Imagine Lord of the Flies… but women. That was part of the original pitch of Yellowjackets, a show about a high school girls’ soccer team that turns to cannibalism after a plane crash. After their plane crashes on the way to a national tournament, the girls must fight to survive, not just the brutal landscape, but also their quickly unraveling minds. The show weaves together two timelines: one in the 1990s, chronicling the teens’ descent into cannibalistic chaos, and another in the present day, where the now-adult survivors grapple with the long-buried secrets of what really happened out there.
While promoting the release of the most recent season 3 of Yellowjackets, Courtney Eaton, the actress for main character Lottie Matthews, promised that it would be “gory and gay.” Before watching the newest season, most fans of the show would consider this a good thing. But, now that it has finished airing, a question arises: is there such a thing as too gay?
Despite only two of its six total female leads being lesbians and heavily featuring two straight relationships in its first season, Yellowjackets has managed to garner a disproportionately large sapphic fanbase. “It’s an inherently gay show because it’s about a girls’ soccer team,” said Alianna Ribadeneira ’25. “Therefore, there are only women within it–especially the younger timeline but also the adult timeline–and fans naturally will always want to find couples to ship (short for romantic relationship) even if they are not canon. So, naturally, all of the ships within the fandom and in the storyline are going to be sapphic.”
On social media platform TikTok, the tag JackieShauna – a term used to refer to the fanmade ship between characters Jackie Taylor and Shauna Shipman–has 30,000 uses. To give some context about how large this number is, the tag Yellowjackets has 295,000 uses. So, JackieShauna related content makes up about a tenth of the total Yellowjackets TikTok content. Unfortunately for supporters of the ship, Jackie died in the finale of season 1 and, with her, died all chances of JackieShauna coming to life on screen.
Even if Jackie survived past season 1, the likelihood that the JackieShauna ship would have been actualized is very slim. After all, the whole reason Jackie died is because she got into a fight with Shauna over Shauna sleeping with her boyfriend Jeff, who Shauna later married in the adult timeline.
There are many ways this dynamic has been interpreted. “I like Jackie and Shauna’s relationship because they’re like teenagers, and they don’t really know anything. Jackie has a boyfriend, and then Shauna likes Jackie, but because she’s a teenager, she doesn’t understand her feelings. They’re so complex. Shauna doesn’t know if she wants to be her or she wants to be with her,” said Anika Mahbub ’25. She continues, “I like their relationship because it is complicated and they don’t understand her. They never get closure, either. They never figure things out. When Shauna looks at her as an adult, it’s mainly just guilt. This is similar to Jackie’s parents–she doesn’t want them to pay for Callie’s education because she just feels so much guilt about Jackie.”
Character deep dives and analysis like Mahbub’s are what makes Yellowjackets so intriguing. The show, at its core, is an exploration of trauma. This is why the viewer experiences the teen timeline and the adult timeline simultaneously–the characters’ actions in the wilderness have short and long term ramifications.
It seems that the show has started to leave this idea behind with the latest season, instead opting to fuel fan culture. One example of this can be seen in the teen timeline, where a relationship between Shuana and the side character Melissa has developed.
The introduction of this relationship was met with mixed reactions. Some fans were excited by Shauna’s bisexuality and ready to see how this new relationship adds to the plot. Other fans, however, felt that the whole storyline came out of left-field when considering how irrelevant Melissa was beforehand.
Mahbub said, “I feel like the subplot with Melissa kissing Shauna was also there for shock value. I was so confused about why, after they kissed, nothing happened with Melissa. Shauna was just like, ‘oh don’t get in my way.’ That was it.” The lack of impact of Melissa’s and Shauna’s relationship leads fans to wonder if it was just included to appease a sapphic fanbase.
A couple of other characters in the teen timeline, such as Gen and Akilah, also got more screen time this season. “It kind of upset me how they only gave characters relevance towards the end or, like, towards season three. I feel like they should have developed Melissa’s plot towards the beginning, because people who watched it weren’t really attached to her, necessarily, like they weren’t to a lot of the other characters, who only kind of got screen time within the end of season 2 and season 3. So it doesn’t really serve as a good plot in general because, you know, people don’t really care about them–they’re not the OG,” said Ribadeneira.
