Yellowjackets

Premise

In 1996, a high school girls' soccer team from fictional Wiskayok, New Jersey, travels to Seattle for a national championship tournament. While flying over Canada, their plane crashes deep in the wilderness, and the surviving team members are left stranded for nineteen months. The series chronicles their attempts to stay alive as some of the team members are driven to cannibalism. It also focuses on the lives of the survivors 25 years later in 2021, as the events of their ordeal continue to affect them many years after their rescue.

Cast and characters

Main

Melanie Lynskey and Sophie Nélisse as the adult and teenage Shauna Sadecki, née Shipman, a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Tawny Cypress and Jasmin Savoy Brown as the adult and teenage Taissa Turner, a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Ella Purnell as Jackie Taylor (season 1; guest season 2; recurring season 3), the captain of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Christina Ricci and Samantha Hanratty as the adult and teenage Misty Quigley, the equipment manager of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Juliette Lewis (seasons 1–2) and Sophie Thatcher as the adult and teenage Natalie Scatorccio, a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Simone Kessell (seasons 2–3) and Courtney Eaton (seasons 2–4; recurring season 1) as the adult and teenage Charlotte "Lottie" Matthews, a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Lauren Ambrose (seasons 2–3) and Liv Hewson (seasons 2–4; recurring season 1) as the adult and teenage Vanessa "Van" Palmer, a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Steven Krueger as Ben Scott (seasons 1–3), the soccer team's assistant coach.

Warren Kole as the adult Jeff Sadecki, Jackie's boyfriend and Shauna's husband.

Jack DePew and Owen Gates portray teenage versions of Jeff as guests in seasons 1 and 2, respectively.

Kevin Alves (seasons 2–4; recurring season 1) as the teenage Travis Martinez, Coach Martinez's eldest son and Javi's brother.

Recurring

Jane Widdop as Laura Lee (season 1; guest season 2), a Christian member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Alexa Barajas as Mari Ibarra (seasons 1–3), a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Rekha Sharma as Jessica Roberts (season 1), a reporter investigating the survivors of the plane crash.

Rukiya Bernard as Simone Abara, Taissa's wife and Sammy's mother.

Luciano Leroux as Javi Martinez (seasons 1–2), Coach Martinez's youngest son and Travis's brother.

Aiden Stoxx as Sammy Abara-Turner, Taissa and Simone's son.

Mya Lowe (seasons 1–2) and Vanessa Prasad (season 3) as Gen, a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Peter Gadiot as Adam Martin (season 1), an artist who has an affair with Shauna.

Alex Wyndham (seasons 1–2) as the adult Kevyn Tan.

Charlie Wright and Sean Martin Savoy portray teenage versions of Kevyn as guests in seasons 1.

Nicole Maines as Lisa (season 2–present), a follower of Lottie's.

Nuha Jes Izman as Crystal (season 2), a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

Elijah Wood as Walter Tattersall (season 2–present), a citizen detective who tries to help Misty.

John Reynolds as Jay / Matt Saracusa (season 2), an undercover detective.

Guest

Gabrielle Rose as Mrs. Taylor (season 1), Jackie's mother.

Carlos Sanz as Coach Bill Martinez (season 1), the head coach of the Yellowjackets soccer team and Travis and Javi's father.

Tonya Cornelisse and Pearl Amanda Dickson as the adult and teenage versions of Allie Stevens (season 1), a member of the Yellowjackets soccer team.

John Cameron Mitchell as Caligula (season 2), the human personification of Misty's pet parrot.

Nelson Franklin as Edwin (season 3), a frog scientist.

Joel McHale as Kodiak (season 3), a wilderness guide hired by Edwin and Hannah.

Episodes

Production

Development

Series co-creators and co-showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, who are married, came up with the premise of the story after they talked about the 1993 film Alive, an adaptation of the book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974) which documents the 1972 Andes flight disaster. They are both fascinated by the story of the Uruguayan team and the Donner Party, which served as a "jumping-off point" for their concept. Nickerson introduced the notion of a "what if?" and they expanded upon that, discussing various ideas about characters and story. They were working on the pitch for the story in 2017 when they read a report on a "gender swapped" film adaptation of the 1954 novel Lord of the Flies being developed and found that the reaction comments were "brutal, but in a way that I thought was just deeply incorrect", Lyle said; people rejected the idea that young girls could descend into the same barbarism as young boys, which "just added fuel to our fire, really, because we just thought we can prove [that notion] wrong".

Lyle and Nickerson's concept was a "metaphor for teenage hierarchy", wanting "to tell what felt like a very real story about teenage girls" and explore "the best and worst that human beings are capable of". Lyle said that girls "learn early on how to make people like [them] and what the social hierarchies are. It's a more interesting way of having things fall away. ... It's a more layered amount of preconceived notions of how to behave and act." They wanted the title of the show to be the name of the girls' team, and chose Yellowjackets after it came up on a Google search for sports team names, finding it a "perfect fit thematically" as yellowjackets are "very dependent on a queen and the dynamics of the hive are very specific ... it's a small creature with a large sting."

