Season 1 - 10 episodes (2021-22)
Rent Yellowjackets on Amazon Video (paid link)
Created by: Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson
Starring: Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Christina Ricci, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Samantha Hanratty, Juliette Lewis
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer
Plot
A wildly talented high school girls soccer team becomes the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the Canadian wilderness.
Verdict
It's entertaining, but what this teases in the first episode is yet to play out when we reach the final episode. That makes this season feel like a teaser for season two where maybe we'll get some better answers as to what happened. This season is full of mystery, intrigue, and maybe something supernatural, but this season is just the start of the story. We don't get anything definitive. This series is planned for five seasons, so this season's pacing fits that, but if this were to get canceled prematurely, it's an incomplete plot. A solid second season would make this season better if we indeed get something more than just build up to the real plot.
It depends.
Review
I liked the premise when this released. It's the novels Lord of the Flies and Hatchet meets Lost. If you like 90s music, this has a lot of the classics.
The series splits time in 1996 when a girls soccer team crash lands in the Canadian forest and 2021 where the survivors are adults that have tried to move on and forget the ordeal. The most interesting part of this show is 1996, but the first episode spends a lot of time in the present. Only appearing in the first episode, there are a few 1996 scenes that hint at cannibalism. My biggest complaint with this season is this teaser. We don't reach this point in the first season. Will we see what happened in the second? Who knows. I get this show wants to build foundation and develop characters, but since it showed us these tantalizing scenes I want to know how we get there. We only get a hint of that.
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| Tawny Cypress, Melanie Lynskey play Taissa, Shauna |
In 2021 there's a big push to avoid the past and any publicity that would remind the world what happened to them. That's a problem for Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) since Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is running for public office.
Everything in 1996 is ominous only because we know things devolve to something crazy. The rest of the season only makes the first episode seem like a bigger tease. We get some survival efforts and escape attempts, but it certainly seems like this season could be shorter. Later in the season the girls somehow clear a runway for an abandoned plane. According to what the this doesn't show us, that happens one morning.
Many of the episodes provide some backstory for the main characters that tie into the episode's plot. There are big hints that something supernatural is occurring across both timelines. We never quite know what's going on as most of the characters in 2021 are involved in something shady. Nat (Juliette Lewis) is trying to figure out why her friend was killed, and it makes us wonder if it's related to 1996. Misty (Christina Ricci) was bullied prior to the crash, but her survival skills make her popular. She intends to remain needed. It's unclear what her plight is in 2021, but it seems like some kind of scheme. There's extortion and a weird symbol that keep appearing in both timelines.
This show moves just a bit too slowly. If we hadn't seen some kind of cannibal cult in the first episode, that wouldn't be a lingering question of when will we see that. It doesn't happen this season. Much like Lost it seems like there's something keeping the girls in the woods. We'll have to wait for next season, and hopefully we'll get more answers. Still, when season two releases I will be watching. It's difficult to rate this season as it's only half the story.
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