Sophie Nélisse in Yellowjackets. photo credit: Showtime.
This post contains spoilers for the entirety of Yellowjackets.
The Yellowjackets S3 tagline on Paramount+ reads, “summer arrives, but the women must confront a chilling question.” I still don’t know what this means. Summer does arrive in the show’s 90s wilderness timeline, where the “chilling question” could be the fate of Coach Ben. By the time that confrontation arrives in S3E6, “Thanksgiving (Canada),”nothing about it feels chilling. Maybe the question is whether to leave the wilderness when the opportunity presents itself, which is answered with a resounding “no” in S3E8, “A Normal. Boring Life” by Taissa, Shauna and Lottie. Then again, summer does arrive in the adult timeline, based on everyone’s outfits and the fact that it’s not snowing after an undisclosed time jump. Shauna’s teenage daughter Lottie seeks answers that may be chilling in the present, but the audience is left begging for scraps until the final episode, which turns on an anomalous flashback to a piece of paper slipping from an envelope in the season’s first episode, “It Girl.” Maybe the chilling question is “what the hell is this lukewarm S1 Jersey murder mystery retread?”
Parsing that bit of marketing copy sums up my attitude toward my once (and hopefully future) favorite cable horrorshow. At its heart, storytelling is sleight of hand—the strategic revelation of information in forms familiar and novel. In the space of three seasons, Yellowjackets has devolved from an elegant mystery box to a grubby little shell game, and I'm no longer confident that there's a prize. Part of the show’s charm derives from toggling between life or death stakes and mordant humor in both timelines, but this season’s tone veered way out of whack as the show abandoned carefully laid character development and plot seedlings sowed in its uneven but still successful S2.
The floundering adult timeline could be a result of Adult Natalie’s death and Juliette Lewis’ exit from the series, but that doesn’t explain the baffling creative choices made in the teens’ timeline. Why was Travis was reduced to a footnote and an unexplained episode title punchline for most of S3? Why would Akilah abandon her dreams of reuniting with her sister and nephew to throw in with Lottie and her cave fumes-huffing road to nowhere? What was Melissa’s entire deal? Shauna’s “holy shit, you actually have a personality” comment in the premiere only works if Melissa does, in fact, have a personality. I still have no idea what motivates Teen Melissa, or why, after Shauna mean mugs everyone into murdering Coach Ben, she intones “feel that? That’s power.” I’m down for a pubescent Lady Macbeth vibe, it’s just not what we got.
There are no revelations of why or even how the teens develop their wilderness ritual behaviors—when did they start donning costumes to hunt? When do they coin the sacrifice/gift language we hear Taissa invoke in the adult timeline? When did they set the rules for the hunt Lottie invoked at the end of S2? There are only a handful of months left for the team in the wilderness, so we know almost everyone who’s still alive in the woods is dead in the present. It’s frustrating to lose both Adult Lottie and Adult Van when so much of whatever theology was guiding their choices in the present hasn’t been explained in either timeline. Taissa and Misty may have finally stumbled upon satisfying character motivations as they unite to take Shauna down (or at least stop her from stabbing everyone in her path), but it’s come at the cost of their prior characterizations. Introducing a new adult survivor played by Hilary Swank ought to be a shot in the arm for that timeline, but it’s hard to feel optimistic about Adult Melissa’s arc considering the way Elijah Wood’s Walter Tattersall has been left to function as a DNA/helicopter ex machina after a strong debut in S2.
At this point, it’s clear that the showrunners and I disagree on what made the show so addictive and exciting in its first (and parts of its second) season. I keep coming back for the cannibalism, the gay shit, and the sharply observed exploration of all the ways character can be fixed in adolescence, with assured direction from real-deal horror directors like Karyn Kusama. As the show has pushed toward its conclusion, it’s lost its horror bona fides, relying more heavily on its showrunners and yeoman tv directors behind the camera, and that’s meant diminishing returns from a show that used to deliver on both jump scares and body horror, making me think twice about walking to the bathroom in the dark after watching. Yellowjackets hasn’t yet been renewed for a fourth season, and I have to wonder if it’s more an issue with the talent coming to similar conclusions about its quality, especially given its series best viewing numbers for the S3 finale. The show is reaching and apparently working for more viewers than ever, but the women playing the adult characters (and Liv Hewson, emboldened by their partnership with Lauren Ambrose) have been unusually outspoken about how unearned they felt certain character deaths were, which is surprising for actors of their stature. These are seasoned professionals questioning the creative direction of the show, despite a history of toeing the party line and trying to rein in Juliette Lewis after spicy remarks at Vulture Fest following S1.
In the penultimate episode of S3, Adult Melissa asks Adult Shauna (played by series GOAT and MVP Melanie Lynskey), “why are you like this?” Shauna spits back: “It should be obvious by now.” In a stunning reversal of traditional dramatic irony, it’s really not. I love a mindfuck as much as the next person, but Yellowjackets increasingly feels like someone failing to unhook my bra and then just slicing through the band with a pair of scissors—or a hunting knife. The show’s multiple timelines need to be elastic enough to absorb narrative or production ripples in all directions while ensuring the inflection point where everything comes together will be satisfying. In its third season,Yellowjackets played chicken, attempting to recapture the raw shocks of its premiere while introducing too many new things no one cared about and resolving too few questions in a way that felt earned. I’m saying my prayers to the dirt that the powers that be at Yellowjackets and Showtime can pull out of this nosedive and get back to the bloody basics in S4.