Lyle and Nickerson pitched the series with a 35-minute presentation to 16–17 networks. They received offers from five. They made a five-season pitch, not with the intent of needing exactly five seasons but to show "how expansive the show and the idea can be", that it was a multi-season story, it was "something that can sort of reinvent itself and change and shift", and that they knew what they wanted it to be and where it was going. Lyle said that a number of networks stated that it was a "big swing of an idea" with no IP attached. A challenge they faced when pitching was networks being "aware of their brands" and tending to place shows with teenage protagonists into a young adult box. Some networks saw the show differently from their concept. "Shows about teenagers or that feature teenagers with ambitions to be something other than a classic YA show tend to frighten people a little bit", Lyle noted. "They aren't something with a long track record."

Casting

The pilot episode was not written with any actresses in mind, and auditions were held in Los Angeles. "We decided pretty early on we weren't going to get overly focused on a physical match," Lyle mentioned. As a result, some cast members had to dye their hair and wear contact lenses to match the physical characteristics of their counterparts. Melanie Lynskey was the first person to join the cast. Lyle said the role of Shauna was "the trickiest to cast" because they "wanted to find an actress who could embody somebody who is really trying to figure out who they are, which is kind of a tricky internal thing to express through her acting". Lynskey questioned the showrunners and extracted as much information as she could about her character's past and the long-term storyline to improve her performance. For the role of Natalie, Nickerson said they searched for "someone who was really free-spirited and unique who could play both a sort of wildness and a vulnerability". Though most of the auditions were held in person, Sophie Thatcher submitted a self-recorded audition tape and was cast as Natalie before Juliette Lewis, who portrays the character's adult counterpart. When asked if the group's survival would depend on their gender, Thatcher replied, "I think naturally, especially at such a young age, women are more emotionally intelligent. So to turn into that cannibalistic mindset ... it maybe took them longer just because I think women are smarter than men. But I think that's it. Besides that, there's no difference. They're going to go batshit crazy."

Nickerson said it was vital to find two actresses who could portray Misty with "a deep kind of humanity that could make it feel lived in and real"; the role was eventually given to Sammi Hanratty and Christina Ricci. On joining the cast, Hanratty said she originally auditioned for the role of Natalie before being brought back four times to audition for the role of Misty: "I'm not gonna lie, I was so crushed [when I didn't get Natalie] because I loved the project. They said they would keep me in mind. Then, I think it was about a week later that I got the audition for Misty, which was so exciting. Because I was like, 'Oh, this girl is interesting as can be." To give her another chance, Lyle and Nickerson wrote a scene specifically for the casting process in which Misty confronts a teacher over cheating. After Hanratty was brought back, Lyle said "It was immediate. As soon as she read that scene for us, we said, 'OK, she is Misty.'" Hanratty described the auditions as being "really intense". She did not meet any of her co-stars until the table read for the pilot. When asked if she was treated differently when in costume, she added, "I don't think we've talked about this, but I was seeing a therapist while I was in Canada, and that was something that we discussed. I was definitely treated differently ... I got more self-conscious, and my walk even changed a bit. I just felt like a bigger target, you know, as a person."

Filming

The pilot was greenlit in September 2019 and shot in Los Angeles in November. According to location manager Jimmie Lee, several scenes from the pilot were filmed on top of the ski slopes on Mammoth Mountain. A number of scenes set in the high school were filmed in and around John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. In the pilot's opening scene, a flash-forward shows a group covered in fur clothing. Hanratty was the only cast member present while the scene was shot and the other characters were played by stunt coordinators. Hanratty says the writers have not told the cast which characters appear in that scene: "We all have our theories on who that is too, and we have a group chat in our cast where we try to come up with theories ourselves of what's going on and who we think is who."

In December 2020, Showtime gave Yellowjackets a series order. Filming restarted in Vancouver on May 10, 2021, and concluded in October, with the young and older cast taking weekly turns to shoot their scenes. Aside from Vancouver, other filming locations included the Panther Paintball & Airsoft Sports Park in Surrey, which was used as the site of the plane crash, and The Bridge Studios in Burnaby. The plane crash scene took two days to shoot. In an interview, Lynskey said Cypress, Ricci, and Lewis stood up for her after she was body shamed by a crew member, with Lewis writing a letter to the producers on her behalf. In November 2021, Purnell summarized the timeline of the production: "Here's how it went; we shot the pilot, we took like a year and a half off in COVID and then we went to Canada and shot the whole season in six months. We were in this super intense immersive bubble. We wrapped three weeks ago and now I'm doing a press junket. It's been crazy."

Filming for the second season began in August 2022, with the first episode directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer. In early February 2023, the cast of the 1990s timeline of the series completed filming their scenes.

Filming for season three started on May 14, 2024, after having been delayed because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Co-showrunners Bart Nickerson and Jonathan Lisco made their directorial debuts this season, with Nickerson helming the premiere and Lisco episode three.

