Imagine that after years of a school soccer team being bad, their varsity team goes on a winning streak. When they are on their way to Nationals, their plane crashes. That is what happens to the varsity girls’ soccer team in the show “Yellowjackets.”
With troubles happening both right after the crash and 20 years after the crash, the audience follows the team and sees how they deal with this very traumatic experience. The show jumps between the teen timeline and the adult timeline, which gives insights to what happens later. These jumps show who will definitely survive and who has a chance of dying.
Something that this show is known for is its casting. The adult and teen versions of each other look similar. For example, one of the main characters is Vanessa “Van” Palmer. Liv Hewson plays the teen version of Van, and Lauren Ambrose plays the adult version. These two actors look very similar once Hewson and Ambrose add the stage makeup up. Ambrose looks just like an older version of Hewson. This is also true about the casting for Misty Quiggley. Sammi Hanratty plays teen Misty, and Christina Ricci plays adult Misty. Before Hanratty puts on the wig, they look very different, but with the wig, they look very similar.
The first episode starts by following the teen versions of the Yellowjackets. It shows them winning semi-finals, then getting ready to go to Nationals. Halfway through the episode, it switches to the adult timeline in 2020. It shows how deeply the wilderness has affected each of the surviving girls. It then swaps once again to the team in the teen timeline where they are boarding the plane. After they take off, their pilot has to take a detour through a different set of mountains due to the weather. Finally, at the very end of the episode, it shows the girls’ plane starting to crash.
The first season shows the girls going through their first couple of months out in the wilderness, figuring out what they need to do to survive. Season two is their first winter out in the wilderness. This is when some characters start descending into madness. Finally, season three is the teens going through their first full summer and fall in the wilderness without the cabin.This shows the girls descending further into madness.
The show has very good cinematography. It sometimes looks very dark, almost like a horror movie. The cinematographer in season three was changed to Shasta Spahn. There have been some comments made on social media like Instagram and TikTok that the cinematography visually declined and didn’t look as good during the third season compared to seasons one and two. Personally I think that yes the show did go through a change, but I don’t think it looks better or worse, just different.
Overall, I think it is a very good show and would recommend it to people looking for a dark, but still at times warm hearted show.