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Yellowjackets is finally returning for a third season, bringing everyone’s favorite team of psychologically unraveling high school soccer players back for more mystery, mayhem, and, most likely, murder. The first two episodes of Season 3 will be available to stream Feb. 14 on Paramount+ for subscribers with the Showtime plan before airing Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. ET on the Showtime network, setting viewers up for a double dose of the dual-timeline survival drama.
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Considering creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have said their plan is for the show to run for five seasons, the next 10 episodes are probably not going to answer every question we have about the teen Yellowjackets’ time in the wilderness and how it continues to shape the fates of their adult counterparts 25 years later. But we can at least hope to get to the bottom of a few mysteries raised in the first two seasons.
Here are nine questions we still have going into Yellowjackets Season 3.
Is Natalie the Antler Queen from the pilot?
After teen Nat (Sophie Thatcher) was spared from being hunted down and turned into the team’s next meal thanks to Javi (Luciano Leroux) falling through the ice of the frozen lake and drowning, Lottie (Courtney Eaton) decreed the supposed supernatural forces at work in the woods wanted Nat to take control of their fates. “The wilderness chose who fed us,” she told the group. “It’s already chosen who should lead us.”
But does that really mean Nat is the so-called Antler Queen from the “pit girl” scene of the pilot? Not only does the wilderness seem a bit too hot-and-cold to allow one girl to be queen for long—Lottie was the first one to take on the role, after all—but Yellowjackets also doesn’t feel like the type of show to give the game away so easily.
What happens to Coach Ben?
When we last saw Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) in the Season 2 finale, he was intent on getting the hell out of teenage cannibalism dodge by making a go of surviving in the wilderness on his own. After finding Javi’s former hideout and trying and failing to convince Natalie to come with him, Ben returned to the cabin one last time to grab some matches so he could light a fire in his new home. It was then he witnessed Nat being crowned the new leader of the group and apparently decided to burn down the cabin. While we haven’t seen Ben in the present-day timeline, we still don’t know what ends up happening to him in the wilderness or what the hideout might provide. But it doesn’t seem likely the girls will react vey kindly to him destroying their only shelter. If he’s not careful, Ben may very well be next on the menu.
How are the Yellowjackets going to survive without a cabin?
The cabin burned down in the middle of a harsh winter, putting the Yellowjackets’ survival in even more jeopardy. A clip from Season 3—in which Van (Liv Hewson) and Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) share their very different viewpoints of what’s happened so far in the wilderness—shows they do make it to spring, and that most of the Yellowjackets believe they survived due to Nat’s leadership and by making “sacrifices,” which brought the “miracle” of warm weather.
But winter will come again. We know at least some of the girls and Travis (Kevin Alves) live to be rescued following a 19-month stint in the wilderness. How exactly they make it through another round of freezing temperatures, blizzards, and the fallout from what is either violent collective delusion or nefarious supernatural forces is still up in the air.
What are we going to do without Juliette Lewis?
Killing off adult Natalie in the Season 2 finale was certainly a twist, but now the show has the difficult task of moving on without the scene-stealing presence of Juliette Lewis. While teen Nat’s storyline will continue on in the past timeline as we learn what happens to her after being crowned Antler Queen, the adult cast has lost one of their heavy hitters. Perhaps that means we’ll soon be meeting a new survivor who lived to make it to the present day.
Who is Hilary Swank playing?
Back in September, it was announced Hilary Swank would be joining the Yellowjackets Season 3 cast as a recurring guest star. No details about her character have been revealed, but if she’s playing the adult version of one of the teens, it seems like they’ll probably have to flesh out the past storyline of a character who hasn’t yet played too prominent of a role.
How is Misty going to cope with even more trauma?
Natalie obviously isn’t the first person that Misty (Samantha Hanratty as a teen and Christina Ricci as an adult) has killed. But it seems like she might be the first person whose death will weigh heavily on Misty’s conscience. Not only was Misty not intending to kill Nat, but she also had a pretty obsessive devotion to her—seemingly even more so than Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Taissa (Tawny Cypress), or any of the other adult survivors.
“It was a complete mistake,” Ricci told Variety of Misty accidentally stabbing Nat with the syringe of phenobarbital. “She made an impulsive choice—another characteristically immature, impulsive, selfish choice where she was going to kill the person who was going to hurt her friend. Not wanting her friends taken away, it’s about keeping what she wants. It was a disastrous decision.”
What’s the deal with the Man with No Eyes?
Throughout the first two seasons, we’ve seen the terrifying Man with No Eyes show up in both the wilderness and the present-day timeline. While we know he first appeared to young Taissa (Bailey Burr as a child and Jasmin Savoy Brown as a teen) when her grandma had a vision of him on her death bed and later seems to be connected to Taissa’s sleepwalking episodes, we still have no idea who or what he really is. Is he actually a supernatural entity or simply a figment of Taissa’s trauma? Well, according to Lyle, the Man with No Eyes is something of a specter of death.
“For Taissa, who’s very much not in touch with her spiritual self, and very much not in touch with her ability to believe, or, her faith, there’s this sort of symbolic character [who] you could look at as death incarnate,” she said during a 2023 panel at PaleyFest. “I think what he represents is ‘the unknown’ and the unknown is something that Taissa is very uncomfortable with as a character.”
How were the Yellowjackets rescued?
We know the Yellowjackets who make it home spend a total of 19 months in the wilderness. What we don’t know is how they eventually get out of the forest. Is there still a search and rescue team looking for them after all that time? Or do some of the girls eventually escape the madness and find a way to hike into civilization? Hopefully we’ll get at least a few hints about the end of their odyssey as Season 3 progresses.
Who’s the pit girl?
Which girl were the Antler Queen and her masked followers hunting and eating in the pilot? The biggest question from the very first scene of the series remains unanswered and will likely continue to be on the forefront of fans’ minds until it is. At this point, we can definitely rule out Misty—who has since been revealed as one of the members of the Antler Queen’s inner circle—and can also nix the idea that it’s one of the other five teens who survived into adulthood: Shauna, Taissa, Nat, Lottie, and Van. But if it’s not someone with at least somewhat of a significant role in the past timeline, it won’t make for a very impactful reveal. Our current best guess is Mari (Alexa Barajas), who has made waves within the group and also fits the physical description of the girl who was shown running for her life.