Obviously, for their deaths to have an impact upon the audience, these side characters need to be developed. But, it does seem like these new storylines are coming at the expense of shafting previous major storylines.
Taissa Turner is one of four characters who have been a main character in both the adult and teen timelines since season one. She was a character who was engrossed in the supernatural side of the show, with her plot revolving around her fugue state and The Man With No Eyes.
In season 3, her character changed from being less about The Man With No Eyes and her alternate state to revolving around Vanessa Palmer and her cancer. In season two, her senator and family plotlines from season one were sidelined in order to introduce Van. Jansson said, “I think that Taissa’s whole storyline was kind of thrown out the window for a new one, because she had something very interesting going on, and now she’s just kind of like following along with Shauna, and she still has her same, like, issues obviously.” Taissa has lost a lot of screen time–going from having her own plotline about politics to being more of a side character in Shauna’s story.
The adult timeline’s focus on Shauna was emphasized by the death of another main character Lottie Matthews. Since the character was only introduced in season two, her story felt unfinished to viewers. Even the actress who portrayed her, Simone Kessel, agreed. “I was pretty brokenhearted, because it felt like it had come to an end just when I felt Lottie was coming into her own. I was excited that Season 3 would take her somewhere interesting, and unfortunately, they just decided that storyline was no longer,”Kessel said in an interview with a reporter from Variety.
This seeming loss in story and character development could be attributed to the way that T.V. shows are formatted nowadays. Since the pandemic, seasons have shrunk to under 10 episodes rather than the past 20+ episodes that had more time for filler episodes and side plots.
But, the general feeling of ‘why should side characters get priority over established characters?’ by fans was only amplified when, in the second half of season three, the show revealed that Melissa is a secret 8th adult timeline survivor. If a show is struggling with a lack of screen time, why would they introduce new plotlines?
“I was praying this whole season, thinking ‘please don’t bring the Hat into the adult time,’ please, and then they did, and then it was Swank. Like honestly, I don’t even mind that they brought Melissa back, because I’m fine with Melissa’s teen storyline. I feel much more empathetic for her right now than I did originally, when she was just kind of following along with Shauna and egging her on. But why did they create her character like that? I feel like I’m seeing kind of a connection between the younger ones and the older ones for a lot of them. But with Melissa? Nothing, nothing,” said Mia Jansson ’25.
Then Melissa killed Vanessa Palmer.
Van is the second main character and fan-favorite to die in season three, with the other one being Lottie Matthews. Both of these characters were introduced as adult characters in season 2 and, similarly to their teenage counterparts, became adored by fans.
On TikTok, user @vpigproductions garnered a fanbase through posting weekly rituals for their followers to do in order to manifest Van Palmer’s safety in each episode. “What else can you do? The show is already filmed and edited, the only way to change fate itself is through elaborate and complex rituals. What’s better than lathering yourself in canola oil with some chipmunks in a bowl in front of you? This is the life,” said the user herself. “Shoutout FC Barcelona Midfielder Fermín López too.”
These rituals are not meant to be taken seriously.
Vpig’s content reflects the attitude of the show and its fandom since the beginning. Yellowjackets has always been somewhat campy and silly–especially in the adult timeline. These lighthearted moments, however, have been historically intertwined with serious moments that make fans pause the show out of shock or horror.
One stark contrast many fans noticed is between the reveals of new survivors. When Lottie was introduced as a new survivor at the end of season one, it was in a tense, cliffhanger scene. She was set up to be a big player and looming threat as a cult leader. Melissa’s reveal in the latest season was much more underwhelming. The camera simply panned over to her wearing her staple backwards hat and viewers know that her character holds little power.
While Yellowjackets fans enjoy the huge plot twists, they have to make sense. Killing or adding new characters simply for shock value does not appease fans since they have attachments to pre-existing characters.
