Yellowjackets has always been more concerned with the journey than the destination.
Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, the hit Showtime series follows the titular girls’ soccer team as they crash in the Canadian mountains on their way to a national championship. A parallel timeline sees a handful of adult survivors reunite in the present day and struggle to keep a dark secret about how they survived alone in the woods.
Since the premiere episode, we’ve essentially known who would live, who would die, and that the girls would resort to cannibalism. However, the beauty of Yellowjackets lies in connecting these grisly dots and the birth of a violent matriarchy. That’s not to say that Lyle and Nickerson haven’t held some cards close to the vest. For three seasons, this supernatural survival tale has managed to keep us guessing with shocking twists and canny additions to the cast.
Now with its fourth and final chapter on the horizon, we may finally get answers to some of our most burning questions. Warning: spoilers ahead for the first three seasons.
Who will return to civilization?
Season three ends on a literal cliffhanger set to one of the show’s best needle drops. As the team prepares for another winter in the wild, they’re discovered by a pair of frog scientists and their rugged nature guide. Witnessing a cannibalistic feast, Hannah (Ashley Sutton) and her partners become immediate threats. Lottie (Courtney Eaton) wastes no time killing one intruder, forcing the group to hold the other two hostage. Hannah will eventually murder the third member of her own party to curry favor with the team.
In the aftermath of this shocking turn, Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), the reigning matriarch, tightens her grip on the remaining survivors. However, Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), the group’s former leader, senses that rescue may finally be within reach and organizes a secret coup. When Van (Liv Hewson) manages to repair Hannah’s satellite phone, Natalie sneaks away to a higher elevation. She finally makes contact with the outside world as Aerosmith’s “Livin’ On the Edge” crashes in.
While we know that rescue is imminent, we’re still a long way from this critical point. Thanks to a stellar adult cast, we know that some of the team will safely return, but the fate of others still hangs in the balance. Chief among those in danger is Hannah. As an outsider, she has no allegiance to the team. She’s also witnessed the girls eating human flesh and has audio evidence of Lottie slaughtering her research partner.
The present-day timeline of season three sees the resurfacing of this incriminating DAT tape and the panic that ensues as the surviving Yellowjackets scramble to protect their secret. A season four trailer also shows Akilah (Nia Sondaya) returning to school, but as yet she has no adult counterpart. Considering Shauna’s violent turn, it’s likely she or Lottie will thin the herd before the promised search party arrives. W
ho will make it back to the civilized world and who will remain lost in the Canadian woods?
What is that ominous symbol?
Perhaps the biggest mystery of Yellowjackets lore has always been the origin of a mysterious symbol carved into trees around the crash site. Resembling a female figure impaled by a spear, the girls find the same crest carved into the floor of an abandoned cabin, underneath a rotting corpse. In the present-day timeline, we see this symbol haunt the surviving Yellowjackets twenty-five years after their plane went down. Natalie (Juliette Lewis), Misty (Christina Ricci), and Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) all receive threatening postcards with the mark, and Taissa (Tawny Cypress) — possessed by a sinister version of herself — draws it on the hand of her comatose wife.
Back in the cabin, the girls perform a seance hoping to connect with whatever force haunts the woods. Though initially a light-hearted game, Lottie shocks the group by announcing in French that they must survive by spilling blood. She proceeds to slam her face against the attic window, bloodying her own forehead. As their time in the woods stretches out, Lottie seems to adopt this symbol as a talisman and uses it to guide the group’s direction.
Though we’ve yet to find out much about this mysterious figure, it seems to work in tandem with a power known as It or the Wilderness. Alternately angry and benevolent, this invisible force sometimes provides food in the form of subservient bears or birds falling from the sky. But this entity also takes away. It leads the group to cannibalism when a rogue wind piles snow on a burning corpse, transforming cremation into a barbecue. As the survivors continue to feed on their own, they develop a way to let the Wilderness “choose” its next human sacrifice. Bolstering matriarchal control, this woodland spirit also seems to decide who will be the next Antler Queen, the unquestioned leader of the group.
In the present day, Lottie continues to connect with the Wilderness and incorporates the sign into her own nature cult. Mirroring her apparent plan to offer up Shauna’s newborn baby, an older Lottie seems to target Shauna’s teen daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins). Terrified by Lottie’s intensity, Callie pushes the woman down the stairs to her death, unintentionally allowing the “hungry” It to feed once again.
Will season four finally identify the origin of this strange symbol and the power it holds over the Yellowjackets?
Will the Sadecki family survive?
Shauna and Jeff (Warren Kole) have always had a complicated relationship. As teens, they begin hooking up in the shadows, behind the back of team captain Jackie (Ella Purnell), Jeff’s girlfriend and Shauna’s best friend. Pregnant when the plane goes down, Shauna has Jeff’s baby in the woods, then watches the infant die in her arms. Decades later, they’re still together, but their relationship is anything but stable.
