Trouble In The Wilderness: Is Season 3 of 'Yellowjackets' Crashing?

By now, we are pretty much halfway through season 3 of the Showtime thriller, Yellowjackets. The story about a high school girls soccer team's plane crashing in the wilderness captivated audiences back in November 2021, and the show even managed to survive the WGA Writer's Strike in 2023. Unfortunately for Yellowjackets fans, season 3 of the series has been less than satisfactory and fans are wondering if the newly introduced (and old) loose ends will be tied up by the finale. Not only that, fans are starting to wonder what the point of a lot of these storylines are.

**Warning: Spoilers ahead for season 3 of Yellowjackets**

We started the show with a cast of fairly likeable survivors from the plane crash, along with the people in their adult lives. Despite their teenage selves, viewers found themselves attached to Shauna, Taissa, Misty, and Natalie, with Lottie and Van being introduced in season 2. But after two and a half seasons, we have already seen two of those main survivors get killed off the show - Natalie and Lottie. In my opinion, this was an odd move because when the show flashes back to themselves as teens in the wilderness, Natalie and Lottie both are main focal points for the group. Natalie was appointed as their "queen" and Lottie has maintained her status as somewhat of a shaman for the group. With them being perhaps the most influential characters, why would they be the ones to get the axe? Especially given both of their involvement and/or connection to the death of Travis in season 1.

Not only are we losing influential characters in the adult storyline, but we are also getting lost in a lot of plot points and unrealistic situations. What exactly was the point of Adam Martin? Why did they feel the need to blow up Taissa's marriage? What happened to Van's video store? What was the point of killing Crystal or burning down the cabin? Why did they turn the series from a famous story of survival to a slow-burning supernatural version of Lost with teenage girls? Where did the materials for their camp come from? Where did the animals come from? It seems like as the show goes on, more things just keep getting introduced without tying up the loose ends that have already happened. Case and point being Lottie dying before we even really knew much about her cult or her continued connection with Travis as adults.

We are also starting to enter the grey area of character development as the teenage storyline is becoming more and more feral. With a majority of the teenage cast, the characters are simply becoming unlikable and it's not in a "love to hate" way. You are starting to downright hate specific characters and you can't keep viewers around if they don't like who they are watching. Shauna's adult self has become more and more unhinged and honestly cruel, while her teenage self has morphed into an angry, out for blood version of herself. Misty has always been crazy, but even her adult self has gotten a bit too unbelievably wild. Taissa's adult storyline went from modern family delving into politics to a disgraced politician trying to hook up with her ex - after almost killing her wife in a car accident. Van went from being a full believer of "the wilderness" as a teen to being such a skeptic as an adult that it almost makes the past feel disingenuous. Really, the list just goes on and on.

With this feral nature, we are also at a point where Coach Ben's character is becoming... almost like a scapegoat. He has had probably the most development of any character in the past storyline, but writers have continued to stunt that development by making him the girls' punching bag. First Misty cuts off his leg, then they use what he teaches them about hunting to hunt each other. He flees out of fear, hides in a cave through the Winter, and once he's found they sentence him to death in some Lord of the Flies fantasy trial. Then after being forced to re-enter the cave by Lottie and Travis, Akilah thinks he's supposed to save them so his execution was stopped. But don't worry, Shauna and Melissa further disable him out of torture so he can't runaway again. It's starting to get hard to watch.

The hard part is we all knew a character shift was coming. The fact that some of the girls survived that long in the wilderness, we knew each of them did a lot of things that they probably never wanted to think or talk about again. The problem with how the show is doing it is they have shifted what was a believable, quirky storyline into a weird, forced supernatural mystery. Yellowjackets writers have also managing to make their most likeable characters the ones we know either die in the wilderness or sometime after being rescued. Unless there are more surprise survivors that we don't know about, Akilah, Mari, Gen, and the remaining girls are easily the most likeable of the bunch and the ones we are rooting for. Not to mention the hopeful, grounding characters we've already lost in the wilderness like Laura Lee, Crystal, Jackie, and Javi.

The bottom line is it's sad to see such a good show take such a left turn. It's pretty safe to say at this point, season 1 truly was the high point of Yellowjackets so far. Season 2 was messy and season 3 is even messier and getting worse. If the season ends and is greenlit for a fourth season, my hope is that they focus more on the stories and less on the mystery. Either that or they need to stop making it such an even split with past and present and focus more on the past. The point of the show was their survival, so stop introducing random plot points and characters, stop killing off important characters, and let viewers see how they managed to stay alive. At this point, the present day storyline has no real ground. They just go from one murder mystery to another and it's already getting boring.

Not to mention, when are we going to find out who Hilary Swank is playing?