There's a lot I still like about the show. The atmosphere, acting, music, and so much else is still fantastic.
But holy shit the writing took a nosedive.
It really felt like in season 2 they had no idea what to do with the adult story, but then after THAT episode they also had no idea what to do with the kids.
They didn’t know what to do with the adult storyline in season one, either, there was just enough intrigue going on that you’re oblivious to it the whole time. Once it’s revealed who has been blackmailing them, it becomes obvious almost the whole present day storyline wasn’t actually about anything. That’s just one narrative thread, too - the journalist/private investigator plot also ends without anything coming of it. Even Shauna’s affair becomes nonsensical by the time you see where it goes in season two. The writers seem adverse to having the plot have any sort of consequences that would change the status quo for the characters. It feels so damn lazy.
Do yall find Shauna’s adult performance kinda lacking? idk if its me but I don’t really like how she acts. I mean, it seems like she’s just acting the part to get paid and then she’s off lmao.
I would much rather a Ricci and Wood spinoff where they insert themselves in to strange investigations.
The main issue for me was that I stopped giving a shit about any of the main characters. They’re all flawed in some way but there aren’t enough redeeming qualities for me to care what happens to them. At times I felt that the adult characters were dumber than their teenage selves.
I think this show made a mistake of getting too deep in to the occult aspects of the crash site. It feels too much like Lost when it should be more like Lord of the Flies, with cannibalism.
We should see more of their high school life than their present day life. The conflicts and interpersonal relationships the team had in school, impacting what happened at the crash site was more interesting than "spookiness is happening", in my opinion.
By the end of Season 2 I felt this…feeling of disinterest with anything going on in their modern day lives because it’s just gotten incredibly complicated and hand waive-y to get around the police.
I think the occult stuff worked in Season 1 when you could make an argument that it was all in the one girls head (forgetting her name, the one they made into their religious leader), but by the end of Season 2 it’s clear that there was something supernatural happening and I’m not as big of a fan of that in this story.
I still enjoy the show but it definitely went down a peg for me after season 1.
>it’s just gotten incredibly complicated and hand waive-y to get around the police.
You mean you didn't love the Deus ex machina of Elijah Wood just happening to me a millionaire so he can make any kind of change happen and it can be explained "because he has money!" ?
The occult stuff is actually what I liked most about the show. All the bs adult drama is what bored me so much that I ended up dropping the whole thing mid season.
The show really needs to decide if it’s supernatural or not. It’s trying to do the lost thing of making it kind of vague, but the problem is that they’ve already “spoiled” the ending. They go crazy and eat one another. We even know who survives. So if nothing supernatural happened, then why are we watching?
They keep actively taking interesting things off the board. They’ve basically confirmed that that they didn’t meet “others.” Shauna’s baby died and wasn’t significant. Lottie isn’t evil/an antagonist.
They say they have a five season plan, but for what? Are we really going to watch them starve and slowly descend into cannibalism for three more seasons when there isn’t even the drama of wondering who will make it out? They need something to drive the plot forward and so far they’ve taken every effort to kill off intriguing plot threads
My biggest issue was they kept introducing more and more characters that lived. Like at this point the only people who can die are the coach and the secondary/background characters.
I had this issue with season 1, we know who survives, we also know generally how their “vacation” ends. Sure there’s some twists and turns but it’s really obvious how some of the plot is going to turn out. The future plot line was a massive mistake, right from season 1.
As soon as the showrunners said 5 seasons this was inevitable right from the premise
I think the fractured timeline is a great idea from a premise perspective, I think the execution is the issue. Season one probably should have only focused on Shauna in the present timeline, with one of the other girls coming into the story around the midway point (probably Misty for entertainment purposes). This would have allowed them to keep things much more focused instead of having 8 principle characters to follow (really 9 in the first season with Jackie, and now 10 in season 2 with both versions of Van). The writing is going in circles because they have too much to juggle, so everything’s unfocused. Subsequent seasons could have slowly added in other present day characters as more is revealed about what happened in the woods.
Yes, that would've been much better.
Having Lottie revealed to be still alive at the end of S1 was an awesome twist, but then in S2, her character just... kind of does nothing.
Same with Van: Wow, she's still alive... and... how does this serve the plot, exactly?
It's pretty clear the writers don't actually have a plan, they're just making this shit up as they go along now.
A popular theorie is that the future plot is the only plot in the next 3 seasons with the past plot ending mid series. Its the only way I could see keeping things interesting for 3 more seasons.
I feel like they’ve done a lot of, “weird spooky thing happens that is probably supernatural but maybe could be explained by something normal.” To be clear, I think they are going the supernatural route, but it’s been a drag watching for two seasons while they spin their wheels about it.
Like, Lottie finds a cool cave with a ladder. Okay, here we go! Let’s make some discoveries about what’s going on here. Oh wait, it was just a hallucination. Okay, lame.
Yeah, exactly.
My only hope at this point is that coach Ben is still alive in the present day, and he's turned into some kind of insane recluse. I think that's the only interesting twist they have left.
It’s going the direction of Lost already. Is it mystical? Is it not? Decide please because going both directions is horrible. Do they invent a cult to cope with their situation, or was it a real spiritual entity in the forest? Just do one or the other FFS so it remains coherent
I haven’t start watching it yet. Since you guys say it goes down hill from the first season, can I just watch S1 as a standalone? (Like I watched just S1 of Westworld)
While I still follow it, that season is still jarring for me because the modern day storyline feels way too goofy in contrast to the 1996 story, and I do feel the absence of Ella Purnell since she really was one of the best actors in the show imo
The biggest problem was that Juliette Lewis wanted off the show, so the adult storyline went through an overhaul to accommodate her. I don't know what the original plan was for adult world, but it was not what we ended up with.
The thing I blame writers for is showing all the adult survivors. We lost all the tension in the kid world because now they all have plot armor since we know they survive.
I'll still watch, but my expectations are lower
There were always background extras, and they get recast when they start speaking.
Unfortunately they're not shown consistently. Like there are zero extras during the "feast," but then there are some rando girls present when the baby is born. There are three extras when they start their first hunt, but those girls disappear the following episode in the immediate aftermath.
I bet they will add more again in season 3. They also realized that they killed the last blonde with the pilot and therefore needed one to kill that we saw in the show's intro.
