‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Plot Revealed in New Teaser
The past is coming back to haunt hunt the surviving Yellowjackets once again.
A terrifying new teaser trailer that was released on Saturday during fan event CCXP 2024 in S?o Paulo, Brazil, dropped the first hints at what season three of the hit coming-of-age survival horror series has on its menu when it returns on Feb. 14.
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The footage (below) opens with a warning that the past will come back to “hunt,” and the words are overlaid on top of someone wearing the Yellowjackets team survivors’ infamous cannibalism mask, indicating what creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco have warned us along: More cannibalism is coming.
Yellowjackets follows dual timelines in the past and present to tell the saga of a team of wildly talented high school girls soccer players (the Yellowjackets) who become the unlucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the remote northern wilderness.
In the past timeline, the teaser finds the survivors in the wilderness at their lowest point yet following the season two ending, which left the starving group without shelter. “I can’t believe we didn’t eat them first,” says Sophie Nélisse, who plays young Shauna (played by Melanie Lynskey in the present timeline), as the group continues to infight over who is in charge.
Season two’s 1996 wilderness story left several bodies in its wake (including one that led to an ensemble feast; another, a harrowing mourning; and a third that remains up in the air) and saw the teens anointing a new leader as they turn to cannibalism to survive amid losing the house they were living in and finding themselves in their most precarious position yet.
In the teaser footage for the present-day timeline, the survivors played by Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell find themselves once again threatened by their past. “Someone wants to kill us,” says Lynskey’s Shauna. “The only people who know about this are either us or dead,” says Ambrose’s Van. The teaser even includes ghost Jackie (played by Ella Purnell) coming back to haunt present-day Shauna.
The first season brought the adult survivors together when someone threatened to expose their past. But this time, the reunited group will be taking on their next enemy without one of their own. Missing from the season three cast list is original star Juliette Lewis, who — spoiler alert! — was killed off when her character, adult Natalie (played by Sophie Thatcher in the past) was accidentally lethally dosed by Misty (played by Ricci in the present-day timeline and Samantha Hanratty in the past). When speaking about her departure from the series, Lewis left the door open to possibly return in some form but also said goodbye to the show. “I thought they wrapped up the characters really beautifully, and I just love good writing, so I was happy to be a part of it,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
Guest star Hilary Swank also makes her debut at the end of the teaser. She whispers “shit,” appears to be terrified and runs away from something horrifying.
The season three cast of Yellowjackets also includes Warren Kole, Sarah Desjardins, Elijah Wood returning in a recurring role, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, Kevin Alves and Steven Krueger (who plays the Yellowjackets coach). Also joining the cast in a guest role is Joel McHale.
Here’s the logline: “The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to savage clans, while also tracking the lives they’ve attempted to piece back together nearly 25 years later, proving that the past is never really past and what began out in the wilderness is far from over.“
The first-look photos (below) also lend more insight into season three, including showing the teens in survival mode and the present-day cast at what could presumably be the funeral for Nat (in the main photo at the top of the story).
Yellowjackets is executive produced by Lyle, Nickerson and Lisco. Drew Comins of Creative Engine is executive producer along with Jeff W. Byrd, Sarah L. Thompson, Ameni Rozsa and Brad Van Arragon. The series is produced for Showtime by Lionsgate Television and distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution outside of Paramount+ markets.
Season three launches Feb. 14 with two episodes streaming and on demand for Paramount+ and Paramount+ With Showtime subscribers before its linear Showtime debut two days later on Sunday, Feb. 16.
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