Is Yellowjackets Based on a True Story? All About the Gory Aftermath of the 1972 Plane Crash That Inspired the Series

Showtime’s ‘Yellowjackets’ is loosely based on the 1972 Andes Mountain plane crash

Showtime’s Yellowjackets is loosely based on a devastating plane crash.

In 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes mountains, leaving only 16 survivors. To stay alive in the brutally cold conditions, they resorted to cannibalism and were eventually rescued after 72 days.

Streaming on Netflix and Paramount+, Yellowjackets, starring Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis, tells an eerily similar story of a high school women’s soccer team whose aircraft goes down in the Canadian wilderness in 1996.

While stranded for 19 months, they do whatever is needed to survive, which comes back to haunt them when an anonymous blackmailer threatens to reveal their secrets 25 years later.

Creator Ashley Lyle, who teamed up with her husband Bart Nickerson to write Yellowjackets, told NPR that she was “absolutely” inspired by what happened to the Uruguayan amateur rugby team as well as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. But she was determined to tell a similar story from a female perspective.

“There was a girl in my high school who poisoned another girl’s food for fun,” she told The New York Times in 2021 of more real-life moments that inspired her show. “Only showing girls getting along is not painting a full picture.”

Here’s everything to know about the Showtime series Yellowjackets and the events that inspired it.

Is Yellowjackets based on a true story?

Yellowjackets was inspired by and is loosely based on the 1972 Andes Mountain plane crash.

On Oct. 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, carrying five crew members and 40 passengers, crashed in the Andes Mountains. The aircraft had been chartered to take the Uruguayan amateur rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, for a match but went down after striking a mountain and losing both wings.

The crash killed 12 people and left many injured. Provisions — mostly candy bars and wine — ran out within a week and passengers resorted to eating corpses. Between the freezing conditions and lack of food and water, six others died. An avalanche ultimately buried eight more.

Desperate, two men made the treacherous trek to the village of Los Maitenes, Chile, where they called for help. The remaining survivors were then rescued by helicopter. After 72 days in the wilderness, a total of 16 passengers made it out alive.

Yellowjackets was also inspired by the iconic 1954 novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The book follows a group of boys who find themselves stranded on an island after their plane crashes. With no adult survivors, the boys must fend for themselves — and the desire to survive leads them to act unimaginably.

What have the survivors of the 1972 Andes Mountain plane crash said about their experience?

In 2016, survivor Roberto Canessa, who wrote the book I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives, spoke to PEOPLE about being stranded in the Andes Mountains with his rugby teammates at just 19 years old.

“It’s not how you survive but why you survive,” the pediatric cardiologist said in 2016. “My mother [once] told me, ‘If one of my children died, I couldn’t make it through life, I would die of sadness.’ So I had to go back and tell my mother, ‘Don’t cry anymore, I’m alive.’ So I think that was the driving force for me.”

Nearly a decade later, he spoke with Today about resorting to cannabilism.

“I thought if I would die, I would be proud that my body would be used for someone else,” he said of the decision. Canessa was one of the two men who made the harrowing trek out of the mountains — an effort that ultimately led to his teammates’ rescue.

Where is Yellowjackets filmed?

Yellowjackets is mostly filmed at Bridge Studios near Vancouver, Canada. The production team utilizes the complex, which features 15 acres of soundstages, to shoot both indoor and outdoor scenes.

According to production designer Margot Ready, who worked on Yellowjackets season 2, she and her crew got very creative when tasked with creating wintery forest scenes on soundstages.

“I’ve learned over the years that if you mix real materials with fake material, somehow your brain buys it,” she told IndieWire. “So we brought in 30 percent real trees [and engineered] them to hang from the ceiling. If you could get a real tree with real bark in every frame, then your brain accepts the foam trees [around it].”

As for all the snow, Ready said, “We used up so much Krendl-blown snow that the entire province of British Columbia ran out. We had to order more from Alberta.”

When will season 3 of Yellowjackets premiere?

Season 3 of Yellowjackets is set to premiere in early 2025.

Meanwhile, fans are anxiously awaiting the “bonus episode between seasons” that Lyle teased back in June 2023.