misty, who was the one who actually killed Nat, and who saw her as her only true friend out of the survivors (a sentiment that wasn’t really shared by Nat, but when has that mattered to Misty).

But what does this all this mean for our characters? Well, it’s hard to say because most of them are still mired in the same place they were at the close of season two – even through the first four episodes. Teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse, still as strong as ever) remains angry and distant from the rest of the team, reacting violently to minor slights and continuing to write vitriolic screeds in her journal (a fun recap is presented in the season premiere, with Van and Shauna offering opposing takes on the actions of the girls thus far in the series, which also works as a fun recap for those who might have forgotten just what has happened in the past). Teen Nat (Sophie Thatcher, who has become a real standout on the series) is still the appointed leader of the girls, although she doesn’t appear to love the position – and she isn’t comfortable with the idea of enforcing her will on others (which one thinks might make her position precarious depending on just who might be able to sway some of the girls to their way of seeing things in the future).

And, perhaps most interestingly, four of the more “background” characters have really moved to the forefront this time around. Mari continues to feud with Shauna, Akilah has taken on the role of keeper of the menagerie (as the girls now have a store of live rabbits and ducks at their new camp), Gen has taken on the role of hunter from Nat, and Melissa is, well, I’m not quite sure what she does, but she is certainly getting closer with Shauna. Lottie and Travis are in their own story, building the foundational trust we saw in their adult counterparts in season two, as well as setting the stage for the dark path both are destined to walk as they grow up. As for Tai, Van, and Misty, well, they’re not really all that involved in much of the social climbing and seem to have found their groove in this new, much less dire living situation. Of course, we’ve seen the future and know that this house of cards is going to come crashing down eventually, but the cracks are there if you look even as you can enjoy the chance to see these characters mostly happy for the first time.*

*One thing that does stand out is the ways in which the characters have rationalized – or not – their actions throughout season two. How does one accept that they have eaten another person, even if it was for their personal survival? Well, for most of the characters, it seems that the answer is you don’t. Instead, you write off the act – letting Javi drown while trying to hunt down Nat and kill her – as a necessary act to appease the wilderness. Which is a hell of a choice, especially when it starts to become clear that perhaps more people than angry Shauna and checked out Travis aren’t as able to easily push their actions aside as they might believe.

The teen side of the story is, as it has been since the beginning, richer and more interesting on the whole than the adult’s half of the tale. But this time around, the modern-day arc at least has our characters interacting much more regularly and with some interesting combinations (you never knew how much fun Misty and Lottie could be together, trust me) so that the less compelling side of the story at least has some opportunities for character development. The downside is that, on the whole, our survivors don’t really grow that far beyond who they have been thus far. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey, still the lynchpin of the adult storyline) continues to act out as a stunted teenager trapped in an adult’s body – only this time, her actions have caused Callie to recognize that her mom can be manipulated in ways that can give Callie some answers of her own. And, in a strange turn of events, the writers have opted to simply hand-wave much of Tai’s story from season one (you know, the wife, son, election to the State Senate) away with a few lines, freeing her up to really dive fully into the Yellowjackets under pressure arc of her fellow survivors (and allow her to team up with Van without any real guilt or lingering plot threads) but without making it clear if Tai’s seeming disinterest in losing all of that part of her life is linked to something deeper in the character or just a tool to help the audience forget about those complications as well.

Once again, there’s some suspicious person stalking the surviving Yellowjackets, lingering in the dark and leaving mysterious items that insinuate that they know what they did out in the wilderness. Is there yet another survivor out there? Or is someone else aware of their story – from Travis or Nat or even Lottie? I’m not sure how many more times we can go to the “someone knows the truth and is trying to get the Yellowjackets to notice” well before we hit the point of diminishing returns, but without an outside threat, I suppose we’d just go round in circles around the “is the wilderness still trying to punish the survivors” question in perpetuity. And that’s my major issue with the series as a whole – the stakes within the adult storyline exist only so long as the characters choose to play into them. If they all truly just walked away and worked through their trauma, there wouldn’t be a show. But watching a group repeatedly refuse to address the central issues that they refuse to acknowledge doesn’t really work as a series either. So, the writers keep introducing outside threats to keep asking the characters to try and protect themselves. It’s fine, but I could already feel myself sighing at the thought of what was going to come in that arc (and boy do I hope the writers manage to surprise me this time around and not just rehash the same story with new players).

If you’re a fan of the series, there’s enough here to keep you invested (and I will say that Christina Ricci has some incredible work in the season premiere that will remind you that there’s more to Misty than others might see). But the unevenness between the two central arcs persists – and it seems that at this stage of the game, that’s more of a feature of the series than a bug. I’m still intrigued to see just what leads to the true start of the hunts – and just how far things breakdown amongst the teens as the season unfurls – while hoping that the adult side of the story gets stronger and more interesting. However, thus far, Yellowjackets season three is more of the same.

The third season of Yellowjackets premieres on Paramount+ on February 14 and regular Showtime on February 16. The first four episodes of the season were provided for review.