In a Vanity Fair exclusive, showrunner and co-creator Ashley Lyle recently discussed the third season of the Emmy-nominated Showtime series Yellowjackets.
A survival drama with horror elements, Yellowjackets follows a high school soccer team as they have to try to survive in the wilderness following a plane crash. Delving into psychological themes of trauma and PTSD, the show examines how the girls’ experiences and trauma shape their behavior both in the wilderness and long after being rescued.
As fans of the show know, Yellowjackets jumps between two timelines: 1996 and the present day. In addition to Lyle’s interview, we got a look at Season 3 through a series of promotional images of our teen Yellowjackets alongside their adult counterparts.
To prepare for the upcoming season, here’s a recap of the most important events from Seasons 1 and 2, and what we know so far about Season 3.
Major Spoilers Ahead
Season 1
We open Season 1 with a group of girls, many unidentified, making a sacrifice to a veiled leader who is wearing a crown of deer antlers. We then see them chasing a girl through the snow until she falls to her death in a pit of stakes, setting the eerie atmosphere of the show and the girls’ time in the wilderness.
In 1996, the Yellowjackets soccer team from Wiskayok High School, including Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), Jackie (Ella Purnell), Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), Misty (Samantha Hanratty), Van (Liv Hewson), Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown), Lottie (Courtney Eaton), and Laura Lee (Jane Widdop), board an ill-fated flight after winning the national championship. Accompanying the team are Coach Martinez (Carlos Sanz), his two sons Javi (Luciano Leroux) and Travis (Kevin Alves), and Coach Ben Scott (Steven Krueger).
After the crash, which kills the flight crew, several team members and Coach Martinez, the surviving girls find shelter in an abandoned cabin. The girls experience a series of hardships, almost losing Van to a pack of wolves and then losing Laura Lee after a failed attempt to get the group rescued by flying an old propeller plane, which exploded just moments after takeoff.
The girls begin to experience what they believe to be supernatural occurrences. This is shown through Lottie in particular. In a flashback scene, we learn that Lottie would experience visions as a child for which she was put on medication. Now stranded, she has run out of her meds. Meanwhile, Taissa begins experiencing odd sleepwalking incidents.
To lift their spirits, the group throws a homecoming (or doomcoming) party. From this point on, their experiences in the wilderness get increasingly out of control when nearly all of the group, except Jackie, accidentally consume hallucinogenic mushrooms. In this altered state, they nearly kill Travis and a frightened Javi flees. The next day, Jackie confronts the group, whom she’s been at odds with all season. She then confronts her best friend Shauna, who is pregnant with Jackie’s boyfriend Jeff’s baby.
After a huge falling out, Jackie sleeps outside the cabin out of anger. Unbeknownst to both her and the group, the first snowfall of the season would come overnight. The next morning, the group finds that Jackie has frozen to death.
As the girls’ situation becomes even more precarious with winter coming and food being scarce, Lottie begins having more visions, cryptically predicting that they won’t be hungry much longer.
25 years later, the surviving Yellowjackets are trying to escape their pasts when they find they’re being blackmailed by an anonymous person extorting them for $50,000. Natalie (Juliette Lewis), Misty (Christina Ricci), Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) spend this season trying to figure out who the blackmailer is.
Natalie, fresh out of rehab, teams up with Misty, now a hospice nurse, to search for the missing adult Travis. Their investigation takes a dark turn when they discover that Travis is dead and suspect foul play. Meanwhile, Taissa, running for the New Jersey state Senate, is facing attack ads that accuse her of being a cannibal, referencing the girls’ rumored actions to survive in the wilderness. Taissa’s sleepwalking incidents return and begin to strain her relationships with her wife and son.
Shauna, who is now married to Jeff (Warren Kole), begins having an affair with a man named Adam (Peter Gadiot), after believing Jeff was cheating on her first. She suspects that Adam is the blackmailer and kills him. Shauna eventually realizes it was actually Jeff who was blackmailing them to pay off loan sharks and save his failing furniture store.
In the season finale, Natalie is kidnapped by unknown assailants wearing the symbol from the blackmailer’s postcards. The episode ends on the cliffhanger that Travis’ bank account was emptied by former Yellowjackets teammate Lottie (Simone Kessell), who, having fully embraced her clairvoyant abilities, now runs a cult.
Season 2
The 1996 timeline picks up two months after the end of Season 1. It is well into winter and the group is starving and locked inside the cabin. As their situation worsens, Lottie leans more and more into her visions, with some of the group members starting to put their faith in her, whether out of desperation or true belief.
Shauna, now heavily pregnant, is still grieving Jackie, having hallucinations and talking to her dead corpse, which is being kept in the meat shed until the ground is thawed enough to bury her.
Natalie and Travis, the designated game hunters, continue to search for Javi, despite Natalie’s belief that he could not have survived the cold. Frustrated, Natalie fakes finding Javi’s bloodied clothing and gives it to Travis, hoping to end his search. However, Taissa’s worsening sleepwalking episodes lead her to find Javi who has survived two months in the wilderness.
The group confronts Shauna over her talking to Jackie’s corpse and they decide to cremate her. By a strange, possibly supernatural, force, snow lands on Jackie’s burning remains, perfectly cooking her. After some contemplation, the group decides to eat her — except for Ben, who is horrified by the act.
The group becomes even more divided, with half of them believing Lottie is a psychic and the other half being skeptical about what actually happened.
Shauna goes into labor and in a post-labor hallucination, envisions her baby alive, but tragically, she awakens to the reality that her baby was stillborn.
As the group grows worried about finding food, they draw cards to decide who will be hunted for dinner. When Natalie draws the losing card, Travis intervenes and tells her to run. In the chaos, Javi tries to save Natalie by revealing where he hid when he was lost, but falls into an icy lake. Interpreting this as a sign that Natalie was chosen by the wilderness, the group deems her their leader.
Ben, suspecting the group murdered Javi, leaves. He finds Javi’s hiding spot through a series of drawings he left. In what is assumed to be Ben’s doing, the cabin is set on fire, leaving the group in the cold without shelter.
In the present timeline, the adults are grappling with the events of Season 1 and the supernatural forces of the wilderness that continue to haunt them. Shauna is still trying to cover her tracks for Adam’s murder, Taissa has driven away her wife and son, Natalie remains on Lottie’s commune after being kidnapped and Misty befriends Walter (Elijah Wood) to help her locate Natalie’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, Taissa tracks down and reunites with the adult Van (Lauren Ambrose) this season.
As the group reunites in the season finale on Lottie’s commune, they catch each other up on everything: Shauna killing Adam, Taissa’s struggle with her dissociative fugue, and Van’s cancer diagnosis.
Lottie attempts to “fix” the group’s problems by making an offer to the wilderness as the group conducts a hunt, much like the ones they performed in the wilderness. Mid-hunt, Natalie is accidentally killed by Misty.
Season 3
In Season 3, we can expect the main cast to return along with newcomers Joel McHale and Hilary Swank joining as characters yet to be announced.
In 2023, Lyle shared that there would be a bonus episode before the release of Season 3. However, the release date is still unknown, with Lyle sharing on X, “Closer to S3. I’m not being coy, there’s a strike and things are complicated!”
Fans are hopeful and still highly anticipating the new season. In the Vanity Fair interview, Lyle stated, “We are going to learn more about what happened in the wilderness that they are so afraid of coming out. We hope it will be both satisfying and at times unexpected.”
Yellowjackets is expected to return in early 2025.
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