Just what the heck is going on in “Yellowjackets”? It’s a question I asked myself more and more often as I watched through the first two seasons of the show this week, convinced at last by my roommate that it was well worth my time, especially with the spooky month of October coming up fast.

The thriller drama series always keeps the viewer guessing, and though it made my head spin a few times, it always kept me wanting to know more instead of diminishing my interest in the solutions to its puzzles. It’s not exactly a family-friendly romp, but “Yellowjackets” was definitely my favorite stream of the week.

“Yellowjackets” follows a group of women through two timelines. The first, set in 1996, centers on their plane crash in the wilderness en route to a national soccer championship tournament and their struggles to survive. The second picks up with the survivors 25 years later, when their haunting ordeals continue to affect their lives.

The crash that strands them in the remote Canadian wilderness is no ordinary one, as the Wiskayok High School Yellowjackets soccer team soon discovers. One of their number begins to see visions, and another can’t stop sleepwalking. They continue to find the same mysterious symbol carved all over the woods, and have some truly odd interactions with the various animals that inhabit the remote territory around them.

The show’s splitting of its story over two timelines might lead one to think that it will spoil who survives this plane crash by showing what’s going on with them 25 years in the future. But “Yellowjackets” expertly avoids giving away the game by introducing adult versions of its characters as the seasons go by, leaving ambiguous the ultimate fate of many of the crash survivors. And it’s just one of the ways that the show leaves its viewers guessing.

“Yellowjackets” doesn’t just leave the driving action of its story in the past, either. The nightmares of what happened to lead characters Shauna, Taissa, Misty, Jackie, Natalie, Lottie, Van, and the rest of the team don’t simply stay in the past; they’re creating all-new problems for the group in their present, despite their attempts to leave their more gruesome actions behind them.

Those actions can get quite gruesome indeed, and “Yellowjackets” is not for the faint of heart. But the brutal portrayal of what can be necessary to survive in some situations also forces the viewer to at least question what they would do in the character’s shoes, a sure sign of effective writing and visual presentation of these difficult-to-watch moments.

The show’s large ensemble cast is incredible, and each pairing of a teenage character with their adult self is superb. Christina Ricci and Samantha Hanratty rightly get a ton of praise for their joint portrayal of Misty Quigley, but Juliette Lewis and Sophie Thatcher, Tawny Cypress and Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Melanie Lynskey and Sophie Nélisse all deserve special praise for their characterizations of Natalie Scatorccio, Taissa Turner, and Shauna Sadecki, respectively.

I’m only through the first season and a half of “Yellowjackets,” and it’s a show that deserves a more deliberate pace than a binge-watch in my eyes. It has a ton of detail and forces the viewer to lean forward and pay attention, as the best thrillers do. I have no idea where it’s going next, but I’m excited to find out.

“Yellowjackets” has released three seasons on Paramount+ Premium, which is the only tier of the streamer that includes SHOWTIME titles such as this one. Viewers can stream Paramount+ Premium for $14 per month or $140 per year, and the fourth and final season will debut on the service on Nov. 22.

Yellowjackets

November 14, 2021

This equal parts survival epic, psychological horror story and coming-of-age drama tells the saga of a team of wildly talented high school girls soccer players who become the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the remote northern wilderness. The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to savage clans, while also tracking the lives they’ve attempted to piece back together nearly 25 years later.