This story has been updated with new details and republished.
The exact appeal of Showtime’s Yellowjackets is tricky to pin down. What kept five million viewers coming back to the decade-spanning psychodrama week after week? Was it the canny treatment of our current cannibalistic zeitgeist? The chaotic evil of Misty Quigley? That impeccable time-jump casting? Between the 90s high school drama, creepy supernatural happenings and that killer soundtrack, season one of Yellowjackets had us tight in its blue-and-gold grip.
The season one finale, which aired at the beginning of the year, left us with a major character death (be warned, spoilers ahead!) and left us with more questions than answers about the mysterious cult that seems to be following our plane crash surviving protagonists about. With season two now in our lives, we’re finally starting to get an idea of where things are headed. But as the episodes rack up enviable Rotten Tomatoes scores, and the cast gathers further critical acclaim, the complications of making a groundbreaking queer drama become clearer.
Most recently, nonbinary actor Liv Hewson (who plays Van, a fan-favourite lesbian goalkeeper) spoke to Variety about feeling out of place during awards season, and electing to sit out of this year’s Emmys: “There’s not a place for me in the acting categories,” they said. “It would be inaccurate for me to submit myself as an actress. It neither makes sense for me to be lumped in with the boys. It’s quite straightforward and not that loaded. I can’t submit myself for this because there’s no space for me.”
Hopefully the Emmys will follow suit after the Gotham Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards and even the Grammys have stopped defining their categories by gender. Wake up people, it’s 2023!
With new characters, new betrayals and much more gore, there’s no reason Yellowjackets shouldn’t be sweeping every awards category available. From trailers to plot points and first-look reviews, here’s everything we know about season 2.
What can we expect to see from season two’s plot?
A number of our stranded soccer players were last seen in the middle of a bloody ritual involving a bear’s heart, but Sophie Nélisse’s Shauna is still reeling from her best friend Jackie’s tragic death. Played by Ella Purnell, the character met her untimely demise as she fell asleep in the cold outside, a choice she essentially made because of a fight with Shauna.
“We are definitely revisiting the winter storyline,” says co-creator Ashley Lyle. “We’ve been calling season two, ‘The Winter of Their Discontent,’” a nod to John Steinbeck’s book of the same name, as well as a line from Shakespeare’s Richard III. It sounds dark and cold and grim and we’re so very here for it.
“We are watching the emergence of a religiosity in ’96 and seeing the ramifications of that and the rebirth of that in the present day,” co-creator Bart Nickerson told Deadline. “I think that that kind of trajectory will continue to hopefully keep the show — you don’t have to completely start from scratch each season. Hopefully, this sort of tone and the feel of the show will continue to become fuller and more itself.”
When did production start?
Not long after season one aired, showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson said they were “in the writing process” with their staff and were “just getting started on the actual scripts,” though they’ve all been brainstorming “for several months now”. Deadline reported that production of the second season would begin in Vancouver in late August.
But the requirements (and costs) of filming dreary winter scenes in sunny British Columbia can stack up quickly. “We’re starting those production conversations and we have some really amazing and creative people on our team,” Ashley shared with Variety earlier this year, adding that everyone “will have to get very creative on the production front,” and for viewers to expect some “movie magic at play”.
Who will return from the original cast?
Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress, and Melanie Lynskey are all set to reprise their roles in the second season. Their teen counterparts, played by Sammi Hanratty, Sophie Thatcher, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Sophie Nélisse are also slated to return. Liv Hewson, who’s character Van narrowly survived season one albeit with a bear-mauled face, will also be returning and has been promoted to series regular.
We’re also likely to see more Courtney Eaton, who plays Lottie, after the finale’s reveal of her potential involvement in Travis’ murder, and maybe even some Ella Purnell – yes, Jackie is dead, but there are always flashbacks!
Are there any new additions to the Yellowjackets cast?
One of the new stars joining the show is Elijah Wood, the American actor known best for The Lord of the Rings franchise. In it, he’ll play Detective Walter, who will no doubt be investigating the murders and beheaded dogs in the present. In a new image, we get a first look at Elijah’s character and Misty together.
Furthermore, not only will we see more of teen Van in the new season, it seems adult Van is still kicking about and will be coming back to create some drama with Tawny Cypress’ Tassia, Van’s former wilderness lover. Playing her adult counterpart is Lauren Ambrose, an Emmy-nominated actress currently starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological horror series Servant. Like Liv Hewson, Lauren will also be a series regular for the next season.
New Zealand actress Simone Kessell will also be joining the cast as adult Lottie, finally putting a face to the terrifying cult leader behind a number of the first season’s strange and violent events. There are also new characters who, currently, only exist within one of the time periods.
Then there’s Nuha Jes Izman in her debut acting role as Crystal, a member of the football squad and the school thespian who questionably, and perhaps regrettably, decides to bond with Misty. We assume that the second season will contain flashbacks to the girls’ school days pre-crash-landing-in-the-Canadian-wilderness, since we didn’t see Crystal on the plane or as one of the survivors. What stopped her from joining the football team on their international match?
Is there a trailer for season 2 of Yellowjackets?
There’s a little one! The brief, quarter-of-a-minute clip flashes through creepy scenes in a snow-covered forest: blades carving into wood and flesh, a hand tracing a mysterious symbol into some condensation, and ‘I <3 U’ written on someone’s arm in blood. Harrowing!
When was it released?
The show returned for its second season in March 2023, with episodes released weekly until the finale, which according to a schedule shared by Esquire, is due to air 21 May.
What are the reviews saying?
The first five episodes of the new season have received a critical consensus of 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, based off of 21 reviews. “Yellowjackets unfurls the grotesque mysteries it taunted in Season 1, making Season 2 even better than its buzzy predecessor,” wrote Inverse, while Screen Rant described the new season as “mean, blackly humorous, and brutal as ever”, saying “there’s nothing else like it.” Many reviews suggested that the timeline has been slowed down a lot in comparison to season one but that makes it no less captivating, largely due to phenomenal performances from the cast. It seems it is no less gruesome too, with Slashfilm summing it up best: “Like season 1, but more f***** up.”
What’s all this about five seasons?
Ahead of the show’s season two premiere, Yellowjackets got given the green light for a third round of episodes. According to Deadline, this latest renewal came exactly one year apart from the announcement for season two – a “practical” decision apparently tied to “the yearly deadline for picking up the cast’s options.” What’s more, we should hopefully have much more Yellowjackets on the way. According to star Jasmine Savoy-Brown, the showrunners have a five-season story arc planned. Waiting three seasons to find out what really happened to the girls in the Canadian wilderness may be hard, but we’ll take it, if nothing else for more Christina Ricci acting unhinged.