Culture

Here’s what we know about Yellowjackets season three

Jan 17 2024
Written by Emily Maskell

The cast of Yellowjackets in the woodland with a silhouette with horns behind them.

Yellowjackets season three is delayed until 2025. (Showtime)

After two seasons of drama, intrigue and teen cult shenanigans, season three of the thriller series Yellowjackets will arrive later than we hoped.

The delay is chalked up to the actor and writer strikes that put the industry on pause last year, Deadline reports. Now, the third season of the hit show isn’t expected to arrive until 2025.

The Emmy-nominated survival series is set in 1996 and follows a New Jersey high school girls’ football team travelling for a tournament when their plane crashes.

The surviving team members are left stranded and must work together to survive in the wilderness… some even turn to cannibalism as the show descends into a Lord of the Flies-esque drama.

The show also features a narrative thread set 25 years later where the survivors are wrestling with their long-standing trauma of the incident.

Yellowjackets fans also applaud the show for its queer representation. There are several queer characters on the show, including Taissa (Tawny Cypress and Jasmin Savoy Brown), Vanessa ‘Van’ (Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose), and Ben (Steven Krueger).

Though, not all hope is lost! We do have some more information about the forthcoming series that will keep the Yellowjackets love alive.

What do we know about the plot for Yellowjackets season three?

Season two of Yellowjackets descended into a psychological horror as the young women’s coming-of-age narratives became dominated by trauma.

According to the timeline, the characters have now been stranded for around 10 months. Meaning, there’s now nine months until they’re rescued… plenty of time for more horrors to occur!

On Variety’s ‘Awards Circuit’ podcast, director Karyn Kusama – who directed series two’s finale – shared her vision for what the next season would entail.

“The concept of that immediate aftermath of re-entry into the world, to me, there’s a whole season worth of material there,” Kusama noted.

“And the fact that this is such a long game that each of these characters is facing, in terms of reorienting themselves to whatever normalcy is supposed to be. I’m sure we’re going to learn that their normal is a lot different than our normal.

“There’s a lot that needs to be figured out between Season 2 and Season 3.”

Who’s in the cast for season three?

Yellowjackets features an impressive ensemble cast including Sophie Nélisse, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, and Courtney Eaton as well as the aforementioned actors.

For season two, all the main cast returned to their roles: Melanie Lynskey reprised her role as the adult version of Shauna Sadecki, while Jasmin Savoy Brown and Tawny Cypress returned to depict the ruthless Taissa Turner.

Samantha Hanratty and Christina Ricci played the once-ostracised Misty Quigley, while Sophie Thatcher and Juliette Lewis appeared as the kidnapped Natalie Scatorccio.

Thinking about them pic.twitter.com/ViX9Yklnde
— Yellowjackets (@yellowjackets96) January 12, 2024

Courtney Eaton and Simone Kessell returned to play cult leader Lottie Matthews, while Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose played character of Vanessa ‘Van’ Palmer.

Within the ensemble, Hewson has been especially lauded for playing the young Van.

The non-binary actor’s portrayal of the young, hardened survivalist quickly became queer fan-favourite and many now consider Van the show’s main character.

Season two also featured some new castings. Notably, The Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood joined the show as weird amateur detective Walter.

With the main cast previously signing on for a second season, we can be hopeful that the central actors will return to reprise their roles for a third instalment.

When does season three go into production?

The finale of Yellowjackets season two premiered in March 2023.

Following the love of the show, season three was quickly green-lit. However, pre-production and the writer’s room for the new series were shut down due to the writer’s strike, which began in May.

Though we may be waiting longer than we hoped for season three, the show creators have previously teased potential ideas for a Yellowjackets spin-off.

Showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson told The Hollywood Reporter that the show has the potential to become a franchise.

“We’re aware that it’s something they’re interested in, and we certainly aren’t closed off to the idea,” Lyle shared. “It would have to make sense. We have a couple of ideas.”

However, Nickerson expressed that it’s a major challenge to write such ideas when there’s so much pressure for the series to be good.

“As a very insecure person, everything I’ve ever written has been such a terrifying experience that this actually doesn’t feel any different,” he said. “It takes me forever to send an email, so I live in that baseline of pressure”.