Yellowjackets fans left in wilderness as series three pushed back to 2025

Following the success of the first two seasons of Yellowjackets, fans of the hit show now face an extended wait for its return.

The teen cannibal thriller follows a girls’ high school football team as they attempt to survive in the wild after their plane crashes. Since first airing in 2021, it has acquired a vast LGBTQ+ fan base, partly because of its dramatic rivalries and sapphic storylines.

But the third season will now not air until sometime in 2025, it has been announced.

The show’s cast is split as the storyline jumps between the survivors’ past and present, with Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Liv Hewson and Courtney Eaton among the cast in the scenes set in 1996. In the present day, their older counterparts are played by Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell.

The series has picked up 10 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including one for outstanding drama series, missing out on a gong most recently to the juggernaut Succession. 

The writers’ and actors’ strikes delayed the production of the show’s third series as pre-production ceased one day after the first walkout began in May, the same month the final episode of season two aired.

And it’s safe to say that fans aren’t happy.

“My day is ruined, what you mean 2025?” one fan asked on X, formerly Twitter.

“Someone else joked: “Yellowjackets isn’t coming back until 2025… someone in this fandom is getting cannibalised before then.”

yellowjackets isn’t coming back until 2025..at this rate someone in this fandom is definitely getting cannibalised before then

— ken (@lotttiematthews) January 16, 2024

Others had more practical suggestions for the trajectory the show should take.

“The only way I’ll accept Yellowjackets 2025 is if they go full gore, full pain. All hands on deck for writing. Take it back to gorgeous cinematography. Give me unapologetic storylines. Give me raw pain, happiness, the in between,” one devotee advised.

the only way I’ll accept yellowjackets 2025 is if they go full gore full pain. all hands on deck for writing. take it back to gorgeous cinematography. give me unapologetic storylines. give me raw pain, happiness, the in between.

— Akcabz (@akcabz_) January 16, 2024

Last year, Lynskey who plays grown-up Shauna, addressed her status as a queer favourite.

Speaking to Gay Times, she said: “I’m big on pushing the homosexual agenda. I don’t really know how me just being cast in something does that, but I think it should be pushed. It’s a big agenda for me.”

Meanwhile, Hewson, who plays Van as a teenager, remarked that they’ve “never been happier” since undergoing top surgery. They realised they were non-binary in 2021, at the age of 16.

“[I had] a discomfort with, and alienation, from my body, and a need to control it or be in charge of it, or shape it,” they told Teen Vogue.

“I came across the term non-binary for the first time, and [thought]: ‘Oh, that’s 100 per cent what my deal. That explains everything’.”