‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 is Even Darker and Bloodier

By the time Yellowjackets finished its 10-episode first season in the cold winter of January 2022, the show had become an unexpected global phenomenon. What began as a small Showtime original series exploded into the cultural conversation, saturating everyone’s weekly watchlists thanks to the internet word of mouth. And it was easy to see why viewers became hooked.

Yellowjackets was an undeniable original in a sea of televised remakes and reboots. That alone was enough to pique viewers’ interest. But the show’s bold dissection of teenage hierarchies— seen through the eyes of a team of high school soccer champions whose plane crash lands in the Canadian wilderness—was also an incisive, sharp new take on teen dramas made for adults. Throw in a stacked core cast with Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey, and Juliette Lewis playing the older counterparts of four players as the show jumps through time, and it’s no wonder audiences were attracted to Yellowjackets like flies to honey.

But there’s an unfortunate consequence that can come into play when shows become bigger than themselves—especially for semi-supernatural dramas with such ambitious plotting, like Yellowjackets. The fan attention the series received sparked an early second season renewal after only half of the first season’s episodes had aired. Though co-creators and writers Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson had reportedly pitched the series with a five-season arc, there’s no telling what kind of pressure having millions of people waiting with bated breath for a second season can do to a show, even one with such a stellar episode-to-episode track record.

Read more at The Daily Beast.