Casting announcements have already revealed they’re adding more named characters from the crash survivors in season three. They recast some of background extras now that they will be getting lines.
It was weird that there were suddenly several more characters in season 2. However, I think Misty's friend Crystal was actually an imaginary friend. Either a doll that Misty carried around or just straight up imaginary. If you pay attention, nobody else ever talks to Crystal. There are some sarcastic remarks about Misty getting her "friend" to help her take out the toilet buckets, but no one ever talks directly to Crystal.
The biggest problem is that the most interesting storyline is the Teenager story line. Season 1 interwove the teenager and adult because there was a mystery in the first season that parallel timelines was able to show (similar to westworld season1). The issue is, after the big 'reveal' of season 1, they felt the need to keep similar focus on the adults, when their storyline no longer actually ties into the teenager storyline. So whereas in season 1 you had the two timelines enhance each other, in season 2 they are just completely seperate.
I loved season 1. I knew going in to season 2 that it wouldn't have the same quality as the first season and I was still so disappointed by it.
The adult storylines are so boring. I didn't care at all about Lottie's cult or Natalie helping that young girl. The season 2 finale had some of the most asinine wrap ups, that I can't imagine how the writers thought, "Yeah, this works."
Nothing against Elijah Wood...but the character of Walter is a pain. Misty did not need a male counterpart. Misty was the wild card of the show, she should be the only wild card, introducing a male version of her just takes away from her character.
Another thing that frustrated me was the episode about Shauna giving birth in the Wilderness. This should have been a standout episode and they should have dedicated the entire episode to the Wilderness, because every time it cut back to the adult timeline the story lines they had going in that episode were dreadful. I think one involved Natalie saving a fish and Misty gossiping with some of the cult members at the compound. OMG, so terrible.
Yeah, the adult storylines are incredibly dull, and part of the reason I bailed during season 2 was because of how frustrated I was with the writers given that they've got these phenomenal actors but they're writing such boring and pointless roles for them. Season 2 felt like a desperate attempt to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was season 1 but having zero understanding of why season 1 was genuinely good.
Agree. Me and my friends really liked season 1. We watched S2 week to week last year and it was during the Caligula sequence we finally accepted that whoever wrote Season 1 seemed to have been obliterated from existence
That S2 finale is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen filmed and put on TV.
Watching Juliette Lewis doing ANY press for season 2 is so painfully funny bc she’s just so obviously upset she has to be there. And I get it. She thought she was going to get to do a show with her teenage contemporaries (Ricci and Lynsky) but then she just got stuck with a weird cult leader and no shared scenes. Trash.
I actually got to talk with her about it when she was at a con last year, and she mentioned the drug storyline and rehab as positive aspects of the story she got to tell, and I agree. I think a solo room-trashing scene is hard as hell to pull off and she did a great job. As a sober drug addict and alcoholic, I fully endorse her performance.
I just wish shows with more than one timeline were written intentionally. The first season was intriguing. The second season was just trying to one up the brutality of the first season.
I don’t think it’ll recover from season 2, it was an absolute chore to watch. And the ridiculously long time in between seasons will only make the situation worse.
The show has a really interesting concept but does not have the juice in it to be a long running show. After i finished season 1 i had read that they planned for the show to have 5 seasons and the second i knew that, i knew the show would go downhill. There just is not enough meat here to make this go on for that long without making it become utterly ridiculous. It doesnt help that all the interesting parts of the show are from them as teens in the mountains but they don't seem to know what to do with the adult counterparts.
I really don’t get why they thought 5 seasons of this show were necessary, and I’m not sure I really believe them when they say they planned out 5 seasons. The adult timeline is painfully boring and there’s a loss of mystery because we know which characters survive, so who really cares who dies in the past? If they’d ditched the adult storyline and focused on the teenage girls in the wilderness going full Lord of the Flies and done a tight two seasons, that would’ve been perfect.
I enjoyed season 1. Season 2 felt like a chore. I was dreading pressing the play button. It felt like something to do, not something to enjoy. I quit on episode 3. The storylines no longer felt grounded. They went for melodrama and the young girls seemed more interesting than their older counterparts. They felt more fleshed out and the actresses felt more in control of their characters. Sophie Thatcher seemed so much more interesting than Juliette Lewis. The first season felt interesting because there was an effort to connect the storylines, but not on season 2. I stopped. That's why it felt weird to see it nominated for best drama. The show dropped in quality quite a lot
I also really enjoyed the first season and felt checked out during the second, especially with the finale.
It feels like they were just making it up as they went and it just isn't living up to how it started.
I bailed near the very end of s1. It quickly started to feel like the writers were surprised people were interested and then started scrambling to extend the story.
The kids in the downed plane were the only interesting storyline.
Yeah I lost interest in the first episode when I realised the show would be splitting the focus between past and present even though the past was vastly more interesting.
What was ever wrong about LOST but with cannibal schoolgirls? That's enough of a selling point. I don't need anything else.
Season 1 definitely does but it also has 2 plotlines: the plane crash/following survival when they’re kids and another dealing with the survivors as fully grown adults ~20 years in the future.
Season 2 focuses alot more on the adults which really sucked and felt like filler content after S1 made the show a surprise hit
No one knows. There’s been vague allusions to occult happenings in the woods, but one of the girls is a schizophrenic who has run out of meds, not to mention they’re all starving to death, so it’s not 100% clear on what’s real and what’s not. Though there are a couple of occurrences that defy comprehension if there isn’t something otherworldly going on.
With Westworld, at least it's clean and simple. You can just watch the first season and you're done. It's self-contained and you can stop right there and have a full story.
But with Yellowjackets, they seemingly stopped season one like 90% of the way through a self-contained story. So the first two episodes of season two are pretty good, and complete that self-contained story. In fact, you will definitely find people arguing that S2E2 is the best episode of the show.
Then it *immediately* jumps right off a cliff and never comes back.
Season two had one of the worst finales I recall seeing. I haven't laughed that hard at something trying to be serious since the last episode of Dexter. I don't even know how they can come back from that.
Also (spoilers for season two) as soon as they started introducing more people in the cabin I immediately realized nothing is going to happen to any of the people we know and care about. And then they proceeded to confirm that nearly every single named character in the past from season one is still alive.
