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We are still buzzing about Yellowjackets. The Showtime drama series, which has now been nominated for 7 Primetime Emmys, is coming back for season 2. The season 1 finale aired in January 2022, and fans have been anxiously awaiting news about the second season ever since. The latest news? The reveal of who will play adult Van.
Although there are a number of mysteries within the show — including what really happened out there in the wilderness — there’s a lot we already know about the highly-anticipated second season. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait too long for more. HollywoodLife has rounded up all the key updates about Yellowjackets season 2.
Will There Be A Yellowjackets Season 2?
Yes, Yellowjackets will return for season 2. Showtime renewed the series in December 2021, while the show was in the midst of its first season. Yellowjackets was already critically acclaimed with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and its audience continued to grow. The show became Showtime’s second-most streamed series in the network’s history.
“Yellowjackets has been an unadulterated sensation for Showtime,” Gary Levine, president of entertainment for Showtime Networks, said in a statement. “We are overwhelmed by both the acclaim and the audience response to our series, including several ‘Best of 2021’ lists, a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and snowballing viewership. Clearly, there is a hunger for originality and audacity, and our incredible showrunners Ashley, Bart, and Jonathan, along with their pitch-perfect cast, have delivered that and so much more. I can’t wait to see the surprises they have in store for us in season two.”
Showrunners Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle, and Bart Nickerson also released a statement about season 2: “We are beyond grateful for the incredible support we’ve received for this show — both from Gary Levine, Jana Winograde, David Nevins, Amy Israel, Dave Binegar, and the rest of the fantastic Showtime team, and from our growing team of ‘Citizen Detectives’ at home. We can’t wait to continue telling this story with our amazing cast and crew. The saga continues!”
Yellowjackets Season 2 Release Date
Yellowjackets doesn’t have a set-in-stone release date at the moment, but Levine told Vulture in January 2022 that Showtime is “working towards a premiere at the end of 2022. He hopes that Yellowjackets will stay on an “annual cycle. I think our audiences deserve that, and I also think that when you have a show that has this kind of a momentum, you don’t want to let it dissolve.”
Season 2 filming has not started yet. When HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Samantha Hanratty, who plays teen Misty, she did not know when production would begin. “I literally have not heard from anybody… I am so out of the loop right now, and I’m really hoping to get into the loop because I want to know everything. I don’t think anybody has really heard anything yet. I really would love to know when we start filming and where we start filming. If we’re going to move up our lives, I want to know where we’re going. Are we going back to Canada? I don’t know. So I want to know as much as everybody else does. I think I know very little to none though, about this upcoming season. I know a little bit about where Misty is kind of heading, which is cool because I needed to know that for where her mindset was. I’m like, ‘Does she believe in this supernatural stuff going on or not?” And I got a more of an elaborate answer than I was expecting, so I was pretty excited about that.”
As of August 2022, the show has still not started production on season 2. However, the showrunners gave an update on the release of season 2. “We’re looking into the first quarter of 2023,” Lyle told The Wrap. “We are on a very similar production track in terms of time as we were last season, although of course, we have to shoot an additional episode because we had already shot the pilot the last time. I believe that we are going to finish shooting in about February and we’ll be airing sometime shortly after that.”
What Happened In Season 1?
Yellowjackets follows a high school soccer team on their way to the 1996 national championships. Their plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness, and the surviving members are left stranded. Many passengers, including the team’s head coach, die in the crash. Ben, the assistant coach, has his leg partially amputated by Misty after a piece of the plane lands on top of him.
The survivors begin their fight to stay alive and have no idea that Misty destroyed the black box that could have helped the outside world locate them. They stumble upon a cabin and an abandoned plane in the middle of the woods. There’s also a strange symbol that begins to show up. Roles are established amongst the group, with Natalie and Travis becoming hunters because they know how to use a rifle. Laura Lee believes she can fly the plane after studying the manual, but she dies a fiery death when the plane explodes in mid-air.
Taissa decides to make a go of trying to find help. She brings along a few members of the crew, including her girlfriend Van. Van is brutally attacked by a wolf but manages to survive after some gnarly stitches. Lottie’s authority amongst the group begins to rise as she feels there’s a dark energy in the woods. Shauna discovers she’s pregnant with Jeff’s baby, and Jackie discovers the shocking news after reading Shauna’s journals.
