Critics are absolutely loving Yellowjackets season three: ‘Shocking and gripping once again’

The Yellowjackets season 3 release schedule has been confirmed, and we’re thrilled that our favourite teen cannibals are back – plus they’re gayer and more unhinged than ever, according to critics.

Warning this article contains spoilers for Yellowjackets season 3.

The Emmy-nominated survival series follows a New Jersey high school girls’ football team who, when travelling for a national tournament in Seattle, crash in the Canadian wilderness and must work together to survive – some even turning to cannibalism. The show is set in dual timelines, chronicling the team’s time in the wild in the 1990s as well as the impact their time in isolation continues to have on the older selves in the present.

Nearly two years on from the Yellowjackets season 2 finale, the show is back on our screens streaming weekly on Paramount+. New episodes of Yellowjackets season 3 will be released every Friday from February to April 2025.

The synopsis for the season promises: “Distrust in leadership and tension within the team jeopardise their chances of being rescued. In the present, long-buried secrets from their pasts begin to surface.”

Premiering on Valentine’s Day – Friday 14 February – the third season of the hit thriller picks up a couple of weeks after the season two finale and hits refresh on the series – with fans and critics alike having felt it had hit a slump.

“It was a bad end to a bad latter half of the season,” Molly Moss write for Radio Times, “but what it did do was wipe the slate clean completely. And fortunately, Yellowjackets season 3 makes the most of this new start, taking the show in a fresh direction that is once again exciting and gripping.”

In the four episodes Moss was given prior to the premiere, she said the “storylines in both timelines feel shocking and gripping once again, with loads of jump scares and truly unexpected twists keeping the audience on their toes and recapturing the magic of season 1”.

Similarly, for The Guardian, Rebecca Nicholson says the show returns “having undergone a necessary reset” and “in taking a torch to things, it appears to have rediscovered that initial anarchic energy.”

“It is funny and zingy, and occasionally scary, too,” Nicholson wrote.

Although, after watching the four episodes she was given access to “it isn’t clear whether Yellowjackets has entirely shrugged off the issues of season two.”

For Yahoo! David Opie declares Yellowjackets is “gayer than ever” in season 3, something which will – no doubt – thrill fans.

From the moment Yellowjackets hit our screens it attracted a huge sapphic viewership for its female-centred storytelling, iconic cast that includes LGBTQ+ actors Jasmin Savoy Brown, Liv Hewson and Nicole Maines, and the very simple fact that the show is about teenage girls – a football team no less – being pushed to the limits of their sanity and humanity and wanting to physically devour each other. Just normal girly things, basically.

The show is awash with sapphic tension – canon and non-canon – and whilst up until season 3 Taissa and Van have been the main WLW couple, fans have been completely convinced Shauna’s jealousy about her best friend Jackie was always something a little more repressed.

One viral Tumblr post summarises it pretty well: “i havent watched yellowjackets yet but im very intrigued by the fandoms ability to ship every single one of those girls with one another and also provide irrefutable evidence for each pairing. like im convinced by every single gifset. ill be damned if those two girls arent in love. which two girls am i talking about? doesnt matter. god bless.”

Season 3, however, gives Shauna a queer reveal when Melissa kisses her at the end of episode two and she – very eagerly – kisses back.

“Chalk it up to team spirit or teen hormones all you want, but there’s definitely more going on here than just a cheeky snog. Shauna’s fixation on Jackie always felt a bit suspect, after all, and with her former dinner bestie now out of the picture, it was only a matter of time before she officially signed up as one of the alphabet people,” Opie wrote.

Yellowjackets season 3 release schedule: new episodes air every Friday on Paramount+.