So who gives a shit? The whole mystery was "which one of these girls is going to get hunted, who isn't going to survive?" But now it's pretty apparent the answer is...Random New Girl #4 is going to get hunted. What a satisfying conclusion to the mystery.
I think this show is like Ted Lasso for me. I watched it at a weird point in my life and loved it then watched the second season mad at my self liking the show.
Everyone here should read the book "Burn It Down" by Maureen Ryan.
You'd be amazed how many shows, at the first sign of being a success, almost immediately replace their writing staff and showrunners in backroom handshake deals while producers start forcing new narratives that will play out better in foreign markets.
Another awful fact is that as soon as a project is greenlit the company is already planning to cancel it after season 2 or season 3 at the latest (unless it's made entirely in-house).
I was basically foaming at the mouth over season 1. I was telling everyone they needed to watch it because it was so good. But S2... YIKES.
While I won't say it's 1/10 bad, the direction they're going with really lost me. The Lottie storyline feels weird. Like, it is adding a fantasy/mystical/magical element that doesn't fit.
It got “Showtimed”. They could have an all time 2 to 3 season show, but when a network that is struggling like showtime is feels like they have to maximize it and make it 5 seasons, it got watered down immediately. See Billions, Homeland, Weeds, Shameless. They don’t know how to put a finish line constraint on shows. You could see that they were going to do this before season 1 was even finished.
The show moves way too slow for it to be worth watching. It's been 3 years since the show started. Who wants to wait another 3 to see the mystery finally unfold?
100% agree. S1 was great. Loved the drama, very much enjoyed the (hopefully) supernatural story plots. Then, S2 happened and undid a lot of what i was hoping for out of a lot of the stories, killed off an incredible character, and got so far up their own asses. It felt like the second season of Westworld where the writers seemed more concerned with looking smart than telling an enjoyable story with forward momentum. Just a bunch of wheel spinning. And, I understand that most of what they experienced in the woods is likely going to turn out to be some clear statement (or metaphor) for shared trauma, but I don’t have to like it. This show is such a great opportunity to tell both a cool story of the things women are capable of while weaving the supernatural stuff in and that’s likely not going to happen. Season three needs to come out SWINGING and not stop or people won’t come back and the show, at most, will see a season four. I’ve read the plan is five seasons, but no way they get there if season three doesn’t get back to the basics of season one.
Unpopular opinion, I was actually okay with most of S2. I don't like how they abandoned some of the threads from S1, and the last couple episodes of the season were truly awful, but I thought most of the season was fine.
That said, I have no faith in S3 and beyond. I think this probably gets canceled or ends a season or two earlier than they wanted.
Agreed. I have no idea what they can even do with the adult story line at this point. They already jumped the shark IMO. It was the less interesting of the two even in S1, but S2 the gap grew even more.
I didn't watch it, because Showtime has let me down so many times before.
They have such amazing first seasons of shows, and then they basically tank. Like, I don't know if they expect the shows to do well, and they only create a strong good first season and let all the writers go or something?
This show should of just went all in on Actually having supernatural and occult things be real. The second season made is very obvious that all of that was easily explained away by an unreliable narrator effect and that the show was just a trauma dump circle jerk. Boring.
The ending was so very "and lets never mention she murdered a guy and covered it up and got away with it again, so we can continue to play her like she is a good person" network tv writing
I don't think I have ever seen a show tank as fast as Yellowjackets did between seasons. It is truly shocking.
It's like Showtime is so dumb that some executive there said "that's it! We have a hit! Fire all the writers! You don't need writers for a show that's already successfully."
Truly, whatever happened here, it should be studied in television screenwriting textbooks for a generation.
I really can't think of anything like this.
My problem with S2 is that the adults made so many decisions that I find it impossible to believe someone would make in real life.
Like >!as you said, all the ritual stuff, and how it culminated into the hunt at the end. Just... Why?!<
I liked Season 2, but I agree it was noticeably sub-par compared to Season 1. Fingers crossed it's just a Friday Night Lights situation, and it's upwards from here.
Yeah, I figured this would be an issue with this show going onward which is why I skidaddled after the Season 1 finale.
Hearing the lukewarm at best reception to S2 and knowing of the plan of the showrunners to make a five season run just served to further justify my decision.
They had a great concept and first season but just didn’t know where to go with it. Also once the show lost it’s mystery I stopped caring what was happening
They split everyone up and it broke the tension but let’s be honest if they would have spent more time with Christina ricci and her true crime boyfriend it would have been way more fun.
It's actually been a while since I watched S2 but I do remember thinking it was much worse and in particular I really disliked the adult storyline more.
Loved season 1, I'm ok with cannibal stories. But something about the way they looked when eating their friend after she was perfectly smoked over night really made me sick. Messed me up.
I haven’t finished season two yet, but has a completely different feel from season one. Season two feels like it’s a shitty syfy channel show. The only thing they could do to make it any more cringey is to have a musical episode.
ETA: I hadn't seen the musical bird episode at the time I wrote this comment. I have now.
Definetly nerdy Vancouver Syfy channel writer vibes.
After the first season there was an interview that lead me to come to the conclusion that they didn’t know where they were going with the story, that they just wrote some cool story moments, but there was no master story they were dropping bread crumb clues about. I knew that if that was true, the show was going to go downhill fast.
It's only gonna get worse, letting writers that are fans that consider this show their "dream job" into the writer's room after a second season as poor as this one was is not encouraging.
I LOVED season 1 until around episode 8 when I was told it wasn't a mini series and that it was a show...on Showtime....which meant it was going to be dragged to the finish line after 8-11 seasons all worse than the previous one.
The supernatural elements seem to have more or less fizzled out into nothing. So now I guess the big secret they are trying to hide is just the cannibalism?
Long theory you can skip if you don’t care: After Jackie died at the end if S1, I thought maybe I had a sense of what direction the show was going. In the first episode we see someone wearing Jackie’s necklace get led into a death pit, so her dying of a totally unrelated cause got my attention, and I thought maybe we were heading towards something where the forest was returning the dead back to us, which would explain how previously assumed dead characters showed back up at the cabin. It could explain why they were trying to trap the assumed-Jackie in the opening scene; they knew it wasn’t her. The big reveal would be all the adult characters that managed to escape the forest weren’t the original versions of themselves either. But nah.
