The primary season of Showtime’s sleeper hit sequence Yellowjackets walked a tightrope. A dual-timeline thriller with a bevy of characters, the present—from creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson—may simply have toppled into jumbled incoherence, a single-season compression of what ultimately occurred to Misplaced. Like that once-great sequence, Yellowjackets issues individuals stranded someplace unusual after a airplane crash, on this case a highschool soccer crew caught in ominous woods within the Canadian Rockies. Years later, we see (a few of) the survivors, now grownups, haunted by their expertise and, after all, tossed into new precarity.
It was lots to juggle, and but the present managed to maintain issues compelling and legible sufficient. An sudden murmur of the supernatural, or the doubtless supernatural, labored its manner into the sequence, including a shiver of primal dread to an already scary survival story. The present’s forged, each younger and fewer younger, efficiently maintained a fraught emotional tenor with out resorting to histrionics. The primary season of Yellowjackets was one of many nice surprises of 2021—neatly serialized and, at occasions, sensational.
Which, after all, makes one nervous a few second go-around. (Season two premieres on March 26.) How a lot can the story hold increasing—with increasingly questions unanswered—earlier than issues get tedious? Misplaced struggled to determine that arithmetic, managing some sensible moments on the way in which to a muddled conclusion. What I’ve seen of Yellowjackets season two thus far (the primary six episodes) each confirms and allays these fears.
On the grownup aspect of issues, suburban mother in revolt Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is mired in a homicide plot acquainted to anybody who’s watched Netflix’s Lifeless to Me. Some tense, very Showtime-y comedy is mined from her predicament—and there’s a stunning improvement involving Shauna’s daughter, Callie (Sarah Desjardins)—however till about episode six, Shauna appears caught in an eddy. To a lesser extent, so is Natalie (Juliette Lewis), who was kidnapped on the finish of season one and now finds herself confronting somebody from her previous with a mixture of suspicion and fascination. Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is in a hallucinatory tailspin, whereas cracked, possibly sociopathic Misty (Christina Ricci) will get into some investigatory antics with a brand new buddy, performed by Ricci’s child-star up to date Elijah Wooden. (They’re a great distance from the New Canaan of The Ice Storm.)
The difficulty is that the gang is atomized, off on their very own misadventures till they’re lastly reunited halfway by the season. Possibly issues would really feel repetitive in the event that they have been collectively, too, nevertheless it’s far much less partaking seeing the crew drift aside than it was to see them warily coming collectively in season one. The performances stay sharp and simply the correct amount of weird (Lewis is the actual spotlight), however even one of the best of actors can’t make wheel spinning terribly fascinating after a sure level.
Again within the wilds of youth, issues are getting extra dire by the day. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is speaking to the ghost of her useless buddy, Jackie (Ella Purnell), and is many months pregnant. That’s a harmful scenario to be in whereas caught in a cabin with a bunch of youngsters—and one injured trainer, Ben (Steven Krueger), who will get some gay-romance flashbacks this season. Misty (the exceptional Sammi Hanratty) might have made a brand new buddy, however she additionally appears to be tipping additional into lunacy. So does nascent prophetess-priestess Lottie (Courtney Eaton), whose visions and intuitions are aligning with the night-terror, sleepwalking trances of Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown). One thing sinister is occurring right here, and when Yellowjackets leans into that mysticism—evoking some type of forest god or malevolent spirit—the present shifts into its eeriest, most alluring type.
After all, all of that supernatural stuff could be a manifestation of troubled psyches—a trauma metaphor, or a touch upon the primordial savage inside us all. I, for one, could be slightly upset if that seems to be the case. However both manner, I’m dying to know. Which says one thing concerning the present’s energy, its persuasive insistence that one thing grand will ultimately be revealed to us.
Watching the primary half or so of season two, I discovered myself getting impatient for that vital one thing—the essential info supposedly undergirding the present—to reach. Maybe it’s nonetheless the lingering burn of Misplaced’s implosion, nevertheless it’s arduous to take a seat again and calmly look ahead to Yellowjackets to make sense. It’s additionally tough to belief a present that, particularly in season two, flits backwards and forwards so unsteadily, between bone-chilling mystery-horror and acrid quirk, between adolescent psychodrama and B-movie pulp. If there’s some grasp blueprint for the present—that means, if its creators know precisely the place it’s going and have a plan for a way lengthy it would take to get there—then maybe among the shaggier components of the sequence must be pared away to streamline that mission.
The ending of episode six provides me hope that the again half of the season will gather itself and drive the story ahead in a assured course. However many hours of throat clearing and stalling have come earlier than, which may ship extra informal viewers off in quest of one thing extra satisfying. I’m actually not ready to surrender on Yellowjackets, however it might quickly be in want of a rescue of its personal.