Filming for the fourth and final season began on March 2, 2026.

Music

The music for the pilot was composed by Theodore Shapiro. The rest of the first season was scored by Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker, members of the rock bands Shudder to Think and That Dog, respectively. Wedren was invited to the series by Kusama after the series was picked up and Shapiro was unable to return. The main theme song, "No Return", was written and performed by Wedren and Waronker, who said they "aimed to channel our off-kilter '90s roots into something that felt like 'then', but could only have been made now, just like the show". Lyle and Nickerson were initially hesitant with the idea of featuring a theme song due to their growing rarity in the mainstream but were eventually convinced otherwise. "Mother Mother" by Tracy Bonham was used as the temp music for the theme, which first appears in episode three and features the sounds of a Farfisa organ. According to Wedren, "The producers really, really encouraged us to go out on multiple limbs and really be experimental and try stuff, which is such a rare direction to get". Lakeshore Records made "No Return" available to stream and download on January 6, 2022. A soundtrack album was also released on Spotify. On March 9, 2023, Florence and the Machine released a cover of No Doubt's "Just a Girl" as a single to promote the second season. The fourth, seventh and ninth episodes of the second season featured a cover of the show's theme song by Alanis Morissette, which was released as a single on April 14, 2023.

Release

A premiere for the series was held on November 10, 2021, at the Hollywood Legion Post 43 in Los Angeles. Yellowjackets debuted on Showtime on November 14. The second season premiered on March 26, 2023, and the episodes became available two days earlier to stream for Showtime subscribers. In November 2024, it was announced that the third season would premiere on February 14, 2025 for Paramount+ subscribers with the Paramount+ with Showtime plan, before making its air debut on Showtime two days later. The fourth and the final season is set to premiere on November 20, 2026 for subscribers with the Paramount+ Premium plan, before making its air debut on Showtime two days later.

The first season was released on DVD and manufactured-on-demand Blu-ray on July 19, 2022. The second season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 10, 2023. The third season is set to be released on DVD on November 3, 2026.

Reception

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 77 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "A genre mashup that blends smoothly, Yellowjackets presents an absorbing mystery with plenty of sting." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 78 out of 100 based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

The first six out of ten episodes of the first season were given to critics to review ahead of the series premiere. Entertainment Weekly's Kristen Baldwin graded the show with a B+ and gave praise to the performances and its story:

Yellowjackets maintains an intriguing tonal balance in early episodes. The survival timeline is pure horror, all steadily increasing dread and glimpses of grotesque violence. It helps that the flashback cast is strong enough to carry an entire drama on their own; standouts Brown, Thatcher, and Nélisse are particularly adept at delivering performances that feel distinct and yet authentically echo the personas of their adult counterparts.

Candice Frederick from TheWrap found the storyline to be a bit complicated:

Yellowjackets can feel tiresome with the sheer frequency of all those flashbacks, and the fact that it dabbles in too many genres when it could settle on its solid mystery thriller elements. But when it commits to its chilling suspense, the show is utterly fascinating to watch. Even more, it finds compelling ways to explore issues like trauma and the façades we build for ourselves that carry from youth through adulthood—elevating what would otherwise be a much flatter genre piece.

Writing for Rolling Stone, Alan Sepinwall gave the series three stars and a half out of four and described it as a combination of Lord of the Flies, It, Lost, Alone, and the works of Megan Abbott. Sepinwall added that "many of its influences already overlap, and thus work together well. The ones that don't can at times combine to create something that feels new and potent, but at others make it feel like the stew could have done with fewer ingredients."

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 171 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.15/10. The website's consensus reads: "Having already made a startling first impression, Yellowjackets coils itself in a second season preparing for the long haul—thankfully, its superb performances and mesmeric ambience are fine substitutes for fast answers." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 77 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Ratings

Yellowjackets is the second-most streamed series in Showtime's history behind Dexter: New Blood. According to Showtime, the penultimate episode of the first season was watched by 1.41 million viewers across all platforms, while the season finale (the first episode to not air after an episode of Dexter: New Blood) brought 1.3 million viewers across all platforms. Yellowjackets averaged more than 5 million weekly viewers, the highest for a freshman series on the network since Billions in 2016. In January 2022, Vulture's Alison Willmore and Kathryn VanArendonk discussed Showtime's decision to release episodes weekly instead of launching the entire season on the same day, noting the positive word-of-mouth and time given to a viewer to theorize: "In an era when shows and movies seem to barely manage to break through before being pushed aside by whatever's new, and when Netflix is so dominant that other platforms have to really fight for attention at all, Yellowjackets has sustained a conversation all while airing on Showtime."

The third season became the show's most-watched season yet. The season premiere garnered over two million viewers in its opening weekend, most of it from streaming, which is a 58% increase over the second season's premiere. The season finale drew three million cross-platform viewers in its first seven days, marking a 19% cross-platform increase and a 54% streaming increase from the season two finale, as well as the series' highest-viewed season finale yet.