The first season of the American thriller drama television series Yellowjackets premiered on Showtime on November 14, 2021. Series creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson serve as the showrunners for the season, alongside executive producer Jonathan Lisco. The series is centered on the teenage survivors of a 1996 plane crash in the wilderness. The narrative is set in dual timelines: the first follows the teens in 1996 as they must learn to survive in the wild after the crash, while the second takes place 25 years later and focuses on the survivors' attempts to piece their lives back together after being rescued and returning to civilization. The ensemble cast includes Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, and Sammi Hanratty as the core teenage survivors, while Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci portray their adult counterparts.
In September 2019, Showtime gave Yellowjackets a pilot order and filming commenced in Los Angeles that November. In December 2020, the series was picked up for a season order and filming then moved to Vancouver in May 2021, concluding in early October. The season consists of ten episodes and received critical acclaim for its performances, writing, and direction. It was also a ratings success, becoming the second-most streamed series on Showtime behind Dexter: New Blood. Yellowjackets was nominated for six Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. At the 27th Critics' Choice Awards, Lynskey won for Best Actress in a Drama Series.
Cast
Main Melanie Lynskey as Shauna Sadecki, née Shipman Sophie Nélisse as teen Shauna Tawny Cypress as Taissa Turner Jasmin Savoy Brown as teen Taissa Ella Purnell as Jackie Taylor Christina Ricci as Misty Quigley Sammi Hanratty as teen Misty Juliette Lewis as Natalie "Nat" Scatorccio Sophie Thatcher as teen Natalie Steven Krueger as Ben Scott Warren Kole as Jeff Sadecki
Recurring Courtney Eaton as Lottie Matthews Liv Hewson as Vanessa "Van" Palmer Keeya King as Akilah Kevin Alves as Travis Martinez Jane Widdop as Laura Lee Alexa Barajas as Mari Ibarra Rekha Sharma as Jessica Roberts Sarah Desjardins as Callie Sadecki Rukiya Bernard as Simone Abara Luciano Leroux as Javi Martinez Aiden Stoxx as Sammy Abara-Turner Mya Lowe as Gen Peter Gadiot as Adam Martin Alex Wyndham as Kevyn Tan
Guest Jack DePew as teen Jeff Carlos Sanz as Coach Bill Martinez Gabrielle Rose as Mrs. Taylor Tonya Cornelisse as Allie Stevens Pearl Amanda Dickson as teen Allie
Episodes
Production
Development
Ashley Lyle said the idea for the show was partly inspired by the public reaction in 2017 to a then-planned female-led adaptation of the Lord of the Flies novel, which critics said would never work because of doubts that girls could descend into the same level of barbarism as the boys in the original story. Lyle said one man's comment posited, "What are [the girls] going to do? Collaborate to death?". The thought that came to Lyle in response was, "You were never a teenage girl, sir." Lyle fleshed out the plot with her husband and producing partner Bart Nickerson. The idea was also influenced by the 1972 Andes flight disaster and the 1993 movie inspired from its events, Alive, as well as the Donner Party. The creators said that the primary aim of the series is to explore "the diverse ways in which women approach friendship, adversity, violence and power - both in adolescence and as adults." Nickerson said the decision to set the story in two different timelines, one in the immediate aftermath of the crash and the other many years later, was to "explore trauma as a lens for continued negotiation of the world. We were very captivated by: How does trauma not only shape your view of the past, but how does it also shape the way that you continue to move forward in the world?"
On May 9, 2018, Showtime announced it had acquired the rights to the series. The network gave an order for a pilot episode in September 2019, with Karyn Kusama set to direct. In December 2020, Showtime greenlit a series order. Kusama brought on Jonathan Lisco as a co-showrunner and executive producer.
Casting
Melanie Lynskey was the first to join the cast. On casting the younger versions of the adult characters, Lyle said she and Nickerson focused less on a physical match and more on a "a kind of energetic similarity, or a kind of soul match". In October 2019, Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, and Jasmine Savoy Brown were announced as series regulars. Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Ella Purnell, Sammi Hanratty, Sophie Thatcher, and Sophie Nélisse joined the cast that November. Nélisse, who plays young Shauna, was one of the last to be cast a week before filming of the pilot began. In preparation for playing the same characters in different timelines, the older and younger actors had conversations about posture, gesture, personality, and tone of voice.
In December 2019, Ava Allan, Courtney Eaton, and Liv Hewson were cast in recurring roles. In June 2021, it was reported Warren Kole, Peter Gadiot, Keeya King, Alex Wyndham, Sarah Desjardins, Kevin Alves, and Alexa Barajas would also star.
Filming
Filming for the pilot episode took place in Los Angeles in November 2019. Several scenes from the pilot were filmed on the ski slopes of Mammoth Mountain, while some high school-set scenes were filmed in and around John Marshall High School in Los Feliz. Further production on the series was postponed to the spring of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming restarted in Vancouver, Canada in May 2021. Interior filming, including the plane crash scene, took place at The Bridge Studios in Burnaby. Filming wrapped in October, with the young and older cast taking weekly turns to shoot their scenes.