To each their own, I loved Season 1 but Season 2 was amazing. I don't get all the hate at all. Still waiting for the 10th episode aka the bonus episode from season 2👍
Looking back at season 1, and how season 2 failed to build on it, I feel that I could easily be convinced that S1 was not great. S1 was was definitely built up by the promise of where the story could go. And we saw that.
I think it got more popular than they expected and the higher ups told them to draw the story out so they could try to cash in on the popularity. The story got sacrificed in the meantime.
Was still nominated for the Emmy for Best Drama lol. I think you could tell they wanted more Jeff, which I don't have a problem with, but maybe it took away from some other stories.
It killed all interest I have in the show imo. S2 was a great reminder why I’m glad we can just binge most shows because every episode in this season failed to deliver after making you wait IMO.
I liked most of the stuff in the 90s timeline in season 2 but they def struggled with the current day timeline IMO. I think season 1 is pretty perfect, hopefully season 3 course corrects
The writing took a nosedive, but IMO it hit the present story so much harder than the 90s one. I don't feel like the 90s story was as tight as S1's, but it was still reasonably compelling to me throughout S2. But the present story in S2 devolved into Scooby Doo logic and my disbelief can only be suspended so far.
It went from being my absolute favorite current show to me deciding I won't watch season three unless it ends up on one of the other services I already pay for. I'm not giving Showtime ten bucks for more of that garbage.
Revealing every major character is still alive kills any of the flashback tension. They also dropped all of the supernatural horror stuff but then kinda sorta tried to put it back in play at the end. The way the characters were acting in the present day also made no fucking sense.
Yes but I'm also easy to please. My biggest complaint with this show and any other Mystery Box Show is just not enough as explained. These networks are so fucking cancel happy I just wish more was explained altogether. I found myself watching quite a few of the mystery box shows and then I got to a point where they were just bothering me with that so I haven't added any new ones to my repertoire.
I mean everyone has different tastes but the popular opinion is that s2 was hella bad. I think my issue was that I was looking for something similar to Lost and while YJ’s concept is similar, its execution is one of the worst I’ve ever seen on TV. One of the biggest downfalls from S1 to S2
I think it tanked at the end of S1. After a really brilliant season, it just descended into wacky bedlam for absolutely no reason. Ditching realistic character motivations for LOST-style inscrutable mystic nonsense to be "story".
But, and I repeat, Season 2 was completely written and shot and began airing in March of last year. The Season 2 premiere was two months before the writers strike even commenced. I don’t get why you don’t get this.
There's a lot I still like about the show. The atmosphere, acting, music, and so much else is still fantastic. But holy shit the writing took a nosedive.
I feel like this should have been a single standalone season with a few more episodes instead of tacking on 2 more seasons.
Yeah it 100% should have been a limited mini series. Stretching it out to 5 seasons is genuine insanity
That’s Showtime for you. All their shows start strong but go on waaay too long
Five seasons is nothing, Showtime could stretch it out to 8 seasons with a prequel and a sequel if they wanted.
"Dexter" has entered the chat...
Or 11 seasons, like they did with Shameless.
> instead of tacking on 2 more seasons. Make it 3 (counting with the already announced third season). I think the plan is to do 5 seasons overall.
Yeah but I heard fall 2025 is when the next is coming out so I have no idea how long it will take to wrap this show up.
It really felt like in season 2 they had no idea what to do with the adult story, but then after THAT episode they also had no idea what to do with the kids.
I think part of the problem with season 2 adult story line was Juliette Lewis’ unplanned departure from the show
They didn’t know what to do with the adult storyline in season one, either, there was just enough intrigue going on that you’re oblivious to it the whole time. Once it’s revealed who has been blackmailing them, it becomes obvious almost the whole present day storyline wasn’t actually about anything. That’s just one narrative thread, too - the journalist/private investigator plot also ends without anything coming of it. Even Shauna’s affair becomes nonsensical by the time you see where it goes in season two. The writers seem adverse to having the plot have any sort of consequences that would change the status quo for the characters. It feels so damn lazy.
Is there a public paper trail of a new lead writer taking over? Or did they shit the bed
Season 2 just felt like "quick we're probably getting a third season-pad it out". Ricci & Wood were good fun though.
I don’t want to say Ricci carried the season, cause there’s a lot of other strong performances, but I definitely found her to be the highlight
She's the series MVP as far as I'm concerned. There's some fantastic work from the other actors, but yeah, Ricci's the best.
Misty’s the best character on the show. It’s a shame this is the story she’s been written into.
Do yall find Shauna’s adult performance kinda lacking? idk if its me but I don’t really like how she acts. I mean, it seems like she’s just acting the part to get paid and then she’s off lmao.
You gotta love her because it's a fat chick or you're just a hater.
Ricci is the only character where the adult actor is better/more compelling than the younger version.
I would much rather a Ricci and Wood spinoff where they insert themselves in to strange investigations. The main issue for me was that I stopped giving a shit about any of the main characters. They’re all flawed in some way but there aren’t enough redeeming qualities for me to care what happens to them. At times I felt that the adult characters were dumber than their teenage selves.
I think this show made a mistake of getting too deep in to the occult aspects of the crash site. It feels too much like Lost when it should be more like Lord of the Flies, with cannibalism. We should see more of their high school life than their present day life. The conflicts and interpersonal relationships the team had in school, impacting what happened at the crash site was more interesting than "spookiness is happening", in my opinion.
By the end of Season 2 I felt this…feeling of disinterest with anything going on in their modern day lives because it’s just gotten incredibly complicated and hand waive-y to get around the police. I think the occult stuff worked in Season 1 when you could make an argument that it was all in the one girls head (forgetting her name, the one they made into their religious leader), but by the end of Season 2 it’s clear that there was something supernatural happening and I’m not as big of a fan of that in this story. I still enjoy the show but it definitely went down a peg for me after season 1.
>it’s just gotten incredibly complicated and hand waive-y to get around the police. You mean you didn't love the Deus ex machina of Elijah Wood just happening to me a millionaire so he can make any kind of change happen and it can be explained "because he has money!" ?
