When it first arrived on our screens, it was clear that Yellowjackets was a knockout idea. It took a girls’ high school football team, crashed their plane in a mysterious wilderness, and teased viewers with their eventual descent into sacrifice and cannibalism. That, alone, would have sustained most shows. But Yellowjackets divided itself in two and added a retro twist. The wilderness, flesh-eating years were flashbacks to the 90s, while it added an outer coating of the survivors as they are now, in their 40s, still trying to cover up what they did when stranded. It had an outstandingly culty cast, including Juliette Lewis, Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci, and above all, it was a lot of fun.
But the second season faltered slightly and seemed unsure what to do with its own success. It lurched forward, but the plot became circular, and began to eat its own tail; whole episodes passed without shifting things in any significant direction. And then, with a typical flourish of excess, it set fire to the past and the future. In the wilderness, it burned down the cabin in the woods where the girls (and Travis) had been sheltering; in the present, it unexpectedly killed off one of its big-name leads. Yellowjackets may have taken its time to get there, but boy did it get there – and with panache to spare.