Seasons one and two see the Sadecki family weather infidelity, blackmail, and a murder investigation, sticking together through it all. But season three brings the family to the brink of collapse.
Perhaps inspired by her mother’s aggressiveness, or frustrated with the discord in her home, Callie begins acting out similarly. She attacks a cruel classmate with animal intestines and begins blatantly smoking pot on the school playground. She also cozies up to Lottie and accompanies the unstable cult leader on a shoplifting spree. In the wake of Lottie’s shocking death — plus a series of dangerous “accidents” — Shauna becomes convinced that the murderer is also targeting her family. She drags Jeff and Callie into hiding, then runs off to investigate with her former teammates.
While gone, Jeff and Callie have a heart-to-heart. Callie confesses to accidentally killing Lottie and shares her suspicions that Shauna murdered the frog scientists in the woods. Determined to protect his daughter, Jeff finally decides to leave his wife. Shauna returns from her disastrous road trip to find her house empty and her phone number blocked. Finally alone, the bloodthirsty mother vows to take back what she’s lost. But is she referring to the family she’s tried so hard to protect or the power she found in the wilderness?
Season three sees Shauna at her most unhinged, turning on friends and family alike. Will the Antler Queen find a way to save her marriage or have Jeff and Shauna broken up for good?
Will Melissa escape?
When season three was set to premiere, showrunners teased an exciting addition to the cast. On a series stacked with A-list divas, Hilary Swank seemed like a natural fit. However, episodes came and went without an appearance from the two-time Oscar winner. Amidst rampant speculation about who she would play, Swank finally arrived as Melissa, the adult counterpart to Shauna’s teen girlfriend.
We eventually learn that she is the one who left an incriminating DAT tape on Shauna’s doorstep, marked with the forest’s mysterious symbol. Though it requires outdated tech to play, this recording contradicts the Yellowjackets’ story about their rescue and connection to the researchers who also went missing around the same time. What’s more, Melissa is now calling herself Kelly and has married Alex (Jaylee Hamidi), Hannah’s orphaned daughter.
Shauna reunites with her former flame in a brutal confrontation through Melissa’s suburban house. After a tense, sit-down conversation, Shauna attacks her teammate, biting a chunk out of Melissa’s arm and forcing her to swallow the flesh. When Misty and Taissa arrive as backup, Melissa takes drastic action, subtly closing the fireplace flue, then watching her attackers lose consciousness. Thankfully, Van (Lauren Ambrose) arrives in the nick of time and drags them all to safety.
She considers stabbing Melissa to death, but ultimately refuses to further the violence. However, Melissa repays this kindness with a knife to the chest and flees while Van bleeds to death. Season three ends with the duplicitous Yellowjacket on the run, now targeted by both Shauna and Tai.
Season four will likely pick up in the aftermath of Van’s tragic death and see Tai seek vengeance for the love of her life. Shauna is also out for blood and will kill to protect the team’s privacy. We’ll also hopefully learn the contents of this mysterious tape and the truth about Hannah’s disappearance.
Will Misty and Taissa turn on their own?
Despite presenting a united front, the surviving Yellowjackets have always had a tense relationship. Reunited by a blackmailer — who turns out to be Jeff, armed with Shauna’s woodland diaries — we’ve seen them alternately help and harm each other as they struggle to keep their grisly secret. But when push comes to shove, they always seem to protect their own, even when the Wilderness demands sacrifice. However, like the Sadecki family, season three ends with the team at a breaking point.
Throughout the season, Shauna becomes convinced that Misty is plotting her death, blaming the ethically dubious hospice nurse for faulty brakes and an industrial freezer. When Lottie’s body is discovered, Shauna’s paranoia kicks into overdrive. Along with her fellow Yellowjackets, she takes a road trip to Melissa’s home, but abandons the group at a rural hospital. She goes rogue in the aforementioned confrontation, inadvertently causing Van’s heartbreaking death. Struggling with problems of their own, Misty and Tai finally tire of Shauna’s recklessness and worry that her self-destructive tendencies will attract renewed media attention. The season concludes with the two survivors conspiring over martinis to finally kill their Antler Queen.
Considering its parallel timelines, we’ve always known, more or less, which Yellowjackets would survive their teens, but we have no such promises for their adult counterparts. Lyle and Nickerson have never been shy about killing off major characters. Natalie, Travis (Kevin Alves, Andes Soto), Lottie, and Van have all fallen in the turmoil of the team’s reunion, and the women who remain are at each other’s throats.
Will the bonds they built in the wilderness hold, or will the Yellowjackets finally turn on themselves without using “It” as a handy scapegoat? With this savage story’s end finally in sight and only four women left standing, season four promises to answer the most important question of all: who will survive the Yellowjackets saga and what will be left of them at the finish line.