Yellowjackets Returns This Weekend
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Yellowjackets, Showtime's Lord of the Flies-esque drama about a girls' high school soccer team lost in the Canadian wilderness, raised more questions over the course of the first season than could possibly be answered in the finale. Fortunately for the show's dedicated citizen detective fans—who dissect and debate theories each week on social media—the show will return for a second season.
Here's what we know so far about the Yellowjackets sophomore run.
Yellowjackets is coming back for a second season.
Back in December 2021, halfway through season one, Showtime confirmed that the series was renewed with an Instagram post captioned: “Those girls were special. They were champions. The #Yellowjackets will return for Season 2!”
“Yellowjackets has been an unadulterated sensation for Showtime,” Showtime entertainment president Gary Levine said in a statement. “We are overwhelmed by both the acclaim and the audience response to our series, including several ‘Best of 2021’ lists, a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and snowballing viewership. Clearly there is a hunger for originality and audacity, and our incredible showrunners Ashley, Bart and Jonathan, along with their pitch-perfect cast, have delivered that and so much more. I can’t wait to see the surprises they have in store for us in season two.”
In a recent interview, Christina Ricci aka Misty, said things get "even wilder" in season two, teasing that the show is "more crazy, more shocking."
"I can't really get too much into detail, but I will say the first couple scripts had the entire cast gasping," Ricci told ET.
Watch the first full trailer right here:
There's plenty of drama to come.
In new interviews with Entertainment Weekly, the cast previewed the season ahead, revealing that key details about both timelines in the show. In the wilderness, Shauna is still pregnant, and grieving the loss of Jackie. "Because of the circumstances, she's not really coping the way you would normally cope," Sophie Nélisse says of her character. (And for the record, Tawny Cypress, who plays the adult iteration of Taissa, confirmed, "They're not going to eat the baby.")
In Jackie's absence, Lottie becomes a leader of the team "It's not like she's chosen leadership," Courtney Eaton says of her character. "It's slightly getting pushed on her."
And in the modern day, the adult versions of Misty, Taissa, Shauna, and Nat are dealing not only with the trauma of their time in the wilderness, but also the events of season one. "They're haunted by their guilt and their anger and their pain, but you know what else haunts them, whether they're ready to admit it, is the fact that they never felt in some ways more alive than when they were in the wilderness," co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco says. "Maybe they went crazy, but it was also a world free of the stereotypes and expectations that society had thrust upon them, specifically as young women. There was a freedom in that kind of madness. So they want to get in touch with their primordial selves."
Read the full interview over on EW.
When will it premiere?
In December 2022, Showtime confirmed the series will return on March 24, 2023.
It will premiere on streaming and on demand before making its on-air debut on Sunday, March 26 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Levine previously told Deadline that a writers room would convene in January 2022 to start working on season two.
“We have not heard the pitch for season two, the writers room has not even come together yet, they are going to come together in January,” he said at the time. “I’m sure Ashley, Bart and Jonathan have some loose ideas but they hadn’t fleshed out their ideas and they certainly haven’t conveyed them to us.”
“I do know that there will be some surprises in terms of the characters,” he continued. “There are still lots of questions about who survived, what happened out there. There will be some real surprises in terms of that and I think some characters you may not even have met yet.”
In a separate conversation with Vulture, Levine suggested that the show could return this year (although now it's clear that wasn't possible). “We are working towards a premiere at the end of 2022,” he said. “We’d love to stay on an annual cycle. I think our audiences deserve that, and I also think that when you have a show that has this kind of a momentum, you don’t want to let it dissolve.”
Per the Hollywood Reporter, production on season two began in late August 2022. Star Ricci shared on Instagram that season two wrapped in February 2023.
It's possible there will be several more seasons of Yellowjackets.
“We pitched it as a five-season idea,” series co-creator Bart Nickerson told the Hollywood Reporter.
But viewers won't have to wait until the very end of the series for all their questions to be answered. “When we were formulating and developing the idea we always saw this as a multi-season story and our goal in the first season is to very much answer certain questions, because I personally get very irritated with shows that drag everything on forever and don't give you any answers,” series co-creator Ashley Lyle told E! News. “So, we wanted to answers some questions and ask some new ones, so that is hopefully what we accomplished over the course of this season.”
There will be some new faces in the cast.
The audience has yet to meet the entire team's older personas in the modern day, which heightened the mystery in season one. Viewers know other characters survived and made it back home, but don't yet know who.
In August, it was confirmed that Lauren Ambrose would appear in season two as the adult version of Van. Nickerson and Lyle also confirmed that an adult version of Lottie will appear in season two as well. “In terms of other survivors, we plant the flag that Lottie (Courtney Eaton) is lurking in the shadows and meeting her in the near future. Ideally, we will probably meet at least one other,” Lyle said. Later , it was confirmed that Obi-Wan Kenobi star Simone Kessell will play the adult Lottie.
Elijah Wood has also joined the cast. Per the Hollywood Reporter, he will play "Walter, a dedicated citizen detective who will challenge present-day Misty in ways that she won’t see coming."
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