Here’s some news that will get you buzzing: Seasons 1 and 2 of Yellowjackets are now streaming on Netflix in the US. 

The twisty thriller series chronicles a high school girl’s soccer team whose trip to the national championship goes terribly wrong when their plane crashes, leaving them stranded in the wild. In the world of teenage girls, the social ladder reigns supreme — but the wilderness has its own set of rules, and they’ll have to put their differences aside if they hope to survive.

Whether you’re ready for a rewatch or this is your first time joining the hive, here’s everything you need to know about Yellowjackets. Don’t swarm! 

What happens in Yellowjackets?

The series takes place across two timelines, one of which is set in 1996 and follows a talented New Jersey high school girl’s soccer team — the Yellowjackets — as they make their way to a national tournament. All hell breaks loose when their private plane crashes in the Ontario wilderness and the survivors end up stranded there for 19 months, finding ways to survive by foraging for food and water, and hunting the local wildlife. But when winter approaches, they soon realize they might have to take extreme actions to stay alive. As the girls come to terms with their dire conditions, the team slowly devolves into separate rival (and possibly cannibalistic) factions, some who swear by rituals of the wilderness, and others whose only goal is to survive long enough to get home.

In the present-day timeline, some of the women who survived prepare for their 25-year high school reunion, which brings up old wounds from when they were young. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Taissa (Tawny Cypress), Nat (Juliette Lewis), and Misty (Christina Ricci) are each struggling in their own ways to reckon with what they lived through as teenagers, and finding it more difficult to navigate their adult relationships and careers in the process. Their lives begin to spiral once more as their unhealed traumas come to a head — and they’ll go to great lengths to conceal what really happened in the woods. 

Who’s in the cast of Yellowjackets?

The 1996 cast includes the following: 

• Sophie Nélisse (The Kid Detective) as Shauna Shipman
• Sophie Thatcher (The Boogeyman) as Natalie “Nat” Scatorccio
• Samantha Hanratty (Shameless) as Misty Quigley
• Jasmin Savoy Brown (Scream) as Taissa Turner
• Courtney Eaton (Mad Max: Fury Road) as Lottie Matthews
• Liv Hewson (Bombshell) as Van Palmer
• Kevin Alves (Locke & Key) as Travis Martinez
• Ella Purnell (Arcane) as Jackie Taylor
• Steven Krueger (The Originals) as Ben Scott
• Luciano Leroux (Teacup) as Javi Martinez
• Jack DePew (The Fosters) as Jeff Sadecki
• Sarah Desjardins (Riverdale) as Callie Sadecki
• Jane Widdop (The Kicks) as Laura Lee
• Keeya King (Van Helsing) as Akilah
• Alexa Barajas (The Flash) as Mari

And the cast of the present day timeline includes: 

• Melanie Lynskey (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, The Intervention) as Shauna Sadecki
• Juliette Lewis (Queer as Folk, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) as Natalie Scatorccio
• Christina Ricci (Wednesday, Casper) as Misty Quigley
• Tawny Cypress (Autumn in New York) as Taissa Turner
• Warren Kole (Shades of Blue) as Jeff Sadecki
• Rukiya Bernard (Van Helsing) as Simone Abara
• Aiden Stoxx (Arrow) as Sammy Abara-Turner
• Andres Soto (Riverdale) as Travis Martinez
• Rekha Sharma (Battlestar Galactica) as Jessica Roberts
• Peter Gadiot (Queen of the South) as Adam Martin

Is Yellowjackets based on a true story?

Yellowjackets isn’t directly based on a true story, but the series’ concept does pull from real-life headlines. In fact, the series draws inspiration from the tragic Flight 571 disaster, when a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team on their way to a match crashed in the Andes mountains on Oct. 13, 1972, leaving 29 people stranded. The story of this “Miracle of the Andes” is also recounted in the 2023 Oscar-nominated feature film Society of the Snow. 

Ashley Lyle, who co-created Yellowjackets with her husband, Bart Nickerson, and Jonathan Lisco, also pointed to William Golding’s classic survival novel Lord of the Flies. She recalled to The New York Times having read an article about a planned remake of the book — where young girls end up stranded on an uninhabited island instead of boys. Lyle recalled that commenters on that story were reluctant to believe that girls could descend into the same sort of chaos, to which she thought, “You were never a teenage girl, sir.”  

When will Yellowjackets be released on Netflix?

Stream Season 1 and 2 right now.

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