The second season of the American thriller drama television series Yellowjackets premiered on Showtime on March 26, 2023. Series creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson serve as the showrunners for the season, alongside executive producer Jonathan Lisco. The series is centered on the teenage survivors of a 1996 plane crash in the wilderness. The narrative is set in dual timelines: the first follows the teens in the 1990s as they must learn to survive in the wild after the crash, while the second takes place 25 years later and focuses on the survivors' attempts to readjust after rescue and confront the truth about what they did to survive. The second season follows the teen Yellowjackets during their first winter as the adult Yellowjackets search for a missing Natalie and try to cover up Shauna's crime.
The ensemble cast includes Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Sammi Hanratty, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci, who all return from the previous season. Simone Kessell, Lauren Ambrose, and Elijah Wood joined the cast, while Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, and Kevin Alves were promoted to the main cast after featuring in recurring roles in the previous season.
In December 2021, during Yellowjackets first season, Showtime renewed the series. The second season consists of nine episodes. New episodes were made available to Showtime subscribers on its streaming service two days prior to the linear TV date. Though reviews were generally positive, with praise for the cast and characters, critics also voiced growing concerns about the mystery plot lines, pacing and character development.
Cast
Main Melanie Lynskey as Shauna Sadecki, née Shipman Sophie Nélisse as teen Shauna Tawny Cypress as Taissa Turner Jasmin Savoy Brown as teen Taissa Christina Ricci as Misty Quigley Sammi Hanratty as teen Misty Juliette Lewis as Natalie "Nat" Scatorccio Sophie Thatcher as teen Natalie Steven Krueger as Ben Scott Warren Kole as Jeff Sadecki Simone Kessell as Lottie Matthews Courtney Eaton as teen Lottie Lauren Ambrose as Vanessa "Van" Palmer Liv Hewson as teen Van Kevin Alves as Travis Martinez
Recurring
Alexa Barajas as Mari Ibarra Sarah Desjardins as Callie Sadecki Nicole Maines as Lisa Nuha Jes Izman as Crystal Mya Lowe as Gen Jenna Burgess as Melissa Nia Sondaya as Akilah Elijah Wood as Walter Tattersall Alex Wyndham as Kevyn Tan John Reynolds as Matt Saracusa François Arnaud as Paul Rukiya Bernard as Simone Abara Luciano Leroux as Javi Martinez Aiden Stoxx as Sammy Abara-Turner
Guest Ella Purnell as Jackie Taylor Jane Widdop as Laura Lee Owen Gates as teen Jeff John Cameron Mitchell as Caligula
Episodes
Production
Development
On December 16, 2021, Yellowjackets was renewed for a second season. In January 2022, showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson confirmed that the adult version of Lottie would appear in season two. They also confirmed that season two would show the girls' descent into cannibalism, which had been long-teased since the series premiere. Gary Levine, Showtime's President of Entertainment, expressed hopes that season two would premiere sometime in late 2022, with an annual cycle of one season per year. In May 2022, the writers were reported to be in the initial stage of writing new scripts. On December 7, 2022, it was announced the second season would premiere on March 24, 2023, on streaming and on demand for subscribers, with March 26, 2023, as the linear TV premiere date.
Casting
In August 2022, Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell joined the cast to play the adult versions of Van and Lottie; Liv Hewson and Courtney Eaton, who respectively play the teen versions of the characters, were also upped from recurring to series regulars. Elijah Wood and Nuha Jes Izman were also added to the cast in season-long recurring guest roles, while Kevin Alves was promoted to series regular. Wood plays Walter, a "new citizen detective who is not represented by a younger self on the show". In December 2022, Jason Ritter, the husband of Melanie Lynskey, was reported to be cast in a guest starring role for the season; ultimately, his character was not shown in season two. His scenes were cut to a "bonus episode" that has yet to air.
In January 2023, Variety reported that Keeya King, who played teen Akilah in season one, had exited the series. Her role was recast with Nia Sondaya. Nicole Maines was cast as Lisa, an associate of adult Lottie attempting to recover from past trauma. Additionally, François Arnaud guest-stars in four episodes portraying Paul, the "secret boyfriend of Coach Scott (Steven Kreuger) who reminds Coach Scott of what might have been".
This season marked the last for Juliette Lewis. Though viewers expressed shock at her character's exit, the showrunners and executive producer Karyn Kusama maintained that the death of adult Natalie had been telegraphed since the pilot.
Filming
Filming for the second season began in August 2022 in Vancouver, Canada, with the first episode directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer. The cabin scenes were filmed on a soundstage at The Bridge Studios. As filming started during the late summer, the production team used fake snow to recreate a winter landscape. In early February 2023, the cast of the 1990s timeline of the series completed filming their scenes.
