The Yellowjackets series is sinister due to its unclassifiable quality. The story of two timelines of the survivors of a plane crash can seem like pure suspense. But in reality it is a twisted story that exceeds expectations. Especially when he uses the settings — past and present — to tell a dark secret that no one wants to remember.
But what could be a drama, a suspenseful thriller about the unspeakable of human nature or terror, is not easy to assimilate. And that is perhaps the element that sustains a gloomy story that develops a completely new idea about violence and terror. One that evades simple explanations and is more focused on the inner darkness of its characters than on anything else. Yellowjackets is a look at what we can do in extreme situations. But from the point of view of the moral sermon or the debauchery of survival. The story avoids being so digestible and uses its best points to become unpleasant and uncomfortable.
As a premise it is also quite a rarity, although it is tried to relate to it with obvious references. The magnificent pilot immediately refers to the already historic Oceanic Flight 815 that in 2004 created that timeless phenomenon such as Lost. But Yellowjackets doesn't want to open its closed doors easily. Its first chapters play with the attention and the deductive capacity of the public to take it through different regions. From fear to the insinuation of the supernatural, nostalgia and finally survival as a weapon. Yellowjackets is a collection of pieces of information that are assembled into a poignant, painful and poisonous narrative.
Yellowjacket: the look into the past that no one wanted to give
In 1996, the Yellowjackets high school football team, champion of New Jersey and with a group of outstanding players, suffers a violent plane crash. At first they are considered missing, until 19 months later they are found. There are few survivors and none wants to detail what has happened in the almost two years they were lost, fighting for their lives. Of course, that the mystery is in that space of time about which nothing is known is a hackneyed resource and more than used on television.
But Yellowjackets is not interested in exploring secrets painful, confessions or heartbreaking moral anguish. He does, but his approach is so different, primary and brutal that it is disconcerting from the first testimonies. When four of the survivors meet in 2021, the big question is one of subtle cruelty. Who are they now? In reality, it is something more fearsome that links and supports something more complicated. Is there anything left of the terrible creatures that struggled to live? The fight for survival was not easy, nor was it easy or fair. And that is when the series finds its best moment.
Because Yellowjackets does not try to narrate an epic, nor a thriller. It explores what we actually do to survive and how that notion is subjected to something more twisted and violent. From aggressive players, with rivalries and rancor on the surface, to adult women full of palpable darkness. Yellowjackets is not a story that is interested in going to an extreme, making a clear point, or dealing with common ideas. In fact, the great achievement of the series is to delve into the nuances.
The evil, the good, the nothing, the revenge and the grudge: Yellowjackets and the secrets
Of course, the adult versions are the most interesting. In 2021, the teenage girls who became wild creatures are women full of invisible wounds. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) struggles in the midst of a kind of intellectual and spiritual nothingness that will slowly shatter into pieces. Natalie (Juliette Lewis) struggles to stay on her feet amid all kinds of addictions and running from the shadows in her mind. Misty (Christina Ricci) is of an elegant cruelty that disconcerts.
In fact, Ricci's character is the one that best shows the edges of the series. On the one hand, he strives to show an ordinary side, a typical life. But what he learned during nineteen months is not easy to forget. And maybe Misty doesn't want to forget it. At the same extreme is Taissa (Tawny Cypress), the senator candidate who accidentally plays — or does she? —with his twisted past. After all, bases its strength and electoral promise on having been able to survive in the depths of the wildest Ontario. And having done it with their “own means”. But as his political language becomes more awkward — watch out for his insistent mentions of wilderness — the character grows darker.
Yellowjackets keeps its mysteries. It does so with a furious determination that emulates the notion of what happened under the official version of the survivors. Was it all the work of a miracle and its strength? As memories recall brutal scenes to the present, it becomes clear that what happened was not just a scary, heartbreaking trauma. A new expression of the primitive that inhabits us, of the perversion of good and something more terrifying.
