‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 is Darker, Disturbing, & Even Better Than Season 1

For Showtime’s cannibalistic Yellowjackets, winter isn’t coming—it’s here. Season 2 delivers on the promises of Season 1, and yes, it goes there.

Yellowjackets creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have called Season 2 of their hit Showtime series, “The Winter of Their Discontent,” and—man—they weren’t kidding.

Over the first six episodes available to critics, Season 2 wastes no time fully immersing audiences—and the ill-fated team—in the darkness hinted at in that cryptic Season 1 finale. If Season 1 wasn’t unnerving enough for you—what with the way we witnessed haphazard amputations, the grisly demises of multiple teenagers, and even the sacrifice of a beloved pet—then strap in for Season 2.

Even though the second season picks up two months after the events of the Season 1 finale, Lyle and Nickerson don’t waste any time getting to what we’ve all been *ahem* hungering for, while also introducing new characters, like the Adult Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Adult Van (Lauren Ambrose). (Season 2 also establishes a new timeline—1998, when they’re found.) The episodes are more tightly written and deftly allocate equal time to each of the leads so no actress is shortchanged, which is pretty amazing since they’re juggling a bigger cast. (In ABC’s Lost days, I remember lamenting when it was an episode dedicated to a whole character, especially after a cliffhanger involving another one.)

In order to present new characters while giving us time with familiar ones, Yellowjackets Season 2 smartly pairs them up: livewire Nat (Juliette Lewis) reunites with seemingly even-keeled cult leader Lottie (Kessell), Taissa (Tawny Cypress) seeks out Van (Ambrose) to subdue her madness, and Christina Ricci’s Misty spars against her Ice Storm alum Elijah Wood, who proves to be a worthy adversary. With Callie (Sarah Desjardins) hot on her murderous trail, Melanie Lynskey shares some really great (and steamy!) scenes with her on-screen hubby Warren Kole, but it’s a scene in the third episode that should be Lynskey’s Emmy clip, when she accosts someone with a gun in her hand.

Suffice it to say, the teen cast really goes through it this season, and we’re also introduced to some new survivors that were there all along (we swear! *wink*). Gone are the days when the girls bonded over having their periods at the same time; there’s a different kind of blood on their hands. While last season some fans commented that the adult timeline was more interesting than the teen timeline, or vice versa, this season they’re both working at an 11. Poor Coach Ben’s (Steven Krueger) reactions and fear of the girls measures how far gone from civilization they’ve devolved.

With such a high-concept premise and surprising reception for its first season, Yellowjackets Season 2 has a lot riding on it, and you can see the joy Lyle and Nickerson take in watching their puzzle pieces move into shape. They deliver some truly shocking television, including a final moment in the first episode that literally made me gasp out loud alone in my living room—you might never listen to Tori Amos’s “Cornflake Girl” the same way.

In other words, to quote something only the TikTok teens of today would understand, they ate.