Emmy-nominated Showtime series Yellowjackets will return for its second season on non-linear platforms on Friday, March 24, 2023. According to a Showtime press release, the series will also air on Sunday, March 26, 2023, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
The first season averaged over five million weekly viewers across platforms and was also the second-most streamed series in SHOWTIME history. Having scored a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, Yellowjackets also received seven Emmy nominations.
Created by Ashley Lyle (Narcos, Dispatches from Elsewhere) and Bart Nickerson (Dispatches from Elsewhere, Narcos), Yellowjackets follows four young teen girls who are bonded by a 1996 plane crash that stranded their high school soccer team in the Canadian wilderness for a span of 19 months. The narrative not only explores the story of how the teens survived the wild, but it also shifts between 1996 to 2021 as their adult counterparts are perturbed by an anonymous stalker who blackmails them with the bewildering truth of what occurred in the woods, according to People. Yellowjackets is equal parts survival epic, psychological horror story, and coming-of-age drama, according to the SHOWTIME press release.
The show stars Emmy nominee Christina Ricci (Casper, Black Snake Moan), Tawny Cypress (Brooklyn’s Finest, World Trade Center), Emmy nominee and Critics Choice Award winner Melanie Lynskey (Togetherness, Heavenly Creatures), and Oscar and Emmy nominee Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers, Cape Fear). Joining the cast for a season-long guest arc is Elijah Wood (Sin City, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring), along with Simone Kessell (Reckoning, Outlaws) and Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under, Psycho Beach Party) as series regulars. Cast as the younger teens are Jasmin Savoy Brown (The Leftovers, For The People), Sophie Nélisse (The Book Thief, Pawn Sacrifice), Liv Hewson (Dramaworld, Santa Clarita Diet), Courtney Eaton (Gods of Egypt, Mad Max: Fury Road). and Samantha Hanratty (Shameless, Zoe Gone), according to ET. Additional roles are played by Steven Krueger (The Originals, Goosebumps), Kevin Alves (Locke & Key, Degrassi: The Next Generation), and Warren Kole (The Following, Shades of Blue), according to the SHOWTIME press release.
Season two of Yellowjackets was given the green light in December 2021, announced by Deadline. The number of episodes this new season will have has not yet been disclosed.
In an interview held with Variety, the creators Lyle and Nickerson said they were calling the new season “The Winter of Their Discontent,” which is a reference to John Steinbeck’s 1961 novel titled The Winter of Our Discontent, and a quote from William Shakespeare’s Richard III.
The short clip provided by SHOWTIME shows a frosty scene, which eminently follows the unexplained stick-figure symbol of a person with a line through their torso–something that was found underneath the dead man in the cabin in the first season, according to People.