May 7, 2025
Yellowjackets
Now that the highly anticipated season three has concluded, Yellowjackets (2021) is the perfect show to start for your next binge-watch. Yellowjackets follows a high school girls’ soccer team that crashes in the wilderness on their way to nationals. In a split timeline format, we watch the teens navigate a Lord of the Flies-style experience, facing the reality of being lost in the wilderness during the ‘90s. Through flash-forwards to 25-years later, we also see some of these characters forced back together when a mysterious postcard with their symbol from the wilderness is sent to each of them without a return address. Paranoia now running through them, they work together to figure out who knows the secrets they promised to keep about those dark 19 months.Right from the start, we get a cold open of one of the most iconic deaths in the show, immediately building anticipation and questions from the audience on who is “Pit Girl” and “Antler Queen.” Leaving fans itching for answers as they jump straight into the adult timeline that follows Shauna Sadecki (Melanie Lynskey), Taissa Turner (Tawny Cypress), Natalie Scatorccio (Juliette Lewis), and Misty Quigley (Christina Ricci), we learn that in these years back in society, Shauna is a stay-at-home mom who is secretly starting an affair, Taissa is running for state senator while struggling with the “other Tai” inside her, Misty is now a nurse, and Natalie is getting out of rehab again.
While the adult timeline continues to hide and preserve their secrets, the teen timeline allows us to slowly unravel what really happened out there. We watch as authority quickly shifts as Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) and team captain Jackie Taylor (Ella Purnell) lose their influence over the girls. As a new hierarchy begins to set in, Lottie Mathews (Courtney Eaton), who was originally fearful after running out of her psychological medication, begins to embrace this feeling and the idea that there’s a higher power at play out in those woods. As the others start to believe it too, their decisions are now left for the wilderness to decide.
The show also has insane needle-drop moments that bring you to both the edge of your seat and to tears. But without giving away anything else, I’ll leave you with a warning. If you start watching and begin to favor a specific character, don’t. Trust me: you’ll thank me later.
Available on Netflix and Showtime.