Yellowjackets Season 2 Review: Each Episode A Sequence Will Make You Dig Your Nails Into The Sofa
Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole
Director: Daisy von Scherler Maye
Streaming Platform: Showtime
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 5/5 (five stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Friday, March 24, Yellowjackets Season 2 came on the Showtime OTT platform, the successful horror and mystery drama series created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson (Narcos). The Showtime series Yellowjackets Season 2 premiered and left us with our mouths even more open. Those responsible seem to have taken the ominous phrase Lottie said in the season finale as a mantra and everything shows that “darkness has set them free”. In this installment, cannibalism ceases to be a promise much sooner than we imagined, they have accelerated the fall into the abyss of its young protagonists, and everything indicates that they have no brake. Yellowjackets caught us all by surprise at its premiere and on its return, it exceeds expectations. He quickly makes it clear to us that the most terrifying thing about this story is not that these teenagers have eaten one of their own to survive, because that Pandora’s box has already been opened in the first episodes, and now we can’t even imagine what they will do in the remaining months until their rescue arrives.
The series tells the story of the members of a youth women’s soccer team, who become the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash in the middle of nowhere. In this way, fiction narrates the complicated journey of this team until it becomes a wild clan. 25 years later, each of the survivors is still trying to rebuild her life. This shows that the past is never really past and that what started in that place is far from over. Who is dead in the well? What does the symbol mean? What will happen to Shauna’s baby? Hopefully, this new season will answer all the questions that were left in the air after the end of the previous installment. The series, which comes with a weekly episode premiere, stars Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci and Tawny Cypress playing the adult versions of the protagonists. On the other hand, Sophie Nelisse, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Cortney Eaton and Liv Hewson once again put themselves in the shoes of the adolescent versions. Additionally, along with the addition of Elijah Wood, this second season is joined by Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell as the adult Van and Lottie, respectively.
Yellowjackets Season 2 Review: The Story Plot
Last season had ended with a chilling ending (in every sense): the students of Wiskayok High School, stranded for a year and placed in the Canadian Rockies after a plane crash, had struggled to survive in that wild environment, some losing their reason, others their lives. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Misty (Christina Ricci), Taissa (Tawny Cypress), Natalie (Juliette Lewis), Lottie (Simone Kessell) and the others have stumbled upon something otherworldly in the woods, or maybe they just succumbed to a madness of group manifested through lysergic rites, cannibalism, betrayals, and collective delusions. The second year becomes more tortuous and ambiguous as it delves into the bonds and relationships between those who survived the plane crash in the 90s and their adult versions twenty-five years later. None came out unscathed or completely sane: those experiences brought with them the aftermath of post-traumatic stress, paranoia, sociopathy, religious delusions, and the killer instinct.
Already during its first episodes, the second season answers the most trivial questions that the end of the first left us. However, the “whys” remain a mystery. Therefore, the beginning of the new installment replaces the lack of answers to its deepest mysteries with greater amounts of disturbing, spooky and supernatural moments. In this way, the acclaimed fiction returns with everything that characterized it, but it does so with levels of madness and savagery through the roof. At present, there are also several open fronts. On one side are Nat and Lottie, whom we see in these episodes not only as adults but also just after the rescue of the survivors in 1998, whose footage of landing on dry land we see for the first time.
On the other, Misty is following the trail of Nat’s disappearance; Taissa, newly elected senator, is increasingly losing control; and Shauna, who stars in a twisted sex scene with Jeff, has the police and her daughter on her heels after Adam’s disappearance. Christina Ricci’s Misty continues to give us the funniest moments, and Lottie intrigues us with her mysticism, but without a doubt, it’s the two equally disturbed versions of Shauna that continue to steal the show in both timelines of the series for their impulsive decisions that leave us more and more open-mouthed.
Yellowjackets Season 2 Review and Analysis
In these first four episodes, our protagonists face the wildest survival in the past, while in the present they continue to try to reconcile with themselves. Sometimes it seems that the writers can’t explain if the personalities of the adult protagonists are the result of the multiple traumas they suffered on the island or something else. It’s clear that Misty has always been like this, and that Shauna has never been a reliable person. However, as we can see in Taissa, Natalie and the adult Lottie, it seems that their problems are caused by a supernatural entity that they took from the place. Or maybe they were all like this from the beginning and what we see in the cabin is just the product of a group of teenagers who can live without rules? It seems that, on this occasion, not everything that happens in nature stays in nature. In this sense, the season also develops some characters whose story provides a more tragic and nuanced background to their stay in the cabin. We also meet new additions, such as the “detective” played by Elijah Wood who further elevates this fantasy cast in which Melanie Lynskey, to no one’s surprise, continues to be the MVP.
For now, this second season of Yellowjackets is really fun and addictive. All within its growing darkness and anguish, of course. And besides, beyond offering more sweets for horror fans, the series keeps its mystery intact and always interesting. However, the subplot of the present is nowhere near up to the task of its riotous and bloody past. It will be necessary to see if, in the remaining episodes, he manages to come back and, in the end, we are left with a more balanced delivery. Fortunately, its chaotic characters continue to be a delight.
By the time we return to the abandoned cabin where the team is camping, winter is upon us. The survival routine is well established, but the cold is relentless, and food is scarce. The coach’s son, Javi (Luciano Leroux), is missing, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is pregnant, and Jackie (Ella Purnell) froze to death, but she has not yet been buried due to the frozen ground. The narrative focus of the season is Lottie (Courtney Eaton), whose visions breed fanaticism, create factions and alienate the most skeptical. The suggestion allows natural events to be interpreted in a mystical key; it is impossible to understand whether a rational explanation is really applicable, if the girls are possessed by an evil entity of the woods, or if the actions of animal cruelty they are guilty of come from themselves. Even Lottie is seized by uncertainty, yet that brutal mysticism seems to be the only one able to give the survivors the psychological strength to get through the winter: you need something to believe in, even if it is a primordial cult.
The second year introduces the adult versions of some characters hitherto known only in flashbacks, which go alongside Shauna, Misty and the others in the present. These are still ambiguous and sinister and are willing to do anything to protect the secret of their past cannibals. The new episodes delve further into the heart of the story, alternating past visions of widespread and disturbing symbolism, of tribal and ancestral violence with the less suggestive, more real ones of the present, which sees the small group of survivors reconstitute themselves. Lynskey and Ricci also seem to prefer the past; or rather, the references to the 90s scattered throughout the flashbacks, and the same goes for the part of the audience that age-identifies with them. For those, Yellowjackets also have a nostalgic quality.
Yellowjackets Season 2 Review: The Last Words
Although questions continue to be raised and mysteries accentuated in the supernatural part of the story, in the first episodes we are given several answers that in other series would have remained unresolved until much later, especially considering that Yellowjackets has already been renewed. If we have to guide ourselves through the initial stretch, things have to go very badly so that in its second season the series does not exceed the level of the first. And what’s more, it’s more addictive, because those responsible have perfected the art of the cliffhanger and reserve for the last minutes of each episode a sequence of images that will make you dig your nails into the sofa.
