Uniform Brilliance — Yellowjackets Season Two (TV Review)

Episodes viewed – 6/10

It's been said enough times that we're in a golden age of television, and with so many shows to choose from it's hard to know which to sink your time into. But last year – Yellowjackets – the Showtime produced drama series with a predominantly female cast headlined by Melanie Lynskey came onto the scene and knocked all who saw it sideways. The wait for the second season has been a long one, with much anticipation.

The season avoids the pitfalls of most second seasons, following a cult-adored first, by not over-expanding the storylines. Aside from a few new faces, the season begins by slowly dissecting the lingering threads left by the first season. The split time frame, 1996's plane crash survival story of high school girls in the wilderness, and 2021's story of four of the survivors reckoning with repressed trauma coming back. The first few episodes slowly begin to look at the consequences of the actions our main four women made and what that might mean.

It's no surprise that the cast are all uniformly brilliant. The younger / older casting split remains ingenious with Shauna (Melanie Lynskey / Sophie Nélisse) commanding both ensembles with ease. The ticking time bomb of young Shauna's ever growing pregnancy is as looming as last season's oncoming winter threat, while Lynskey shows the frayed edges of the dissatisfied older Shauna. As the season picks apart the fracturing mind of Taissa both Tawny Cypress and Jasmin Savoy Brown keep a good streak of dead-pan humour. Naturally both Misty (Christina Ricci / Sammi Hanratty) and Natalie (Juliette Lewis / Sophie Thatcher) remain easy to love fan favourites and with good reason.

As the season looks at the four women in the present, what will become of Shauna after she killed her lover, what is happening to poor Taissa's mind, what was the cult that took Natalie and the joy of seeing a buddy romance bloom between Misty and a fellow true crime obsessive we get to peal back the layers of what makes them tick. This does mean that for a good chunk of the season we're watching four distinct modern day stories, while the joy of the first season was watching the four interact and seeing the collision of their different lives.

The scenes in the past are where the darkness really blooms. The death of Jackie (Ella Purnell) looms over everything as Lottie (Courtney Eaton) continues to exert power over the people that have come to look to her for guidance. Eaton, along with Liv Hewson as Van, get a beefed up role in this season of both of them make the most of it, as does Steven Krueger as one-legged coach Ben, as his grief and fear begin to rip him apart.

The encroaching darkness is clearly what is alluring to Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, both show running the season, but even as long winters both physical and mental ensnare our anti-heroes the thick vein of black comedy runs stronger than ever. An ill-timed Steel Magnolias monologue is howl inducing, a bad attempt at Bad Cop, and a fork attack all bring about belly laughs when the tension becomes almost unbearable.

If there is a misstep, the ongoing police subplot involving a caricature of a rookie detective is grating and threatens to undo all the hard work Lynskey is bringing in barely repressed psycho-energy.  It also remains the case that even with a little more time to flesh out the secondary Yellowjackets we still don't get to know all of them, so about five of the poor survivors remain “those five in the corner”.

Lynskey remains the shows MVP, though her crown might be stolen by certain newcomers, or Sophie Thatcher who mines such depths of compassion as young Natalie it's hard to not open your heart to her when she shows up on screen.

For those looking for slow burning, plot twists and central enigmas that cause real questions, the return of Yellowjackets could not have come soon enough, and will mean the wait for season three is already more than many will be able take.