“I wish she wouldn’t have died, but man, what a way to go. The plane scene with Lauren Ambrose and Liv Hewson was just beautiful, and I will never be able to listen to Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music for a Film’ the same way ever again,” said Vpig on Van’s death. “The adult timeline of sunshine and giggles just became the adult timeline of tragedy and despair. When Van died, I did dramatically fall to the ground, and I did accidentally give myself carpet burn. A month later, the mark is still there on my knee. It’s kind of beautiful in a way.”
This raises a question: if the Yellowjackets creators are trying to pander to fan culture, why would they kill off characters that drive so much of it? Maybe, just maybe, the creative decisions this season are actually not to pander. Maybe they are part of a bigger plan.
The existence of a “bigger” or “overall” plan is core to shows like Yellowjackets. After all, the show revolves around the mystery of The Wilderness™ and how what happened out there shaped the teens into the adults they became.
The open-endedness of the show has led to the creation of many theories–some that have been pieced together through small details over the seasons. The subreddit r/Yellowjackets is known for its users’ insistence on the mineshaft theory, which is based solely on a symbol that appears around the woods the teen timeline is based in. There have also been numerous attempts to pinpoint exactly where the teen timeline crash happened.
In season 3, quite a few of these drawn-out theories came true.
One of the most talked-about theories involved the mysterious “pit girl” from the pilot episode–a nameless girl seen fleeing through the snowy woods before falling into a trap-filled pit and being eaten by the soccer team. The theory gained traction due to her physical resemblance to the pit girl and a string of foreshadowing moments throughout the earlier seasons.
While some fans began to doubt the theory when Mari was referred to as a “decoy” in the first episode of season 3–suspecting this meant she was meant to throw viewers off the trail of the real pit girl–the finale ended with Mari, at last, in the pit. Interestingly enough, she was a decoy, just not in the way fans originally assumed. Rather than her death being a red herring, she served as a diversion to help another key character Natalie secretly use a transmitter to call for rescue.
That moment–Natalie calling for help–confirmed another major fan theory. Viewers had long speculated that Natalie would be instrumental in saving the soccer team, especially based on the cryptic comment “she [Natalie] is the only reason we are here” from adult Taissa. When the transmitter was revealed, fans started putting the pieces together and came to the conclusion that Natalie would go to a high altitude to use the transmitter and call for help.
Creating theories and watching them play out can be fun for a lot of fans. But, there’s also a dark side. People can get too attached to their theories and will sometimes disregard a decision on the show as “bad” if it contradicts their theory. Even if the decision is not objectively bad.
A prediction that has split Yellowjackets fans since the pilot is who will be the infamous “Antler Queen.” The season 3 finale answered this question, ending with Shauna donning the Antler Queen outfit.
Unlike pit girl, there was no one popular suspect for the Antler Queen. So, no matter who the writers decided, the reveal of Antler Queen would not have pleased all fans. Unsurprisingly, people took to social media after the finale to complain.
Proponents of the Lottie will be Antler Queen theory came up with a hashtag to express their dismay: #LottieMatthewsIsMyAntlerQueen. While some people are serious about their disappointment over Shauna being Antler Queen, most fans are joking.
Still, even debates like these reflect the show’s growing popularity and passionate fanbase. Though a bigger fan base tends to lead to more negative fans, most pre-existing fans view it as a positive. Vpig said, “ I’ve been watching the show since season 1, and it’s been pretty cool to watch it grow into the mainstream. It used to be that nobody knew about the show, but now everybody has heard about it in some way.” This growth resulted in the renewal of Yellowjackets, with a season 4 renewal being confirmed on May 20th, 2025.
What Yellowjackets season 4 needs, at the end of the day, is to find an equilibrium. Not too silly, too serious, too campy, too dramatic, too thought-out, too spontaneous. Or too gay.
Imagine Lord of the Flies… but women. That was part of the original pitch of Yellowjackets, a show about a high school girls’ soccer team that turns to cannibalism after a plane crash.