Review: ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Reshuffles the Deck with New Dynamics, Gets Closer to Unraveling the Mystery

Showtime’s Yellowjackets returns with more answers, fewer cast members, and fresh dynamics that make it a bloody good start to Season 3.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that both the best and most challenging aspect of Showtime’s survival series Yellowjackets is its deep bench of players.

While Season 1 focused on the core four of Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Tai (Tawny Cypress), Nat (Juliette Lewis), and Misty (Christina Ricci) and the mystery of the blackmailer, Season 2 introduced new adult survivors like Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Van (Lauren Ambrose), a dead body, a wellness retreat, oh and Elijah Wood. Plus, there’s also the 1996 timeline of team members who demand their own attention and storylines, like pregnancy loss, and of course, the trauma of eating your friends. Needless to say, showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have a lot on their slab, and at times toward the end of Season 2, it felt like your head was swirling with characters and dangling threads.

Yellowjackets Season 3 Review

Luckily, in Season 3, Lyle and Nickerson have one less character to worry about in the present, but that’s much to the chagrin of fans, as the loss of Juliette Lewis hangs throughout the first two episodes. Lewis added something edgy to the core four, serving as the one the wilderness might have most negatively impacted, the one most lost from civilization (which is really saying something when you have Tai sacrificing the family dog). One of my favorite things about the series has always been Lewis and Ricci’s chemistry, which is sorely missed (even if Ricci and Lynskey being paired up together offers a new dynamic to explore). The adult characters mourn Nat’s loss (we even briefly meet her mother at the funeral) while also dealing with their own hangups like rebellious teenage daughters, (possible) drinking problems, and impeaching themselves as a senator.

In interviews about the new season, Lyle and Nickerson described the girls as “thriving” in the ’96 (or now ’97) timeline, and when we catch up with them in the season premiere “It Girl,” they certainly are! After losing their cabin in a fire last season, they’re on the rebound, residing in newly constructed teepee structures, and enjoy the warmer weather with capture games during their first (and presumably only) solstice festival. While we don’t see any flashforwards in the first four episodes available to critics, the summer season reminds us their rescue is imminent, with only about six months left of being stranded in the wilderness. We’re getting closer to the reveal of what they dare not speak of.

Yellowjackets and David Lynch-spiration

Even though Young Nat (Sophie Thatcher) was named queen at the end of last season, everyone thinks they can do it better, including an increasingly aggressive Young Shauna (Sophie Nelisse), who has her own adoring fan fawning over her in Melissa (Jenna Burgess). And for those hoping that Coach Ben plays a bigger role in the third season, you’ll be very pleased with how soon they address his betrayal (or did he betray them?).

In the episodes available to critics, Season 3 starts by slowly fixing some of the issues that lingered toward the end of Season 2, and in Episode 3’s “Them’s the Brakes,” Twin Peaks fans will recognize David Lynch-inspired elements that remind audiences of the creator’s enduring legacy not only in film but on television.

While the first three episodes are solid, it was by the end of Episode 4’s “12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis” that I was unequivocally hooked all over again. Let the bodies hit the floor, indeed.

Yellowjackets Season 3 airs on the Showtime app Fridays starting February 14, on Showtime starting February 16.