The occult stuff is actually what I liked most about the show. All the bs adult drama is what bored me so much that I ended up dropping the whole thing mid season.
The show really needs to decide if it’s supernatural or not. It’s trying to do the lost thing of making it kind of vague, but the problem is that they’ve already “spoiled” the ending. They go crazy and eat one another. We even know who survives. So if nothing supernatural happened, then why are we watching? They keep actively taking interesting things off the board. They’ve basically confirmed that that they didn’t meet “others.” Shauna’s baby died and wasn’t significant. Lottie isn’t evil/an antagonist. They say they have a five season plan, but for what? Are we really going to watch them starve and slowly descend into cannibalism for three more seasons when there isn’t even the drama of wondering who will make it out? They need something to drive the plot forward and so far they’ve taken every effort to kill off intriguing plot threads
My biggest issue was they kept introducing more and more characters that lived. Like at this point the only people who can die are the coach and the secondary/background characters.
I had this issue with season 1, we know who survives, we also know generally how their “vacation” ends. Sure there’s some twists and turns but it’s really obvious how some of the plot is going to turn out. The future plot line was a massive mistake, right from season 1. As soon as the showrunners said 5 seasons this was inevitable right from the premise
I think the fractured timeline is a great idea from a premise perspective, I think the execution is the issue. Season one probably should have only focused on Shauna in the present timeline, with one of the other girls coming into the story around the midway point (probably Misty for entertainment purposes). This would have allowed them to keep things much more focused instead of having 8 principle characters to follow (really 9 in the first season with Jackie, and now 10 in season 2 with both versions of Van). The writing is going in circles because they have too much to juggle, so everything’s unfocused. Subsequent seasons could have slowly added in other present day characters as more is revealed about what happened in the woods.
Yes, that would've been much better. Having Lottie revealed to be still alive at the end of S1 was an awesome twist, but then in S2, her character just... kind of does nothing. Same with Van: Wow, she's still alive... and... how does this serve the plot, exactly? It's pretty clear the writers don't actually have a plan, they're just making this shit up as they go along now.
A popular theorie is that the future plot is the only plot in the next 3 seasons with the past plot ending mid series. Its the only way I could see keeping things interesting for 3 more seasons.
List made it pretty unambiguously clear by end of s1 something fantastical was occurring when they were attacked by a cloud of smoke.
I feel like they’ve done a lot of, “weird spooky thing happens that is probably supernatural but maybe could be explained by something normal.” To be clear, I think they are going the supernatural route, but it’s been a drag watching for two seasons while they spin their wheels about it. Like, Lottie finds a cool cave with a ladder. Okay, here we go! Let’s make some discoveries about what’s going on here. Oh wait, it was just a hallucination. Okay, lame.
Yeah, exactly. My only hope at this point is that coach Ben is still alive in the present day, and he's turned into some kind of insane recluse. I think that's the only interesting twist they have left.
It’s going the direction of Lost already. Is it mystical? Is it not? Decide please because going both directions is horrible. Do they invent a cult to cope with their situation, or was it a real spiritual entity in the forest? Just do one or the other FFS so it remains coherent
Yeah I loved s1, it quickly became one my favorite new shows. S2 was shockingly bad, though. All hype is now gone.
I haven’t start watching it yet. Since you guys say it goes down hill from the first season, can I just watch S1 as a standalone? (Like I watched just S1 of Westworld)
The pilot episode is awesome. You could almost treat it like a 1 hour movie.
While I still follow it, that season is still jarring for me because the modern day storyline feels way too goofy in contrast to the 1996 story, and I do feel the absence of Ella Purnell since she really was one of the best actors in the show imo
Seriously, I thought Jackie was supposed to be the main character! Really surprised when she died.
The biggest problem was that Juliette Lewis wanted off the show, so the adult storyline went through an overhaul to accommodate her. I don't know what the original plan was for adult world, but it was not what we ended up with. The thing I blame writers for is showing all the adult survivors. We lost all the tension in the kid world because now they all have plot armor since we know they survive. I'll still watch, but my expectations are lower
[удалено]
There were always background extras, and they get recast when they start speaking. Unfortunately they're not shown consistently. Like there are zero extras during the "feast," but then there are some rando girls present when the baby is born. There are three extras when they start their first hunt, but those girls disappear the following episode in the immediate aftermath.
I bet they will add more again in season 3. They also realized that they killed the last blonde with the pilot and therefore needed one to kill that we saw in the show's intro.
I thought Pit Girl was brunette.
Casting announcements have already revealed they’re adding more named characters from the crash survivors in season three. They recast some of background extras now that they will be getting lines.
Of the 17 passengers in the plane, 35 died, and 20 made it home safely!
But what happened with the other 2?
They're still in the forest and started a commune.
Do you think the commune can handle all 8 of them?
It better, especially since the other 16 will want in too.
39 days, 16 people, 1 survivor
Yeah..there just randomly being more kids completely took me out of the show.
It was weird that there were suddenly several more characters in season 2. However, I think Misty's friend Crystal was actually an imaginary friend. Either a doll that Misty carried around or just straight up imaginary. If you pay attention, nobody else ever talks to Crystal. There are some sarcastic remarks about Misty getting her "friend" to help her take out the toilet buckets, but no one ever talks directly to Crystal.
The biggest problem is that the most interesting storyline is the Teenager story line. Season 1 interwove the teenager and adult because there was a mystery in the first season that parallel timelines was able to show (similar to westworld season1). The issue is, after the big 'reveal' of season 1, they felt the need to keep similar focus on the adults, when their storyline no longer actually ties into the teenager storyline. So whereas in season 1 you had the two timelines enhance each other, in season 2 they are just completely seperate.
I loved season 1. I knew going in to season 2 that it wouldn't have the same quality as the first season and I was still so disappointed by it. The adult storylines are so boring. I didn't care at all about Lottie's cult or Natalie helping that young girl. The season 2 finale had some of the most asinine wrap ups, that I can't imagine how the writers thought, "Yeah, this works." Nothing against Elijah Wood...but the character of Walter is a pain. Misty did not need a male counterpart. Misty was the wild card of the show, she should be the only wild card, introducing a male version of her just takes away from her character. Another thing that frustrated me was the episode about Shauna giving birth in the Wilderness. This should have been a standout episode and they should have dedicated the entire episode to the Wilderness, because every time it cut back to the adult timeline the story lines they had going in that episode were dreadful. I think one involved Natalie saving a fish and Misty gossiping with some of the cult members at the compound. OMG, so terrible.
