‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Is a Gory Mess—in a Very Bad Way

Juliette Lewis’ Natalie died at the conclusion of Yellowjackets’ second season, and considering how inept the show had become—particularly in the adult-centric half of its story in which she was featured—that was a mercy.

The series’ problems continue apace in its latest run—launching Feb. 14, on Paramount+ with Showtime—which spins its wheels so vigorously that it not only gets stuck in the proverbial mud but actively sinks in it. Now a wholly tedious affair whose dual narratives are equally aimless and pointless, it’s a mystery that lacks any terror, coherence, or purpose.

Once again split between two time frames, Yellowjackets reveals that in 1996, the soccer team’s living members have easily recovered from the fiery destruction of their cabin by building a camp—full of teepees, huts, furniture, and animal pens—that’s nicer than any constructed on Survivor.

How they did this (or all turned into Bear Grylls) goes casually unmentioned, thereby neutering the preceding cliffhanger’s drama and underscoring the proceedings’ unseriousness. In the woods, young and still-alive Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) has assumed leadership of the group, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is fuming mad about all sorts of things—including the death of her baby and her jealousy about Natalie’s promotion—and Lottie (Courtney Eaton) keeps acting like a weirdo shaman, convinced that a wilderness spirit is omnipresent, choosing who lives and dies and in constant need of satisfying via prayers, rituals, and other assorted mumbo-jumbo.

Because they’ve learned to hunt, the girls are, at least for the time being, taking a break from cannibalism. That would be a relief to Travis (Kevin Alves)—whose younger brother Javi (Luciano Leroux) was their most recent meal—if he weren’t being prodded by Lottie to repeatedly ingest mushrooms in order to commune with the wilderness.

This is silly, but far worse is that, since we know their survival hinged on eating their own, there’s no longer any impetus to their tale; all that’s left is seeing how the anonymous members of their troupe perish (which is of zero consequence), and learning the true nature of the supernatural entity that periodically howls and screams in the treetops, and which Lottie thinks is some Mother Earth-y deity.

Determined to keep the wilderness’ identity and intentions secret, Yellowjackets barely even hints at answers during the first four episodes of its third season (which were all that were provided to press). Instead, it wastes time on nobody Mari (Alexa Barajas) squabbling with Shauna and heading off into the woods alone, where she falls into a neatly dug pit, dislocates her knee, and is discovered by Coach Ben (Steven Krueger), whom the girls blame for setting their cabin ablaze.

In that same hole, Coach found military suitcases full of provisions, suggesting a potential Lost-ian twist, and he takes Mari captive in his home: the cave beneath a tree where Javi previously hung out. As this happens, the gang back at the camp get increasingly worried about Mari and decide to search for her, with Natalie concerned that they might find Coach, whom she doesn’t think is evil.

None of this gets Yellowjackets’ 1996 storyline anywhere, and it’s not long before one suspects that it doesn’t know what it’s even about anymore. That goes double for its 2021-set action, whose emptiness is so extreme that it turns the series into a torturous chore.

Despite killing Natalie (accidentally) with poison, Misty (Christina Ricci) has suffered no legal consequences for her crime, and she’s drinking a lot while trying to both make nice with her Yellowjackets mates and keep her boyfriend Walter (Elijah Wood) happy.

Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is dealing with her insufferably smug daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins), who gets suspended for playing a prank on bullies and who has the magic ability to make every adult do what she wants by simply demanding it with an infuriating smirk.

Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose), meanwhile, are enjoying their rekindled romance, and though Taissa has gotten over her sleepwalking, she’s seeing faux-scary visions and acting strange, convinced—as is Lottie, who’s soon out of a mental facility and in Shauna’s home—that the wilderness is controlling their fates.

Yellowjackets’ present-day material is almost impressively adrift and enervating, marked by an endless procession of random, hysterically dramatized incidents that have nothing to do with the series’ overarching wilderness-related questions and which underline showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson’s ongoing inability to come up with something meaningful for their grown-up characters to do.

At this point, the protagonists’ young and old versions barely resemble each other, further severing any links between then and now. Worse, however, is that every 2021 thread is filler, lowlighted by Jeff (Warren Kole) dragging Shauna along on a work dinner that accomplishes the trifecta of being irrelevant, unfunny, and unenlightening. After four hours of the new season, there remains no apparent reason why anyone should be invested in Shauna, Lotti, Taissa, Van, and Misty’s helter-skelter, going-nowhere contemporary lives.

Rarely has a show boasted as many easily excisable scenes as Yellowjackets, whose installments are padded with hackneyed nonsense. Shared dreams, hallucinations, hungry wolves, woodland courtroom trials, and a dine-and-dash stunt all make it seem like something is happening, yet that’s just an illusion. There’s no point to having Shauna and Misty cope with a vehicular malfunction while Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie” blares on the soundtrack except to create the impression of action, and the rest of the season’s ’90s shout-outs—complete with Shauna and Jeff goofily referring to marijuana as “chronic”—resonate as unimaginative flourishes designed to keep nostalgia-happy audiences superficially sated.

To a greater degree than its prior outing, Yellowjackets appears to be making things up as it goes along, unsure of the ultimate destination it wants to reach. Stuck playing aggravating nobodies who grow less interesting with each passing chapter, the show’s cast overdoes it in a futile attempt to generate laughs and chills, thereby exacerbating the endeavor’s strained quality. Perhaps Lyle and Nickerson will, in the near future, deliver a course-correcting bombshell that justifies all this frivolousness. For now, though, their once-intriguing series is so devoid of juice that it’s downright desiccated.