Yellowjackets is Killer

“Teenagers are monster” - Everyone, everywhere, pretty much constantly.

A high-school girls’ soccer team on the way to nationals finds themselves stranded in the wilderness, far from civilization, with minimal adult supervision. At the risk of spoilers, THINGS DON’T GO WELL.

Twenty-five years later, some survivors of the experience are still working through and/or drowning in the lingering trauma.

Welcome to Showtime’s Yellowjackets: It’s like Lord of the Flies, but scarier!

Having taught Lord of the Flies, teenagers, and Lord of the Flies to teenagers, I was excited to give this show a shot. And from the first haunting scene to the last lingering shot of the pilot, Yellowjackets delivered in a big way. I’m going to be painting in broad strokes here, because I think that this is one of those “the less you know the better” shows, but it’s one that deserves to be hyped up, too.

So, let’s start with that Lord of the Flies inspiration, William Golding’s 1954 debut novel. The novel follows a group of boys from a British boarding school crashing on a desert island in an attempt to escape a war. Without a single surviving adult, the boys construct something like a society on the island as they try to feed themselves and signal rescuers. Bullying and envy inevitably lead to fractures in the group. Talk of a Beast in the wilds puts fear in their hearts. Violence, superstition, and tyranny follow.

The novel was something of a phenomenon, a clever allegory for humans pushed to extremes and a sober view on the kind of cruelty that children perpetrate away from the eyes of their elders.

Yellowjackets takes that formula and builds on it. The characters have deeper, longer, more subtle relationships than the relative strangers in Flies, and the show makes the most of the ever-shifting social dynamics of adolescent girls. Teenagers are already prone to more volatile feelings and action than schoolchildren, which raises the stakes the second civilization falls away. And, very cleverly, the focus on the survivors years after the incident adds a layer of mystery (how did we get from there to here?) and lots of room for social commentary. Women who went to a very primal place to survive a disaster have to put up with the superficial roles thrust on them in adulthood: disappointed housewife, pitiful addict, lonely spinster.

It’s not easy to root for the characters on this show; as with Flies, innocence is in dangerously short supply. But it’s a strange, ominous, gripping ride, full of top-notch performances and propelled by a kick-ass score and 90’s-fueled soundtrack.

Two seasons are out now, with a third coming next year. Be warned: sex, drugs, and violence ahoy.