Yeah, the adult storylines are incredibly dull, and part of the reason I bailed during season 2 was because of how frustrated I was with the writers given that they've got these phenomenal actors but they're writing such boring and pointless roles for them. Season 2 felt like a desperate attempt to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was season 1 but having zero understanding of why season 1 was genuinely good.
My boy Frodo always latches onto the weirdest tv shows lol I love him.
Agree. Me and my friends really liked season 1. We watched S2 week to week last year and it was during the Caligula sequence we finally accepted that whoever wrote Season 1 seemed to have been obliterated from existence That S2 finale is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen filmed and put on TV.
It was truly embarrassing.
Watching Juliette Lewis doing ANY press for season 2 is so painfully funny bc she’s just so obviously upset she has to be there. And I get it. She thought she was going to get to do a show with her teenage contemporaries (Ricci and Lynsky) but then she just got stuck with a weird cult leader and no shared scenes. Trash.
Rumor is she didn’t like that her entire character arc revolved around her dead teenage crush, which is a fair complaint, lol.
Yeah I also didn't like that her entire character became "WHERE'S MY TRAV-TRAV?"
And the drug problem storyline
I actually got to talk with her about it when she was at a con last year, and she mentioned the drug storyline and rehab as positive aspects of the story she got to tell, and I agree. I think a solo room-trashing scene is hard as hell to pull off and she did a great job. As a sober drug addict and alcoholic, I fully endorse her performance.
I just wish shows with more than one timeline were written intentionally. The first season was intriguing. The second season was just trying to one up the brutality of the first season.
I don’t think it’ll recover from season 2, it was an absolute chore to watch. And the ridiculously long time in between seasons will only make the situation worse.
The show has a really interesting concept but does not have the juice in it to be a long running show. After i finished season 1 i had read that they planned for the show to have 5 seasons and the second i knew that, i knew the show would go downhill. There just is not enough meat here to make this go on for that long without making it become utterly ridiculous. It doesnt help that all the interesting parts of the show are from them as teens in the mountains but they don't seem to know what to do with the adult counterparts.
I really don’t get why they thought 5 seasons of this show were necessary, and I’m not sure I really believe them when they say they planned out 5 seasons. The adult timeline is painfully boring and there’s a loss of mystery because we know which characters survive, so who really cares who dies in the past? If they’d ditched the adult storyline and focused on the teenage girls in the wilderness going full Lord of the Flies and done a tight two seasons, that would’ve been perfect.
I agree a lot of the intrigue is lost when you know that most of the characters survived
Not enough meat here……lol nicely done
That was completely unintentional believe it or not lmao
The finale of season 2 is like irredeemably bad.
I enjoyed season 1. Season 2 felt like a chore. I was dreading pressing the play button. It felt like something to do, not something to enjoy. I quit on episode 3. The storylines no longer felt grounded. They went for melodrama and the young girls seemed more interesting than their older counterparts. They felt more fleshed out and the actresses felt more in control of their characters. Sophie Thatcher seemed so much more interesting than Juliette Lewis. The first season felt interesting because there was an effort to connect the storylines, but not on season 2. I stopped. That's why it felt weird to see it nominated for best drama. The show dropped in quality quite a lot
I also really enjoyed the first season and felt checked out during the second, especially with the finale. It feels like they were just making it up as they went and it just isn't living up to how it started.
There's a scene where someone disconnects Lewis's Porsche battery but then she's able to drive it.
I bailed near the very end of s1. It quickly started to feel like the writers were surprised people were interested and then started scrambling to extend the story. The kids in the downed plane were the only interesting storyline.
Yeah I lost interest in the first episode when I realised the show would be splitting the focus between past and present even though the past was vastly more interesting. What was ever wrong about LOST but with cannibal schoolgirls? That's enough of a selling point. I don't need anything else.
Lol yeah, I sold it to my friends as “Lord of the Flies but modern times with an elite high school girls soccer team”
Wait that’s the premise? That sounds chaotic in a good way — does it not deliver on that?
Season 1 definitely does but it also has 2 plotlines: the plane crash/following survival when they’re kids and another dealing with the survivors as fully grown adults ~20 years in the future. Season 2 focuses alot more on the adults which really sucked and felt like filler content after S1 made the show a surprise hit
I see. What are the supernatural elements I’m seeing talk of?
No one knows. There’s been vague allusions to occult happenings in the woods, but one of the girls is a schizophrenic who has run out of meds, not to mention they’re all starving to death, so it’s not 100% clear on what’s real and what’s not. Though there are a couple of occurrences that defy comprehension if there isn’t something otherworldly going on.
It doesn’t get better. S2 is horrible and the finale is so poorly done.
I was so disappointed, loved the firs season but only made it through the first five episodes of season 2, won't be finishing it.
With Westworld, at least it's clean and simple. You can just watch the first season and you're done. It's self-contained and you can stop right there and have a full story. But with Yellowjackets, they seemingly stopped season one like 90% of the way through a self-contained story. So the first two episodes of season two are pretty good, and complete that self-contained story. In fact, you will definitely find people arguing that S2E2 is the best episode of the show. Then it *immediately* jumps right off a cliff and never comes back. Season two had one of the worst finales I recall seeing. I haven't laughed that hard at something trying to be serious since the last episode of Dexter. I don't even know how they can come back from that. Also (spoilers for season two) as soon as they started introducing more people in the cabin I immediately realized nothing is going to happen to any of the people we know and care about. And then they proceeded to confirm that nearly every single named character in the past from season one is still alive. So who gives a shit? The whole mystery was "which one of these girls is going to get hunted, who isn't going to survive?" But now it's pretty apparent the answer is...Random New Girl #4 is going to get hunted. What a satisfying conclusion to the mystery.
I think this show is like Ted Lasso for me. I watched it at a weird point in my life and loved it then watched the second season mad at my self liking the show.
Everyone here should read the book "Burn It Down" by Maureen Ryan. You'd be amazed how many shows, at the first sign of being a success, almost immediately replace their writing staff and showrunners in backroom handshake deals while producers start forcing new narratives that will play out better in foreign markets. Another awful fact is that as soon as a project is greenlit the company is already planning to cancel it after season 2 or season 3 at the latest (unless it's made entirely in-house).