The penultimate episode is a trip — literally — after the group is accidentally poisoned with mushrooms Misty meant to use on Coach Ben. Travis and Jackie have sex before Shauna, Lottie, and others attack Travis and nearly kill him. Natalie stops Shauna before she slits Travis’ throat. The finale ends with Jackie’s death. Jackie and Shauna got into a fight the night before, and Jackie decides to sleep outside. The next morning, Shauna sees that it snowed and realizes Jackie fell asleep and died out there. While still searching for Javi, who ran off, Travis tells Natalie that he loves her.
In the present day, the survivors are still trying to grapple with what happened 25 years before. Natalie is fresh out of rehab, while Taissa is running for state senate. Shauna is married to Jeff and has a teenage daughter. Misty works at a nursing home.
Natalie, Taissa, Shauna, and Misty receive a postcard with the wilderness symbol on it. When Natalie and Misty go searching for Travis, they discover him dead in a barn. While it appears he killed himself, Natalie is convinced he was murdered. Shauna begins an affair with a younger man, but she ends up killing him when she believes he is blackmailing her. Turns out, her own husband was blackmailing her and others to help save his business.
The final moments of the finale feature Natalie being kidnapped by a group wearing necklaces that feature the symbol from the wilderness. The woman she asked to find out who emptied Travis’ bank account calls and leaves a message asking who Lottie Matthews is. Taissa wins the state senate race as her wife Simone discovers Taissa’s secret shrine that includes the head and heart of the family dog that went missing.
In the very first episode of the series, there is a flash-forward to the middle of winter while the team is still stuck in the woods. A young woman dies after falling into a trap and is later sliced open. The next scene shows survivors eating what appears to be the woman. There is an “Antler Queen” surrounded by 6 others. The only person’s face we’ve seen is Misty’s so far.
Yellowjackets Cast & Crew
The entire cast is expected to return for season 2 of Yellowjackets. The adult cast includes Melanie Lynskey as Shauna, Tawny Cypress as Taissa, Juliette Lewis as Natalie, Christina Ricci as Misty, and Warren Kole as Jeff. Lauren Ambrose joined the cast of season 2 as adult Van, Showtime announced on August 11.
The teenage cast features Sophie Nélisse as Shauna, Jasmin Savoy Brown as Taissa, Sophie Thatcher as Natalie, Samantha Hanratty as Samantha, Liv Hewson as Van, Courtney Eaton as Lottie, Steven Krueger as Ben, Kevin Alves as Travis, Keeya King as Akilah, and Alexa Barajas as Mari.
Since Jackie dies in the finale, Ella Purnell is not expected to return as a series regular. Nélisse told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY that Jackie was “only supposed to be in the first season.” However, Nickerson revealed to TVLine that Jackie will likely be seen again in the future.
“We definitely have an idea for a way to continue to use her, and she’ll certainly be a presence, probably throughout the run of the show at least,” he said. “The gravity of her character will be felt throughout the constellation, no matter what. And we would love to specifically use her for a few things that we have cooking.”
Yellowjackets Season 2 Plot
The first season ended with winter arriving, so the stakes will only get higher. Nickerson revealed to THR that the show was pitched as a “five-season idea.”
Lyle also noted in an interview with ELLE that the showrunners have an “endpoint” for the series. “We know what we want to be building toward. As writers, we have to be flexible, especially now that we have this incredible writing staff and you have all these beautiful brains coming together to think about the paces that we can put these characters through. But we do have an endpoint, and we have tent poles along the way of things we know we want to happen. To some extent, the question is just, if we have an idea of how we get there, can we find a better idea?” Following the finale, the showrunners teased to Variety that “we haven’t met all the survivors yet in 2021.”
Nélisse revealed that she thinks Shauna will be wrecked over Jackie’s death moving forward. “I think she’s going to have a really hard time afterward because even though things were going sour with Jackie, I don’t think they’ve even ever really had such a big fight before,” she told HollywoodLife. “So for it leading to her death, I think she’s just going to put all of the pressure on her shoulders. She’s going to be even slightly traumatized probably afterward. We’ll see in season 2 what they write, but I feel like she might even go numb and just go into full-on survival mode and just be emotionless for a while.”
Who Will Play Adult Lottie?
Adult Lottie will be seen in season 2, that is for certain. Fans have tossed out names like Maggie Q, Sandrine Holt, Morena Baccarin, and Olivia Munn as possible candidates. The showrunners confirmed that they already have ideas about who could play the older version of Lottie.
“I can’t really reveal who they are, but yes, we’ve had some really fun, vivid discussions about who could play adult Lottie. I can’t really tell you much more about Lottie in 2021, because I feel like that might kind of spoil the story that we’re marinating on,” they told Variety. In August 2022, Lyle told The Wrap that the role of adult Lottie had been cast but not announced yet.
