WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Trigger warning: death, murder, cannibalism
After becoming a fan of Showtime’s series “Yellowjackets” last year, I eagerly awaited this season’s premiere on February 14. Paramount released the episodes one by one on Fridays, and I went crazy every week concocting theories. The plot was enticing and reasonably complex, enough so that I had to watch the reviews at the start of every episode. This is not a show to put on in the background.
From the phenomenal acting to the disturbing violence to the haunting musical score, Season 3 of “Yellowjackets” delivered upon the promises made by the first two seasons.
I want to convince every single person in the world to watch this show, but I also think the show is even more provocative when you have no idea what comes next. My review will spoil most of the main plot points of Season 3, as well as relevant information from Seasons 1 and 2, so only read it if you know or want to know these things.
Though I am not knowledgeable enough in cinematography to critique this aspect, I highly appreciate the tiny visual details that are present in this series, such as when the team is living in the wilderness. The audience gets to see how this group of lost children created a home for themselves and how they are improving their commune over time. In the summer, they have livestock of ducks, rabbits, and goats. In the winter, we see their faces become gaunt and chapped; the colors in their clothing are clearly fading.
However, the part of any piece of media that draws me in the most is the characters, and “Yellowjackets” delivers on that front. The cast includes household names, like Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Hilary Swank, along with impressive rising stars in the teenage timeline. Sophie Thatcher, who plays Natalie Scatorccio at 17 years old, also recently starred in “Companion” (2025) and “Heretic” (2024).
Shauna Sadecki is definitely my favorite character in the series, both as a teen and an adult. She is the character who I would argue has to face the most complex emotions, as she lost her best friend and her first child, and then struggled with her purpose in adulthood, having a husband who she never loved and a daughter that she doesn’t know how to love.
In her role as adult Sadecki, Melanie Lynskey does a wonderful job depicting this quietly manipulative housewife with a penchant for flesh, and Sophie Nélisse portrays Sadecki as her personality undergoes a drastic change. Over the course of Season 3, teenage Sadecki goes from resentfully writing in her journal to being the “antler queen,” the leader of the group, and a ruthless one at that. At a certain point in this season, every new episode just had me thinking, “What on earth will Shauna do now? How much further can she unhinge?” And she would continue to surprise me.
A core aspect of Sadecki’s character is Jackie Taylor, played by Ella Purnell. Shipman and Taylor’s relationship is very complex, and throughout the first two seasons, many people theorized that there were repressed romantic feelings between them. This was confirmed in Season 3, partially by the development of Sadecki and Melissa’s relationship. I was excited to see where this plot line would go, considering how tumultuous Sadecki’s relationships have been historically.
Melissa, played by Jenna Burgess as a teen and Hillary Swank as an adult, surprised the other characters, and many viewers by actually having a personality. I find her chemistry with Sadecki fascinating, and her adult character still has mysteries to her that I hope will be elaborated upon. Her emergence as a central figure in the teen timeline, as well as her later appearance as an adult, was a great way to introduce someone new to the story without actually bringing in another character. The same effect was achieved with Mari Ibarra, Akilah, and Callie Sadecki, all of whom became fan favorites as more episodes were released.
Three completely new characters were brought in, however, and pretty late into the season. I didn’t find the frog scientists and their guide particularly interesting in that episode about their quest, but they did present the Yellowjackets with an opportunity for escape, and in a very non-linear way that I enjoyed. I am also excited to learn more about Hannah Finch in Season 4, as she has shown herself to be far more ruthless than expected.
The deaths in Season 3 were as impactful as I have come to expect from “Yellowjackets.” The cast was not shy about the fact that this season would be death heavy. I was excited by this because one of my gripes with the first two seasons was the lack of death in the wilderness. There are at least a few background girls they could have gotten rid of without affecting things too much, and to me, it seemed realistic that more of them would die.
I don’t expect everything to be entirely realistic. It’s fiction, and the magical realism of this series is clear in aspects such as prophetic dreams, quid pro quo deaths, and the mysterious force called “It” that follows the survivors home. But as the extent of the team’s mistakes becomes ever clearer, I might argue that there is not actually anything supernatural happening. The characters simply want to believe there is so they can blame it for their actions. They are all highly unreliable narrators.
Lottie Matthews’s perspective is very unique to watch, as her schizophrenia goes untreated in the wilderness, which causes her to have hallucinations and severe lapses in judgement. In Season 1, many of the other kids begin to refer to her as a spiritual leader. They then go on to repeatedly blame her for problems that she was also a victim of, both as a child and as an adult.
The real tragedy of Matthews’s experience as a schizophrenic is that she was not being properly cared for before the crash, either. She was forced to undergo shock therapy, and her parents were largely absent from her life. When the team has the opportunity to leave the wilderness, Matthews refuses. There is an extreme sadness and panic in her eyes—portrayed beautifully by Courtney Eaton—when she says that if she goes back to civilization she “won’t be well.” As the audience we know that she is right, because at that point, she is already dead in the adult timeline.
Ben Scott’s death was one that I kept expecting to come earlier in the season, and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for it. So was he, after his near-execution. Steven Krueger plays this descent into depression beautifully. It is painful to watch Scott become more haggard and disheveled as his health worsens and his despair grows. When Scatorccio kills him, the catharsis is clear, even though he’s in extreme pain. He never belonged in the wilderness like his team did.
I also find it terribly sad that Scott died never being able to come out as gay. If he had made it back to civilization, I think that he likely would have come out to his family and friends, having experienced much worse things than their reactions. But instead, he died surrounded by the high school girls’ soccer team that he had come to hate, and the last person to kiss him was Misty Quigley, as loyal and obsessive as ever.
When the Yellowjackets eat Scott, it is their first act of cannibalism out of ritual rather than necessity. Eating him is presented as a way of honoring his life, which is common reasoning among cultures where ritual cannibalism is practiced. This exemplifies what Matthews said about them not belonging in normal society anymore. They are too far gone, they have broken too many taboos.
We see this in all the women’s adult lives, of course, with Taissa Turner’s alter ego and Quigley’s criminal tendencies, but especially with Sadecki. By the finale of the season, everyone has abandoned her due to her violent and unpredictable behavior. Her family leaves her without a word, and her last two living friends decide to team up against her. She isn’t very popular in the 1997 timeline either at that point, with multiple girls attacking her during the hunt.
The hunt also marked a moment that fans have been waiting for since the first episode of Season 1: the identity of Pit Girl. When Ibarra fell into Scott’s pit earlier in the season, it seemed to me like that meant she wouldn’t be Pit Girl, but tragic irony won. I enjoy that kind of thing, and watching Alexa Barajas run barefoot through the snowy woods was absolutely captivating. It also makes sense that she would be sacrificed during Sadecki’s leadership, considering the hatred between them at the start of the season.
The other big reveal of the finale was even more striking, which was that Callie had been the one to kill Matthews. At that point, I had somewhat lost interest in the plot line of finding her killer, as I was not sure that it would even happen. I’m glad that we got to see it, though, because the entire scene is wild. Matthews had previously stated Callie was the child of the wilderness, but in this scene, she is even more overt about it, and I am truly fascinated by that. I expect this will be a central plot point of Season 4, and I cannot wait to see where it leads now that Matthews is dead.
Every season of “Yellowjackets” has built upon the ones before it in a beautiful way. This is one of the most engrossing series I have watched in years, and I highly recommend it to all.