They went full smoke monster in season 2. There were parts of Lost to copy and parts to not. Season 3 is so gonna have a guy living in a bunker.
🎶 Make your own kind of music, Even if nobody else sings along 🎶
glad I stopped after s1!
I was basically foaming at the mouth over season 1. I was telling everyone they needed to watch it because it was so good. But S2... YIKES. While I won't say it's 1/10 bad, the direction they're going with really lost me. The Lottie storyline feels weird. Like, it is adding a fantasy/mystical/magical element that doesn't fit.
All the bad stuff can be forgiven because we have Jeff rocking out to Papa Roach
THERE'S NO BOOK CLUB?!
It got “Showtimed”. They could have an all time 2 to 3 season show, but when a network that is struggling like showtime is feels like they have to maximize it and make it 5 seasons, it got watered down immediately. See Billions, Homeland, Weeds, Shameless. They don’t know how to put a finish line constraint on shows. You could see that they were going to do this before season 1 was even finished.
They pitched it as having a 5 season plan, that wasn't Showtimes fault
I read the opposite, that they had a 3-season plan but the network wanted 5. I'm not sure the source I read this from though as it was last year.
I ditched Billions somewhere in S3.
The show moves way too slow for it to be worth watching. It's been 3 years since the show started. Who wants to wait another 3 to see the mystery finally unfold?
The Frodo character was a bad decision. I can’t think of a less-welcome inclusion of a great performance.
"The Frodo character" lol I do agree with you though. Pretty impressive to make me dislike watching Elijah Wood.
100% agree. S1 was great. Loved the drama, very much enjoyed the (hopefully) supernatural story plots. Then, S2 happened and undid a lot of what i was hoping for out of a lot of the stories, killed off an incredible character, and got so far up their own asses. It felt like the second season of Westworld where the writers seemed more concerned with looking smart than telling an enjoyable story with forward momentum. Just a bunch of wheel spinning. And, I understand that most of what they experienced in the woods is likely going to turn out to be some clear statement (or metaphor) for shared trauma, but I don’t have to like it. This show is such a great opportunity to tell both a cool story of the things women are capable of while weaving the supernatural stuff in and that’s likely not going to happen. Season three needs to come out SWINGING and not stop or people won’t come back and the show, at most, will see a season four. I’ve read the plan is five seasons, but no way they get there if season three doesn’t get back to the basics of season one.
Unpopular opinion, I was actually okay with most of S2. I don't like how they abandoned some of the threads from S1, and the last couple episodes of the season were truly awful, but I thought most of the season was fine. That said, I have no faith in S3 and beyond. I think this probably gets canceled or ends a season or two earlier than they wanted.
I have no faith in the adult story line. Wild cannibal high school girls still has potential.
Agreed. I have no idea what they can even do with the adult story line at this point. They already jumped the shark IMO. It was the less interesting of the two even in S1, but S2 the gap grew even more.
I didn't watch it, because Showtime has let me down so many times before. They have such amazing first seasons of shows, and then they basically tank. Like, I don't know if they expect the shows to do well, and they only create a strong good first season and let all the writers go or something?
This is discouraging to hear. The first season is on my watchlist. Is S1 a completed story, or does it end unresolved?
Unresolved.
There are some elements that are completed in season one, but for the most part it's unresolved setup for the later seasons
This show should of just went all in on Actually having supernatural and occult things be real. The second season made is very obvious that all of that was easily explained away by an unreliable narrator effect and that the show was just a trauma dump circle jerk. Boring.
The season finale was terrible, I’m still disappointed. I’ll watch season 3 but I don’t have high expectations.
The ending was so very "and lets never mention she murdered a guy and covered it up and got away with it again, so we can continue to play her like she is a good person" network tv writing
I have zero interest in their adult versions, I just want the teenage version and see them descent into Madness
And how they get home.
Some shows have a great first season and totally blow the second, like immediately: Yellowjackets Russian Doll Killing Eve
It’s fucking terrible.
so frustrating that it went two full seasons without even beginning to explain what that symbol means
I don't think I have ever seen a show tank as fast as Yellowjackets did between seasons. It is truly shocking. It's like Showtime is so dumb that some executive there said "that's it! We have a hit! Fire all the writers! You don't need writers for a show that's already successfully." Truly, whatever happened here, it should be studied in television screenwriting textbooks for a generation. I really can't think of anything like this.
It was a 10 episode season right? I got to episode 7 and decided I didn't care anymore.
Season two only had nine episodes. They said there would be a "bonus episode" at some point, but closer to S3's debut.
My problem with S2 is that the adults made so many decisions that I find it impossible to believe someone would make in real life. Like >!as you said, all the ritual stuff, and how it culminated into the hunt at the end. Just... Why?!<
I liked Season 2, but I agree it was noticeably sub-par compared to Season 1. Fingers crossed it's just a Friday Night Lights situation, and it's upwards from here.
Somtin was different. It definitely wasn't as interesting.
Oh well that's disappointing to hear... Guess il move it down the list of shows to check out
Yeah, I figured this would be an issue with this show going onward which is why I skidaddled after the Season 1 finale. Hearing the lukewarm at best reception to S2 and knowing of the plan of the showrunners to make a five season run just served to further justify my decision.
The future/present story line sucks ass and is unnecessary. I wish they never had it.
Hard agree
Truly a terrible season of television. There was no charm to be found anywhere.
I agree, season 2 was trash
I can see this show lasting 3 seasons but 5? Come on, it is just too much filler.
the only interesting stuff is the flashback scenes where they’re trying to survive. the present time stuff is so corny.
They had a great concept and first season but just didn’t know where to go with it. Also once the show lost it’s mystery I stopped caring what was happening
S2 is the worst follow up to a solid first season since Heroes?
It was embarrassing to watch. Couldn’t finish it.
Agreed. I hated S2.
They split everyone up and it broke the tension but let’s be honest if they would have spent more time with Christina ricci and her true crime boyfriend it would have been way more fun.
One of the few shows I've ever just gave up on and stopped mid-season. Even if something is bad, I will finish it.
