“Yellowjackets” premieres on Sunday, March 26, and the buzzy series hasn’t lost any sting in its sophomore season. Showrunners ratchet up the tension right off the bat, while somehow managing to lean even harder into their exquisite portraits of post-traumatic stress disorder.
But as season one’s mysteries are solved, an ugly truth is exposed. This show might be addictive, but the secret to its success is as cynical as it is effective: brutal levels of female rage.
(Spoilers for “Yellowjackets” below.)
With strong notes of both “Lost” and “Lord of the Flies,” the series takes place in two different timelines. “Then” is 1996, senior year for the stars of the Yellowjackets girls’ soccer team, whose private plane crashes in the Ontario wilderness on the way to the national championship. The survivors are stranded for 19 very long months. “Now” is 2021, 25 years later, as survivors Shauna, Taissa, Misty and Natalie try to get on with their lives, only to discover someone — or something — wants to dredge the horror back up. The show is also a paean to 1990s culture: As teens, the girls read “Sassy” and wear flannel; the soundtrack features PJ Harvey; characters dance to Montell Jordan playing from a Walkman and sing Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose.” The present-day storyline is also something of a celebrity time capsule — the older versions of the main characters are played by Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis, almost all 90s-era It Girls.
At the center is a provocative puzzlebox mystery. Season one dropped titillating hints about historical horrors, especially once winter descended on the stranded soccer team and a pack of girls realize “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” is a blatant lie.
Season two doesn’t make fans wait long for answers. The premiere cheerfully features a now-heavily pregnant teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) chowing down on a human ear, with Tori Amos’ “Cornflake…
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