Yellowjackets Season 3 Episodes 1-4 Review

The first two episodes of Yellowjackets’ season 3 are now streaming, and will air at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 16 on Paramount+ with Showtime.

In the first episode of Yellowjackets season 3, a morose Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) pleads with her former soccer teammates and fellow plane-crash survivors: “What’s it all about?” She’s asking if there’s any meaning in their disappointing lives, but maybe that’s a question for the series’ writers as well. What started out as an absorbing thriller with tinges of horror and mystery has gotten so far afield from Shauna and company’s harrowing experience in the Canadian wilderness (and the aftershocks it still causes 25 years later) that it’s not clear what the show is building to anymore. Aside from revealing just how the Yellowjackets get back home, it’s clearer than ever that there’s nothing left to know about any of these characters, which deflates the excitement of continuing on this journey with them.

The focus of season 3 seems to be “women behaving badly, and maybe that’s ok.” In the past, our main characters have reverted to mean girl cliques who barely address the cannibalism they resorted to when the going got tough. In the present, their adult selves are miserable and aimless because everything that was bad (yet stimulating) in their lives has blown over. By the end of season 2, Shauna’s murder of her lover was effectively covered up and forgiven by her husband, Jeff (Warren Kole); Juliette Lewis wisely exited the story as adult Natalie after she took a bullet for a random new character; and then maybe the trees told Lottie (Simone Kessell) during her psychotic break that Nat’s death has “pleased” them – which means they barely talk about her. In season 3, no one seems to care about that death spirit wanting sacrifices, except for Tai (Tawny Cypress), so it doesn’t really drive any of the story in the four episodes provided for this review.

All of the grown Yellowjackets proceed to make some selfish choices to feel something, which gets an innocent person killed. But the guilt passes quickly in favor of date-night plans. There’s a frustrating conscience applied to these women that makes their actions mostly bland and comes across as a fear that we’ll really hate them instead of living vicariously through them.

Their lives in the woods are almost idyllic in comparison. In the ’90s storyline, spring has enveloped them; post-cabin destruction, they’ve created a new community of yurts and huts, and killing game to stave off death is no longer an issue. It’s like a summer camp now, a feel-good dynamic threatened only by Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) and Mari (Alexa Barajas) acting up to create some discord. But it’s incredibly maddening that they’re not even trying to find a way home. They’ve got food, better health, and longer days, but no one is trying to walk out of this forest. They’re making paper lanterns, but not for signaling to any planes that might fly overhead. This is their home now, which wipes out any tension in the struggle to survive. Instead, conflict and consequence are ginned up through silly scenarios like a mock court trial or a cave encounter that elicits waking nightmares.

A large part of what used to make Yellowjackets so addictive was how its parallel storylines fed into and off of each other. In the first season, that meant swapping back and forth to paint a compelling picture of how each character endured an unthinkable catastrophe in 1996 and how the unaddressed trauma from that experience affected their seeming suburban “normalcy” in 2021. By season two, the pivots between then and now grew more random and less deliberate; in season three, there’s almost no reason for the storylines to touch anymore. What once worked in tandem now operates independently. Potential cult leader Lottie (Courtney Eaton) is far less ethereal and intriguing in her adult skin. Young Misty (Samantha Hanratty) is still weird, but she’s passionate and loyal for a reason. In 21st century New Jersey, Christina Ricci plays a Misty who’s just quirky to be quirky, and to provide some comic relief.

Things take a major turn at the end of episode 4, “12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis,” but only time will tell if it gives Yellowjackets a desperately needed renewed sense of purpose. What’s clear at this point in the season is the writers seem determined to snuff out any belief that something strange, mystical, or supernatural is motivating the characters in either timeline. Now the real mystery is ”What’s still holding these stories together?” More cannibalism? Karmic justice, which Jeff seems to believe in this season? In truth, Yellowjackets was a “must watch” when we knew less about everyone on screen.