Index – Culture – The most shocking series of our days has come to an end

It’s the toughest survival series since Lost — perhaps the best way to sum up Yellowjackets, Showtime’s two-season drama about a high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes behind God’s back in Canada, and the kids have snow , fighting frost and hunger, they have to fight for survival in the forest until the rescue teams find them.

Not many people believed in the basic concept of Yellowjackets, not even HBO, who approved Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson’s creation when the duo pitched it to the channel, because at that time they already had a dark-toned drama series about teenagers, Euphoria. So it is clear that HBO was afraid that the two productions with a similar presentation would cancel each other out, and anyway… There were reservations about Yellowjackets, which was heavily based on the story of Lord of the Flies, television executives did not believe that some young girls can be as wild as Ralph, Röfi and the others in William Golding’s classic novel.

However, this became the strongest storyline of the Yellowjackets, which was finally embraced by the cable TV called Showtime, showing that there does come a point in survival in the wilderness, when the surviving little girls are so overcome by hunger that they consider dismembering their dead companion and eating them raw. In the first season of the series, set to be released in the fall of 2021, there were also strong hints that rock-hard cannibalism would permeate the Yellowjackets, and the most recent, second episode, aired on Showtime from the end of March to May 28 of this year, mercilessly pushed cannibalism to the maximum. The first season of this series wasn’t even a walkover, but in the latest 9 episodes, the characters really became crazy. The young Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) enthusiastically discussed with the spirit of her dead girlfriend, but the soccer team coach, Ben (Steven Krueger), also struggled with some pretty rough hallucinations, while the mentally ill, manipulative Misty (Samantha Hanratty) got another person’s blood on her hand.

There was also plenty of excitement in the contemporary thread, although Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), who is more than 20 years older, killed her lover in the previous season, the surviving members of the Yellowjackets tried to cover up this crime at all costs: among them the politician suffering from personality disorder, Taissa (Tawny Cypress), Natalie (Juliette Lewis), struggling with suicidal tendencies and drug addiction, and Misty (Christina Ricci), who is still a psychopath. They were joined as newcomers by Lottie (Simone Kessell), who was promoted to sect leader, the big-mouthed Van (Lauren Ambrose) and, of course, the self-proclaimed Reddit detective, Walter, played by the former Frodo of The Lord of the Rings, also joined the team, who delighted us with his performance, just like Wilfred.

While after watching the first season, we complained because the story of the adult girl soccer players was too syrupy and soap opera-like, in the new phase of Yellowjackets, the writers really got their act together spectacularly. They dropped two cops on Shauna, who kept squeezing her neck, and the twists and turns of events led to the fact that we liked Melanie Lynskey here even more than in The Last of Us. As we alluded to in the previous paragraph, the show was badly stolen by the creepy Elijah Wood, and Lauren Ambrose, seen in the Graveyard works, was also a great addition.

A big difference compared to Lost, mentioned at the beginning of our article, is that the creators of Yellowjackets are sparing less and less with horror elements.

Of course, this requires a well-constructed mystique, the fact that the female soccer players slowly respect nature as a god and submit to its will even with a blood sacrifice. The writers are skillful in building Yellowjackets not only in this respect, because they move a large cast of characters, comparable to Game of Thrones, part by part. And although there are blunders, such as the ad hoc, pointless killing of one of the most likable characters in the finale of the second season, we can be largely satisfied with the development of the storylines.

These days, there are few TV series that appear every week, which we always sit down excitedly in front of, wondering what shocking twists the creators have prepared for us this time… but Yellowjackets is exactly like that.

However, we can already worry a lot about the third season of the series, not only because there is a chance that the story will be dragged out despite all the excitement, but also, of course, because of the writers’ strike. Currently, at the time of writing this article, the Writers Guild of America strike is on its 27th day, which could last up to 3-4 months, and is already affecting the Showtime series, whose scripts for the third season have been suspended indefinitely, so the premiere will be later will obviously be as originally planned.

Back home, Yellowjackets is considered an undeservedly underrated series that most viewers don’t even know exists. You couldn’t find a better Lost replacement than this. Especially for horror fans, the series can be a real gem, with its presentation leaning towards magical realism, it is a rare interesting story, which is crowned by excellent performances from one to the other. Much praise goes to the writers, and hats off to the casting people, who selected the youth and adult versions of the soccer team with such a sense that it really is as if we are watching the same people of different ages in the two time planes.

Yellowjackets is a great performance from the entire production team, which we would really like to continue watching, and which we are really worried about not being cut by the writers’ strike…

9,5/10