Devout fans of “Yellowjackets” are familiar with the series’ penchant for providing more questions than answers. Who is pit girl? Or the Antler Queen? Or the man with no eyes? What are those strange symbols that keep appearing on trees and envelopes and slap bracelets? Is “The Wilderness” even real, and what defines that realness? But outside of the plot, grounded in our reality, is this: Why has a disturbing show full of violence, confusing supernatural elements and extremely “unlikable” characters garnered such a passionate fanbase largely comprised of young marginalized viewers?
“Yellowjackets” follows two timelines. In the late 1990s, a New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team crashes in the middle of a remote Canadian forest and, driven by hunger and an eerie spiritual connection dubbed The Wilderness, begin to ritualistically hunt and eat each other to survive. In the 2020s, some of those girls have now grown into adult women navigating daily struggles alongside lingering trauma from their nineteen stranded months. Among the central cast we’ve followed from both timelines are Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Taissa (Tawny Cypress), Natalie (Juliette Lewis), Misty (Christina Ricci) and, as of Season 2, Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Van (Lauren Ambrose), a collection of deeply imperfect women who we first meet as deeply imperfect girls.
As a YA author who primarily writes from the perspective of teenage girls, I’ve been privy to many conversations about “un/likable female protagonists.” And having been one myself not very long ago, I was already well aware of people’s inclination to relentlessly pick apart the actions of teenage girls. Mistakes and transgressions are crimes, age-appropriate immaturity is pathetic childishness, and any degree of sexuality that stems from a girl’s wants rather than projected onto her by others is utterly condemnable. Audiences do not often grant female characters the same generosity they do their male counterparts when it comes to their complexity, nuance and due empathy. Obviously, this prejudice-fueled pattern is multifaceted, as this lack of grace similarly applies to characters who are queer, trans, of color, neurodivergent and/or marginalized in any other form. Engrained in this reception is the sense that these characters need to be punished at every turn, or otherwise be so flatly written that they limit the range of things they’re capable of doing that’ll be called into question. Which is precisely where “Yellowjackets” refuses to comply.
Audiences do not often grant female characters the same generosity they do their male counterparts when it comes to their complexity, nuance and due empathy.
You’d think a show that follows the transition from soccer champions to cultish cannibals would want to start us off with pure, innocent girls to emphasize the severity of their journey. But when we first meet these central characters, they are not the figureheads for virtue. Shauna is sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend and Taissa intentionally brutally injures one of her teammates. As soon as they crash, Jackie abandons an on-fire Van to get out of the plane faster and Misty destroys the black box that could get them rescued so she can play hero as the most capable survivor for a bit longer. From the start, their desperation and willingness to do what it takes regardless of morals is evident, but they still aren’t explicitly presented as the poster children for who you’d want by your side in the middle of nowhere.
I said this was how we first meet the girls, but that’s not entirely true. The pilot episode begins with an eerie chase scene, as a girl in nothing but a white dress runs through a snow-coated forest until falling into a pit that impales her with wooden spikes. We then see the girls, masked and anonymous, ceremoniously cook and eat the girl. This serves as a captivating opener, setting the tone and path of the series, but also as a lens through which to view the everyday girls we meet shortly after who we see driving to school with friends, laughing in the locker room, cheering at pep rallies and going to parties, knowing their fate to come. Suddenly, what would otherwise be morally dubious transgressions or—as earlier established—classic teenage girl faults, are now glimpses into what these girls are capable of if the stakes are heightened. Shauna becomes the defacto butcher carving into the dead bodies of her friends; she knows how to physically engage in something that’s immoral. Taissa massacres the wolf eating Van’s face; she is not afraid of getting her hands bloody. Misty threatens to kill then covers the death of the only person to who she confesses her black-box crime; she knows how to hide the truth to serve her interests. Even the grayer but not “wrong” things they did prior to the crash shape their fortitude in The Wilderness, like Natalie being a designated gunman in contrast to the pre-crash accident where she attempted to defend against her abusive father with a gun, but left the safety off (though he still unintentionally died from his own mishandling of the weapon).
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To be clear, while the girls are seen as capable of cruelty and violence, we are not meant to receive them as evil or go, “Well, obviously they’d start eating each other. Look at them.” Their actions are multifaceted; they do what they must to survive. But they also show each other kindness and empathy. Shauna refuses to let Taissa sleep in the terrifying cabin attic alone, and Taissa supports Shauna through her pregnancy. Misty, perhaps overzealously, constantly tries to befriend and prove herself to the other girls. Natalie spends countless hours looking for Javi despite believing him dead, just to comfort Travis. Simply put, they are given genuine range. They unite to survive, they constantly bicker, they share clothes and food and chores, they dance and sing and dress up just to give themselves reasons to smile. They do their best.
