Plenty of sting left in ‘Yellowjackets’

Published date28 March 2023
LIKE the summer-bastard wasps that it’s named after, Yellowjackets attacks you with brutal sting after brutal sting leaving you no time to recover before circling and striking again

In just the first episode of the second season, which began streaming on Friday night on Neon and screening on SoHo yesterday, the show hits you with a bloody stabbing, some old-fashioned extortion, violent electric-shock therapy, rough but consensual sex, a murder cover-up, an animal-masked death cult and a poor sod being buried alive before wrapping things up with some cannibalism to lead into the end credits. It’s certainly flying straight at your viewing jugular.

Which is a good thing. Season one was the breakout show of last year, winning stacks of awards and being nominated for seven Emmys. Which, yes, is an unusual amount of praise for a survival horror/murder mystery series with strong paranormal overtones. It’s also unusual because the show is determinedly freakish, delighting in mining nightmares for material and soaking them in a grungy 1990s music-video aesthetic.

It gets away with it because in some ways it is two distinct shows. To quickly recap, Yellowjackets is about the survivors of a girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes into the wilderness en route to a tournament. It cleverly splits itself into two timelines. First, we go back to the mid-90s, where we follow the teenagers fighting for their lives against a supremely hostile environment and, increasingly, each other before zooming forward to the present day with the now-adult women trying to cope with the untold actions of their survival and the associated trauma involved with that.

The show flips between these dual timelines with confidence and flair, sometimes multiple times in a scene. It often uses these time jumps to mirror the past with the present or to explain certain character traits or behaviours. It’s an addictive and endlessly interesting format that allows the show to continue pushing forward, layer puzzling mystery on top of gruesome murders and keep things zipping along.

Unlike other shows that teased out their secrets for years, twisting themselves into knots trying to keep viewers guessing until...

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