There was a time—back in the fog-drenched glow of 2021—when Yellowjackets debuted like a hallucinogenic blast of cold air to the prestige TV landscape. It promised blood, trauma, and female rage, dipped in ’90s nostalgia and slow-burn supernaturalism. The initial season was captivating. Creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, previously known for their work on Narcos and Dispatches from Elsewhere, had a vision: crash a plane full of teenage soccer girls, splice the story between their feral wilderness survival and their adult breakdowns, and give the audience a slow-drip mystery flavored with pagan horror. It was part Lord of the Flies, part Lost, and it worked—until Season 2 got a little too high on its own pine-scented supply.

Now, in its third season, Yellowjackets attempts a soft reboot with mixed results. It sets fire to its own mythology—sometimes literally—and tries to reclaim the anarchic brilliance that made Season 1 so intoxicating. The result is a season that’s bolder, darker, and more emotionally raw, but also one that can’t quite decide if it’s lost or just evolving.

Season 3 opens in the aftermath of destruction. The cabin’s gone. The cold has broken. The girls have survived winter—by any means necessary—and begun to rebuild. Their new community is stitched together with rabbit pens, makeshift huts, and deeply suspect rituals. Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) and Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) emerge as pragmatic leaders. Lottie (Courtney Eaton) doubles down on mysticism. Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) is still MIA, assumed dead. The wilderness timeline is calmer, but it hums with menace.

Meanwhile, the adult Yellowjackets are staggering through the emotional crater left by Natalie’s (Juliette Lewis) death. Misty (Christina Ricci) is raw and unraveling. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is in denial, juggling maternal guilt with bloodlust. Taissa is haunted—again. Van (Lauren Ambrose), now central, is navigating cancer, love, and the eldritch feeling that “It” wants more.

The season splits itself, again, between these two timelines—but now the duality feels more like tension than symmetry. The girls are building a society. The women are barely holding theirs together.

Season 3 leans hard into its most haunting question: what exactly is the wilderness?

Rather than answering it, the show plays its strongest hand—ambiguity. The forest, once just a backdrop, becomes an intelligent, malevolent force. It listens. It hungers. It changes them. It is less a setting and more a character, or god, or trauma metaphysicalized.

There’s a recurring sound—grinding gears, industrial churn, human screams—that feels like something out of Silent Hill. The show flirts with supernatural horror, but smartly stays noncommittal. Is this magic? Madness? Collective trauma? Who knows. And that’s the point.

Religious imagery also spikes hard this season. Lottie’s mushroom-fueled rituals veer into cult territory, with the girls donning flower crowns and sacrificing rabbits like it’s Midsommar: Junior Varsity Edition. Shauna, who hates all this woo-woo crap, becomes the perfect atheist foil—a bloodstained Cassandra snarling at her class’s descent into pagan cosplay.

Let’s get this out of the way: the writing in Season 3 is a mixed bag. At its best, it’s sharp, character-driven, and brutally funny. The trial scene in Episode 4 (“12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis”) is a highlight: a chaotic, kangaroo-court fever dream where Misty defends Ben with the logic of a deranged camp counselor while Shauna plots sabotage like a budding warlord.

But the adult timeline? Still a mess. Characters wander without purpose, and emotional stakes vanish as the narrative dodges clarity like it owes it money. Despite powerhouse performances (Melanie Lynskey deserves an Emmy just for a single bone-dry monologue), the grown-ups feel like shadows of their younger selves. There’s more sitcom than scar tissue in some scenes.

Season 3 tries to prune its overgrowth—Lottie’s cult is gone, Tai’s political career barely gets lip service—but it’s still weighed down by too many half-baked arcs and unresolved threads. The plot lacks propulsion. It wants to be mythology-rich, but often feels like it’s stalling to avoid showing its hand.

Visually, this season is gorgeous. The natural lighting in the wilderness sequences is almost dreamlike, with cold golds and endless twilight. Dream sequences—especially one where Lottie leads a classroom of ghosts—are standout setpieces that blend surreal horror with psychological revelation.

And the music? Still rules. The ‘90s needle drops are carefully deployed, and the haunting original score continues to do emotional heavy lifting. A standout moment features a meal prep scene soundtracked by Cass Elliot’s “Make Your Own Kind of Music”—a wink to Lost, and a reminder of just how deep this show is in conversation with its genre ancestors.

Strengths:

• Incredible performances across the board—Ricci, Lynskey, Hewson, and Thatcher are electric.
• Visceral, emotionally authentic horror.
• Top-tier dream sequences that feel like horror poetry.
• Aesthetic and tone that nails the line between camp and dread.

Critiques:

• The adult storyline lacks purpose and coherence. Emotional beats feel disconnected.
• Too many plotlines, not enough payoff.
• Shaky internal logic—these kids are building furniture out of sticks and managing livestock like it’s Survivor: Pagan Village, and no one’s even thinking about escaping?
• Lottie’s arc is frustratingly muted post-cult collapse.
• Still no answers about “It.” (And yes, that’s a feature, not a bug—but damn.)

Yellowjackets Season 3 is a welcome return to form—but not a full redemption. It’s visually arresting, thematically ambitious, and often brilliant in short bursts. Yet it’s weighed down by uneven writing and a present-day timeline that still hasn’t found its footing. If Season 1 was a near-masterpiece and Season 2 a misfire, Season 3 is the bloody compromise: flawed, gripping, and willing to burn its past to find its future.

It’s not flying high anymore, but it’s not crashing either.

TL;DR: Season 3 of Yellowjackets is a beautifully brutal attempt at a narrative reset. It ditches some dead weight, doubles down on forest freakiness, and gets back to what it does best: fucked-up girls doing fucked-up things in fucked-up woods. It’s messy, moody, and worth the trip—just maybe pack a compass.

Recommended for: Fans of female-driven horror who enjoy their trauma slow-cooked and served with mushrooms. Viewers who liked Lost but wished it had more cannibalism and less Jack.
Not recommended for: People who think “the Antler Queen” sounds like a drag name and not a lifestyle. Anyone hoping for answers.

Creator: Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson
Network: Showtime, Paramount+
Released February 14, 2025