Release
On November 10, 2021, Yellowjackets had its premiere at the Hollywood Legion Post 43 in Los Angeles. The season premiered on Showtime on November 14, 2021. The first episode was released for free by Showtime on its platforms and on YouTube on November 6, 2021.
Home media
Showtime released the first season on DVD and manufactured-on-demand Blu-ray on July 19, 2022.
Reception
Audience viewership The series premiere was watched by 0.246 million viewers, earning a 0.02 in the 18-49 rating demographics on the Nielsen ratings scale. The ninth and penultimate episode was watched by 1.41 million viewers across all platforms, making it the second-most streamed series in Showtime's history behind Dexter: New Blood. The season finale brought 1.3 million viewers across all platforms. Yellowjackets averaged more than 5 million weekly viewers, the highest for a freshman series on the network since Billions in 2016.
Showtime CEO David Nevins stated that the series was not initially a marketing priority for Showtime, but after he and other executives took note of the online buzz generated by younger women on social media early in the show's run, the network spent more during the course of the show to promote it.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the season holds an approval rating of 100% based on 77 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "A genre mashup that blends smoothly, Yellowjackets presents an absorbing mystery with plenty of sting." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 78 out of 100 based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
The first season was met with highly positive reviews from critics, who praised its mix of different genres, ensemble cast, and themes. John Doyle of The Globe and Mail wrote, "It's a blazing start to a series speculating about the dark, seething rage and violence that lurks in young women given the agency to create and control their own society." Phillip Maciak of Slate wrote, "Sometimes [the show is] a haunted-house, political thriller; sometimes it's a cabin-in-the-woods slasher; sometimes it's a semi-satirical feminist suburban revenge comedy; sometimes it's an odd couple, buddy cop, road trip adventure. Whether the show's baseline understanding of itself is in constant, generative flux or in tailspin, Yellowjackets instability is precisely what makes it so fun to watch week in and week out." In Time, Judy Berman said Yellowjackets "is the rare series whose execution improves upon an already strong premise. Each episode has its puzzles and twists, just as each woman has her secrets, all set up carefully enough to make you wonder why you didn't unravel them sooner." The New York Times James Poniewozik observed that the show is "not the 'Lord of the Flies' downer you might expect", as "the horror is cut with hormones and mordant humor".
The cast received widespread praise, with RogerEbert.coms Brian Tallerico calling it "one of the best ensembles of the season". The casting of 1990s teen idols Lynskey, Ricci, and Lewis was lauded as being part of the show's meta commentary. In Salon, Melanie McFarland wrote, "The beauty of Lynskey's and Cypress' separate performances is the way they conceal how dangerous they can be, but just barely." Of Lynskey in particular, Poniewozik wrote the show lets her "play the kind of layered ennui she evoked so well in HBO’s Togetherness. You think you know her character — a quiet housewife beaten down by life — and then she reveals a cutthroat toughness that she deploys psychologically against her surly teenage daughter and physically against a rabbit unlucky enough to rob her garden." In IndieWire, Kristen Lopez wrote that the "fun of Yellowjackets is in watching Lewis and Ricci tear up the scenery and each other," adding that Lewis brings "a necessary grit [with] inner vulnerability" and Ricci sports a "Patrick Bateman-level…of psychopathy that is terrifying."
The actresses playing the teenagers similarly received acclaim. Lopez wrote, "Thatcher, Nelisse, Purnell, Samantha Hanratty as young Misty, and Jasmin Savoy Brown as young Taissa are all fantastic...Where the individual adult actors are such defined personalities...the teen girls have to illustrate not just their dynamics in an ensemble but their state of becoming. In the case of Shauna and Jackie, their relationship is so fraught with those unspoken power dynamics that exist between girls that much of the actresses' power comes from the silent glances between them." The show's 1996 timeline was praised for its coming-of-age plot lines that "[treat] the concerns [of teenage girls] with obvious sympathy", with characters that subvert "lazy teen stereotypes". The latter timeline was described by The New Yorker Doreen St. Félix as a "spiky exploration of the feminist dream deferred". Critics observed that Yellowjackets parallel structure emphasizes the lingering trauma of the survivors' time in the wild.
Though reviews were universally positive, critics noted that the show works best when it does not lean into supernatural mystery box aspects and instead focuses on the horrors of survival and the breakdown of social dynamics. Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Any attempts to connect the past and present versions of the characters are stymied by the gaping hole in the middle, which after six episodes is still filled only with promises that some future twist will explain everything. The series feels so stuck on the question of what happened that it can't even begin to think about what it might mean." However, Han concluded: "In the meantime, Yellowjackets remains too fun to write off just yet. Its gutsiness sets it apart from the usual survival-drama fare, and its performances suggest a deeper story even if we don't know what it is quite yet."
Accolades