Yellowjackets: Why See the New Cult Series on Showtime! From the Intriguing Plot to The Excellent
After watching Yellowjackets, the last episode of which was aired on Showtime on January 16, 2021, we ask ourselves once again why not everyone – from TV series lovers who usually enliven the debate on their social platforms up to even the occasional viewer – talking more about this series, which in our case kept us glued to the screen in a long binge-watching session. On the contrary, we wonder why other titles (both on the small and big screen) are causing the public to chatter when, finally, we have the series created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson available in full on Showtime.
Yellowjackets: Why See the New Cult Series
Perhaps little publicized and encouraged here, but not even at home did we expect the success that this drama – only partly adolescent – with extremely dark hues, which moves from thriller to horror (without disdaining decidedly lighter and more entertaining moments) he would have gotten. In our opinion Yellowjackets is truly one of the most successful series of the last period and we can’t wait to continue this story with the second season already confirmed (we are even talking about a total of five seasons, but the question of whether a story like this can be carried on for so long will be asked later). In the article that follows we set out to explore why Yellowjackets is a real must-watch, an unmissable product capable of uniting and involving different types of audiences: this is why seeing this new cult series.
An Engaging and Enthralling Storyline
The intuition – in our opinion extremely successful – at the basis of this series is to combine atmospheres and storylines a la Lost with those of a classic of literature such as Lord of the Flies, however making most of the protagonists female and – if already that wasn’t enough – splitting the narrative on two different timelines: the period of survival of a group of girls in the wild Canadian forests after a plane crash, and that of “then”, when, more than twenty years later, they find themselves making come to terms with what – truly terrible – has happened. The “survivors” will have to contend with the traumas they carry with them, with the secrets they can’t afford to reveal, and with a series of still unsolved mysteries, which seem to come back to haunt them.
Stephen King said he particularly loved this show. On the other hand, we too have repeatedly returned to the pages of his books while watching them: the richness and originality of the Maine writer’s stories find their strength, exactly as happens for Yellowjackets, in the deepening and characterization of the characters, capable of being credible, fascinating and consistent with themselves from the first to the last page, from the first to the last minute of viewing.
The Cast and Multidimensional Characters
The strong point of this series is its protagonists, both as teenagers (at the time when the tragedy occurs) and twenty years later. If as adults – in the cast we have Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci, all sensational in their various roles – it is not surprising to find them as multidimensional, multifaceted characters, full of flaws but at the same time fascinating (television series has accustomed us to women of this type, an example can be the character of Kate Winslet in the recent Murder in Easttown), it is the way the protagonists are portrayed as teenagers that makes us understand how this series is capable of distinguishing itself from a writing point of view.
The “Yellowjackets”, i.e. the members of a school soccer team traveling for the national championships, crash into the Canadian forests, far from civilization and completely isolated. The only men to survive the impact are one of their coaches (badly injured and maimed), the other coach’s teenage son, and his little brother. It is therefore the girls who have to get food, find shelter, and look for natural remedies to heal their wounds. They are the ones who are forced to find an unexpected strength to survive: some make it, and others find themselves crushed by a situation they never thought they’d have to face.
Forcing a group of adolescents so different from each other to live together for a long time is functional to staging different types of human relationships, to study and deepen relationships in their greatest beauty – compassion, camaraderie, absolute altruism – but also in the lowest and most reprehensible moments, made up of envies, jealousies and obsessions, giving life to a narration capable of being incredibly fascinating and engaging. In these characters – in their being so “real” and with whom it is so easy to empathize – we find a little bit of ourselves, even though fortunately we have never experienced such an extreme situation.
In Yellowjackets we get to know a group of teenagers as they are: smart, funny, loving and resourceful, but also opportunistic, selfish and almost repulsive at times. Exactly how we felt too, in that period of our lives when every emotion resonated stronger than ever. Among them, the five protagonists struck us: Sophie Nélisse, who plays Shauna who will also play Melanie Lynskey, Jasmin Savoy Brown (recently seen in the new Scream) in the role of Taissa, Sophie Thatcher, in the part of Natalie, who will by Juliette Lewis, and Sammi Hanratty, who shares the role of Misty with Christina Ricci.
Among them we have the typical “geek”, quiet and introverted, the ambitious champion with an important future ahead of her, the one considered no good but with a difficult past behind her and then the outsider, the one who in “real” life was bullied and which is now proving to be an indispensable resource. Finally, we also know Jackie (played by Ella Purnell), the most popular girl in school, the “queen bee” who – in a completely different social context – no longer finds herself. Each of them hides completely unexpected facets, secrets and sides of themselves.
One Mystery After Another
We apologize for the little spoiler, but we want to describe the opening scene of the series: a girl in her underwear is chased through the snow, only to fall into a death trap where she finds her end. She recovered her body, a masked figure, covered with animal skins and whose faces are hidden by scary masks. In a disturbing ritual scene, the body of the murdered girl will first be bled to death, then cooked and consumed by those present, in a moment full of terror and mysticism.
The mystery about the identity of the girl sacrificed in the first minutes of Yellowjackets will accompany us for the entire duration of the series, composed in this first season of ten episodes. To this “Main” mystery that she answers the question, which is repeated over and over again, “What happened down there?” many others will then go on to add, capable of keeping the viewer glued to the screen: which of the girls we do not meet right away has survived (we are told that there are others, but that they are hiding and have changed their names)? Who is it that haunts the protagonists with cryptic messages? What is happening to Taissa and who is the mysterious woman that her son keeps seeing from the window? Who is the instigator of the murder that will upset the characters in the third episode?
A story built to continually arouse the viewer’s curiosity, suitable both for binge-watching (we must admit that we are among those who have seen as many episodes as possible in a row) and for weekly fruition, sipping twists and emotions, to have time to share interpretations and formulate hypotheses. The use of flashbacks and flashforwards is perfectly functional to always keep the suspense high, leading us to change our minds over and over again about the direction that the story can take: we are immediately told that the girls will “barbarize” and resort to cannibalism, but it is to find out how this in the end happens, by putting together clues episode after episode, to transform the series into such an interesting product (leaving a small glimmer of space open to the supernatural, then, makes everything even more intriguing).
We conclude by underlining how Yellowjackets is capable of giving life on the screen to a very particular blend of drama, thriller, suspense, and horror, thus creating a fascinating story of friendship, love, anger, desire, mysticism, the spirit of self-preservation and at the same time of self-destruction. If we combine all this with the mysteries that the narration is capable of evoking and with the excellent cast that takes part in it (both adult and younger actors), there is no doubt that Lyle and Nickerson is one of the best series TV of the last period. A probable future cult not to be missed.