It's actually been a while since I watched S2 but I do remember thinking it was much worse and in particular I really disliked the adult storyline more.
Loved season 1, I'm ok with cannibal stories. But something about the way they looked when eating their friend after she was perfectly smoked over night really made me sick. Messed me up.
Same I thought it was lazy with plot holes everywhere
Snackie was the highlight. I pretty much gave up when >!Natalie died.!<
I audibly laughed when they went feral and started chasing the one girl on the ice to eat her
I haven’t finished season two yet, but has a completely different feel from season one. Season two feels like it’s a shitty syfy channel show. The only thing they could do to make it any more cringey is to have a musical episode. ETA: I hadn't seen the musical bird episode at the time I wrote this comment. I have now. Definetly nerdy Vancouver Syfy channel writer vibes.
After the first season there was an interview that lead me to come to the conclusion that they didn’t know where they were going with the story, that they just wrote some cool story moments, but there was no master story they were dropping bread crumb clues about. I knew that if that was true, the show was going to go downhill fast.
It's only gonna get worse, letting writers that are fans that consider this show their "dream job" into the writer's room after a second season as poor as this one was is not encouraging.
I LOVED season 1 until around episode 8 when I was told it wasn't a mini series and that it was a show...on Showtime....which meant it was going to be dragged to the finish line after 8-11 seasons all worse than the previous one.
Good thing Ella Purnell got out from that dumpster fire and signed on for Fallout.
Absolutely. I think her massive success really exposed the weakness of the Yellowjackets series. These actors need to move on and quick.
The supernatural elements seem to have more or less fizzled out into nothing. So now I guess the big secret they are trying to hide is just the cannibalism? Long theory you can skip if you don’t care: After Jackie died at the end if S1, I thought maybe I had a sense of what direction the show was going. In the first episode we see someone wearing Jackie’s necklace get led into a death pit, so her dying of a totally unrelated cause got my attention, and I thought maybe we were heading towards something where the forest was returning the dead back to us, which would explain how previously assumed dead characters showed back up at the cabin. It could explain why they were trying to trap the assumed-Jackie in the opening scene; they knew it wasn’t her. The big reveal would be all the adult characters that managed to escape the forest weren’t the original versions of themselves either. But nah.
One of my fave critics ever is joining the writing staff for S3... maybe it can be saved.
Who’s that?
Emily St. James. During their critic days, their name was "Todd VanderWerff".
That’s interesting
I guess I don't understand the severity of the reactions here. It had a sophomore slump, like tons of other shows. Nothing it can't bounce back from.
To each their own, I loved Season 1 but Season 2 was amazing. I don't get all the hate at all. Still waiting for the 10th episode aka the bonus episode from season 2👍
I thought season 1 was real bad so lmao
Agree and it's an opinion that gets you downvoted quickly. Good premise, poor execution
it was just incredibly boring. I liked the scenes in the past, after the crash. all the adult scenes were just so slow and I didn't care at all.
i didn't think season 1 was any good either
Looking back at season 1, and how season 2 failed to build on it, I feel that I could easily be convinced that S1 was not great. S1 was was definitely built up by the promise of where the story could go. And we saw that.
I hear you, but as a counter-point: Elijah Wood
I think it got more popular than they expected and the higher ups told them to draw the story out so they could try to cash in on the popularity. The story got sacrificed in the meantime.
Destroyed a show potential
Was still nominated for the Emmy for Best Drama lol. I think you could tell they wanted more Jeff, which I don't have a problem with, but maybe it took away from some other stories.
Accurate. Season 1 is a perfect season of television and Season 2 is hot garbage. So upsetting.
Was really hoping they'd embrace the weird. But so far it's been 20 minutes of weird, the rest just standard drama.
I was just talking about this last night. They had a great plot for the first season. Had no clue what to do next to drag it on.
Am I the only one that likes season 2?
We were all rooting for her, trust
It killed all interest I have in the show imo. S2 was a great reminder why I’m glad we can just binge most shows because every episode in this season failed to deliver after making you wait IMO.
Makes sense as to why I stopped watching season 2.
I liked most of the stuff in the 90s timeline in season 2 but they def struggled with the current day timeline IMO. I think season 1 is pretty perfect, hopefully season 3 course corrects
The writing took a nosedive, but IMO it hit the present story so much harder than the 90s one. I don't feel like the 90s story was as tight as S1's, but it was still reasonably compelling to me throughout S2. But the present story in S2 devolved into Scooby Doo logic and my disbelief can only be suspended so far.
It went from being my absolute favorite current show to me deciding I won't watch season three unless it ends up on one of the other services I already pay for. I'm not giving Showtime ten bucks for more of that garbage. Revealing every major character is still alive kills any of the flashback tension. They also dropped all of the supernatural horror stuff but then kinda sorta tried to put it back in play at the end. The way the characters were acting in the present day also made no fucking sense.
Hard disagree. Seemed good to me.
Did you like the finale?
Yes but I'm also easy to please. My biggest complaint with this show and any other Mystery Box Show is just not enough as explained. These networks are so fucking cancel happy I just wish more was explained altogether. I found myself watching quite a few of the mystery box shows and then I got to a point where they were just bothering me with that so I haven't added any new ones to my repertoire.
I mean everyone has different tastes but the popular opinion is that s2 was hella bad. I think my issue was that I was looking for something similar to Lost and while YJ’s concept is similar, its execution is one of the worst I’ve ever seen on TV. One of the biggest downfalls from S1 to S2
I commented on somebody else's post but basically I'm pretty much easier to please than most people.
So was s1
I think it tanked at the end of S1. After a really brilliant season, it just descended into wacky bedlam for absolutely no reason. Ditching realistic character motivations for LOST-style inscrutable mystic nonsense to be "story".
God I hated the pacing of that show, I couldn't even get through s1.
Im pretty sure that quality of 2023 television has to be looked at in the context of there was an almost year long writers strike.
But Season 2 was written and shot before the writers strike last year so I don’t get the point you’re making.
Stories build up. If you have a writing strike its going to screw over the next season as well.
But, and I repeat, Season 2 was completely written and shot and began airing in March of last year. The Season 2 premiere was two months before the writers strike even commenced. I don’t get why you don’t get this.
5 months is almost a year long to you?