Release Season two premiered on Showtime's linear network on March 26, 2023. To incentivize streaming subscriptions, the premiere and subsequent new episodes were made available for viewers on the standalone Showtime streaming app two days prior to the cable TV airing. Critics noted this potentially diluted the impact of the series' plot twists and mysteries. The standalone Showtime app was itself absorbed into Paramount+ after the conclusion of season two, which critics said may have impacted new viewers' attempts to find the show.
On March 9, 2023, Florence and the Machine recorded a cover version of No Doubt "Just a Girl" that appears in the trailer and soundtrack for the second season. The fourth, seventh and ninth episodes of season two featured a cover of the show's theme song by Alanis Morissette, which was released as a single on April 14, 2023.
Home media The second season of Yellowjackets was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 10, 2023. It includes the bonus features "Behind the Buzz, Creating Yellowjackets" and the music video for Alanis Morissette's cover of the theme song "No Return."
Reception
Audience viewership The season premiere was watched by nearly 2 million viewers across Showtime's platforms, according to figures from Nielsen, comScore, and Showtime's internal streaming data. The finale episode drew in 1.5 million total viewers, showing a 7% increase in cross-platform viewership from the season one finale.
Critical response On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the season holds an approval rating of 94% based on 171 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Having already made a startling first impression, Yellowjackets coils itself in a second season preparing for the long haul -- thankfully, its superb performances and mesmeric ambience are fine substitutes for fast answers." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 77 out of 100 based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Yellowjackets continued to receive praise for its ensemble cast, black humor, and focus on the darker sides of women. In a positive review, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Alternately eerie, mystical, weird, jolting, darkly funny and just plain terrifying, 'Yellowjackets' has solidified its standing as one of the most memorable series of the decade." Roxana Hadadi of Vulture wrote, "Yellowjackets sometimes attempts so much that it trips over itself, like a fumbled fast-break play on the soccer field. But between its confident willingness to get weird — sinister trees, bloody bees, pernicious facsimiles! — and its relatively sure grip on its world-building, Yellowjackets is making a compelling case for its own longevity." USA Todays Kelly Lawler lauded the second episode in particular, where "the young ensemble cast works seamlessly in one of the most intense, affecting and all-consuming scenes I've ever watched on TV."
In a more critical review, Candice Frederick of HuffPost said that the new season becomes overwhelmed with too many characters and subplots, to the detriment of characters like adult Natalie and Taissa. She opined "maybe juggling two different chronologies puts a strain on the narrative from which the writers never fully recover". Hadadi noted "the series undercuts the impact of adult Lottie (Simone Kessell) by immediately working her into the narrative and maneuvering others around her, instead of more gracefully engineering anticipation for her debut." Ben Rosenstock, also of Vulture, criticized the characterization of Lottie as mostly serving a narrative function, instead of fully fleshing out her character like the others.
Of Ricci, Ben Travers of IndieWire wrote that she "continues to have a ball as the eccentric investigator", and that she "easily [has] the most enjoyable arc of the season". In Entertainment Weekly, Kristen Baldwin wrote, "Lynskey conveys her character's ongoing inner battle with an impeccable blend of grief and rage, though it's also nice to see her have more sweet, silly moments with Warren Kole (as Shauna's husband, Jeff). Ambrose is another one of Yellowjackets strokes of parallel casting genius; she matches Hewson's dry wit and tough mien, and brings a subtle melancholy to adult Van." However, Travers wrote that the series has "a hesitancy — toward character development, definitive actions, and forward momentum — that simply wasn't there before, and one has to wonder if that's necessary to build out future seasons, or if it's simply the result of a successful series biding its time".
Another criticism was towards the separation of the core adult characters into different plot lines. In Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson wrote, "The trouble is that the gang is atomized, off on their own misadventures until they are finally reunited midway through the season…it's far less engaging seeing the crew drift apart than it was to see them warily coming together in season one. The performances remain sharp and just the right amount of peculiar (Lewis is the particular highlight), but even the best of actors can't make wheel spinning terribly interesting after a certain point." Many commented that the 1990s timeline emerges as the more gripping timeline of the two because of its higher stakes and contained format.
Critics also wrote of the series' habit of expanding mysteries but delaying answers, as well as its reliance on the supernatural. The Independent Nick Hilton wrote, "The highest compliment I can pay Yellowjackets is that it's always been fun. Preposterous, but fun. Gruesome, but fun. Tantalising, but fun. Yet there comes a point where the show must produce a pay-off. It is the trap that series like Lost, another plane crash drama, fell into: teasing the audience with juicy morsels of an overarching mystery, but failing to deliver an orderly final menu." Rosenstock echoed this by saying, "Yellowjackets is most satiating when it's specific and emotionally charged, but when it lingers too long in abstraction, it leaves us hungry."
Accolades