From the left: Jasmin Savoy Brown, Courtney Eaton, Sophie Nelisse, Alexa Barajas, Kevin Alves, Sophie Thatcher from Yellowjackets appear at Sao Paulo Expo in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Dec. 7, 2024.Miguel Schincariol/Getty Images
The biggest problem with Lost is that it left most viewers … well, lost. After an ambitious but solid first season that explored character backgrounds and raised questions about the island the survivors landed on, the hit 2000s show derailed into a spooky mess of new characters, unanswered questions and supernatural powers. To this day its finale remains one of the most controversial TV endings around.
Heading into Season 3 (which premiered Feb. 14 on Crave), Yellowjackets seems doomed to repeat its fellow survival drama’s mistakes. When the series premiered in 2021, it was fresh and feisty. Sure, the story of a plane crash stranding a female high-school soccer team in the Canadian wilderness had undertones of Alive and Lord of the Flies. But the series was deft in the way it handled young female relationships, rage, the loss of society and the exploration of how trauma can follow you into adulthood. There was also that killer 1990s soundtrack.
Structurally, the show made sense. The first season unrolled as an origins story of sorts, with each episode having a dual focus: past and present. In the past, the girls attempted to survive – finding water, building shelter et cetera. In the present, the now-grown women lived separate lives while hiding their past from an ever-inquiring public. They were trying to move forward, but didn’t know how.
The supernatural element was always there, but it could be justified. Starvation and stress explained the “Wilderness” character some of the girls began listening to. But when survivors started dying, the show took an even wilder turn.
Season 2 dove into themes that were only hinted at in the first, including graphic depictions of cannibalism and the devolution of remaining society. It also introduced seemingly random characters without any backstory and, in the present, the women reunited and fell into old patterns. In the past, the cabin they had discovered burned to the ground, charring the last anchor these girls had to the world they left behind when they boarded the plane that day.
Sophomore seasons are traditionally tricky to execute well, particularly when you’re trying to live up to a buzzy, Emmy-nominated debut. It’s the time to work out kinks, experiment and see whether a show has legs. A third season needs to even out if you want to retain viewers in the endless sea of streaming options. But rather than balancing the pace and digging into the elements that made Season 1 successful, Yellowjackets is doing the opposite and delving into the supernatural.
There was an opportunity to see how the girls in the past rebuilt after the loss of their shelter. Instead, the series skips forward to show the new society they have built. It’s an impressive set that isn’t quite plausible given how the group bickered in the past, or considering the beef between two of the members. How they got there is a story worth telling, and so far in the season there are no flashbacks that do so.
With the group supposedly thriving, the supernatural elements can no longer be explained away. That’s fine for fans of the genre, but it can also alienate those who enjoyed the ambiguity.
The supernatural also spills into the present with visions, unexplained events and random tragedies. There’s less of a time jump here as the story picks up days after Nat’s death (and Juliette Lewis’s previously confirmed departure). But instead of exploring how the women are coping with resurfaced trauma and losing one of their own after years of survival, the show treats everything as business as usual (with the exception of Christina Ricci’s Misty character). They carry on with their lives and problems, and none of the questions from that fateful night – how were they all able to walk away without any legal consequences or news coverage, for one – are really explained.
For Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) that means piecing her family back together, even as her daughter learns more about her world and deals with the generational trauma that stems from that. Meanwhile, there are hints of a stranger from the past as the show potentially adds yet another resurfaced character to the mix. But why now, after Lottie’s (Simone Kessell) reunion last season? That was the logical time for any remaining survivors to enter the chat, rather than relying on the same recurring storylines going forward.
As for Taissa (Tawny Cypress), all of the time writers spent building her present-day world was for nothing. Her son, wife and political career have all taken a backseat to spending time with Van (Lauren Ambrose) as she resubscribes to the Wilderness she fought so hard to keep out in the first place.
Then there’s Misty, who with the help of Walter (Elijah Wood) is finally realizing these women aren’t exactly her friends. It’s a stunted revelation that leads to a few comical moments, but it’s also a storyline that doesn’t add much to the overall plot.
While all four lead actors do plenty with the material given, Season 3 still spends too much time in the present and not enough in the past. When we are back in time the story focuses on a central event that takes too long to unfold while raising additional questions that may never be answered. The strength of Yellowjackets has always been in the way it depicted the past, so it’s a frustrating choice.
There’s still potential for the show to turn things around, and often with highly serialized series it takes a few episodes for a season to get going. Here’s hoping the middle and back half pick up, because despite the slew of viewing options these days, there aren’t enough shows that, like Yellowjackets, are so heavily invested in the dark side of flawed female characters. These women deserve better than a fate of smoke monsters and polar bears.