Yellowjackets Season 3’s Timeline Comments Teases More Of The Long-Awaited Rescue Storyline
In an interview about season 3, Yellowjackets co-creator Ashley Lyle confessed they’re slowly working to bridge the 25-year gap between the show’s two timelines, including finally exploring what happened after the girls were rescued. Notably, what distinguishes Yellowjackets from similar survival stories like Lord of the Flies or Prime Video’s The Wilds is its usage of a past and present timeline. Not only does the show develop what the all-girls soccer team underwent after being stranded in the Ontario wilderness, but Yellowjackets season 2 ending continued to reveal the effects of that traumatic experience on the now-adult survivors.
Creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson built the show with that two-timeline concept in mind, and had, since day one, enough material from both storylines to last five seasons. While most of season 1 and 2 covers the Yellowjackets characters’ survival efforts after their plane crashes, that may soon change. The past timeline, starting in 1996, has explained roughly 10 out of the 19 months the group spent in the wild. In contrast, the present timeline, starting in 2021, has presented approximately only two months — leaving a giant gap between the two storylines that season 3 will begin to bridge.
Yellowjackets Season 3’s “Merging” Timelines Could Mean The Rescue Comes Into Focus
Yellowjackets is poised to explain more mysteries in season 3. For its first 2 seasons, the Yellowjackets creators intentionally withheld some events that happened in the wilderness and shortly after the survivors’ rescue, expanding the mystery of how the characters became who they are in the present. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ashley Lyle confessed season 3 “is really when we start bringing those pieces together,” confirming the show will answer its “big questions.” Notably, there is a wide gap between the two versions of the characters, which can be bridged by delving into their transition back into civilization.
As its last episodes finally built up to a large portion of what Shauna, Natalie, Taissa, Missy, Lottie, and Van did and suffered in that cruel winter, their actions and behaviors as adults started to make sense — mainly as we saw the teens surrender to ritualistic cannibalism as a way to honor the supernatural forces of the wild. Future seasons of the show need to respond to how the youths dealt with this once they were rescued. This could also explain whether the supernatural aspects were hallucinations or a real presence that followed them back home.
Why It Makes Sense For Yellowjackets Season 3 To Feature The Rescue Timeline
Yellowjackets Season 2 Set Up The Rescue Timeline And The Mysteries It Solves
Yellowjackets season 2 teased a glimpse into the rescue timeline by quickly showing the group getting off of a plane where many media outlets waited for their return. Although nothing else was shown regarding how the rescue came to be, or which other characters got back, the short clip perfectly sets up the Yellowjackets’ return and what it might look like. Lyle, for her part, confirmed season 3 will play off of the show’s fractured structure to explore this:
For each of these pairings and for each of these characters, the merging, or the overlapping of the past and present, happens in a very different way. It’s very specific to the characters .
If the show previously only showed bits and pieces of the unseen timelines for specific characters, Yellowjackets season 3 will begin to attach all of their puzzle pieces. Notably, season 2 gave flashbacks to Lottie’s childhood and her experience post-rescue, as she was subjected to harsh psychiatric treatments. This revelation starkly contrasted with Lottie’s seemingly composed and charming adult version, provoking a lingering curiosity about what Shauna, Natalie, Taissa, Missy, and Van experienced after being rescued.
While the adult characters in Yellowjackets are well-developed now, it is still not entirely clear how they came to be. Shauna’s marriage to Jeff, Van’s estrangement from the group, Taissa’s prolonged ritualistic sleepwalking and even Natalie and Jay’s friendship over the years are all character elements that demand further exploration. Yellowjackets season 3’s focus on the rescue storyline should begin to answer disparities between past and present versions of the protagonists, successfully showing the extent of what they’ve been through.