L-R: Silvana Estifanos as Teen Britt, Vanessa Prasad as Teen Gen, Jenna Burgess as Teen Melissa, Anisa Harris as Teen Robin and Steven Krueger as Ben Scott in “Yellowjackets.” (Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME)The few male characters in the past timeline emphasize the girls’ complexities as well. Javi—the youngest and most innocent—hides away for weeks after fearing the girls’ mushroom-induced violence, only to become the first intentional sacrifice when Nat chooses to let him drown and take her place as the next meal for the group. Travis is constantly being used—like as a path for Jackie to lose her virginity as revenge against Shauna, or a testing ground for communicating with The Wilderness for Lottie. And Ben, the only adult in The Wilderness, is a young gay assistant coach who loses authority and runs away after genuinely fearing he will be the next sacrifice. As of the time I’m writing this, he’s the scapegoat for whoever set the cabin on fire at the end of Season 2, something that’s heavily speculated was actually done by one of the girls. These guys don’t exist to make the girls look worse, but the way they function in the narrative provides the girls’ desperation—to live, to eat, to know the truth, to protect themselves—more nuance. We see that there are victims of their actions, that not everyone would do as they did in their positions. But not everyone could.
The narrative does not encourage these characters to be good or kind or gracious. It does not affirm them for being vicious or violent or selfish either. The narrative simply lets them be.
Most of the main characters have at least attempted to murder someone, if not succeeded, and all of them have engaged in the ritualistic consumption of their peers while in The Wilderness. Combine that with more grounded transgressions like infidelity, indoctrination, neglect and stalking, and we are under no false pretenses that these are “good” people in any conventional sense. But while their actions themselves are not aspirational—at least one can hope—the sheer desperation demonstrated by these characters is inspirational. To paraphrase the dust jacket of my own book, “If We Survive This”: these are not the girls who survive. And by that, I mean these are not the girls people expect to survive. But by Season 3, we’ve seen them through the unimaginable, and they’re still standing. Not by nature of easy, simple solutions. Yes, they’re traumatized. Yes, they’re morally dubious—and that’s a generous interpretation. Because yes, they’re human.
The narrative does not encourage these characters to be good or kind or gracious. It does not affirm them for being vicious or violent or selfish either. The narrative simply lets them be. Viewers are not meant to walk away from each episode with a neat message about the morality of any of their actions; the complexities and messiness of their desperation to stay alive are far more compelling than anything as simplified as the former. What matters is this—they want to survive, and they do. They do not surrender to their circumstances; they do not accept their doomed fate.
L-R: Lauren Ambrose as Van, Melanie Lynskey as Shauna and Tawny Cypress as Taissa in “Yellowjackets.” (Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME)In writing, there’s a saying that the relatable is in the specific. Crashing in the Canadian wilderness in 1996 with your soccer teammates and being stranded there for nineteen months is pretty specific. But by making these girls as layered as the show does, it’s easier for viewers to see them as real people instead of archetypes, which makes it easier to relate to and see ourselves in them.
In the wake of increasing hostility against marginalized communities in the U.S. (and across the global scale) it is unsurprising that young people, especially ones belonging to those communities, are scared. Some may find comfort in more joyous, conventionally affirming narratives that provide a form of escapism. But others may find comfort in stories like “Yellowjackets,” which are still a form of escapism, yes, but are also deeply intertwined with contemporary fears about the future and making it out alive. There is something encouraging about art that affirms that someone like you or your friends has the gifts of complexity and endurance. Misty, a bullied and lonely outsider. Shauna, a teenage girl with an unwanted pregnancy she cannot terminate. Taissa, a closeted Black lesbian having to hide her relationship with Van, a closeted butch lesbian (played by a non-binary actor in the ’90s timeline). Natalie, a victim of child abuse and adolescent addiction. Lottie (played by two actresses with part Māori heritage, though her ethnicity hasn’t been explicit in-show) who’s been suffering with mental illnesses since early childhood. While viewers and fans may often find themselves wincing at the actions of these girls, they just as often may find themselves identifying with them—wondering what it means for their own lives if someone like them could make it through such awful circumstances.
In the Season 2 finale, as these women attempt to recreate the ritualistic hunt they once relied on in their youth, Shauna, the chosen sacrifice, says, “You know there’s no it, right? It was just us!” to which Lottie replies, “Is there a difference?” While viewers like myself are still desperate for some answers, it is clear that whether there is a greater “it” wilderness genuinely pulling the strings, these girls were still undeniably the ones holding the weapons, fighting until the end to make it out alive.
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