What to Expect for Yellowjackets Season 4

With season 4 of Showtime’s Yellowjackets officially in production, it’s time to prepare for the
wilderness one final time.

First released in 2021, the show tells the story of the Yellowjackets: the girls soccer team of
Wiskayok High School, New Jersey. Trouble comes when the team gets into a plane crash on
their way to Nationals and ends up stranded in the Canadian wilderness for 19 months. We also
see the surviving women, 25 years in the future, as they grapple with prying journalists and their
own trauma. While Yellowjackets has remained pretty niche in the UK, it has quickly become
one of Showtime’s biggest programmes, and has brought many stars into the spotlight – most
notably Sophie Nelisse, who has since starred in hit show Heated Rivalry. Other big names
include Ella Purnell, who has been in shows like Arcane and Fallout, and Sophie Thatcher, who
has become Gen-Z’s newest scream queen, leading titles like Companion and Heretic. The
adult timeline of the show boasts huge names like Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Hilary Swank,
and Melanie Lynskey.

Season 3 was released last year, and took the show somewhere a little more abstract than
previous seasons. Lottie Matthews (Courtney Eaton) has been the driving force of the
supernatural elements of the show, and season 3 brought these even further into the forefront,
with long sequences of hallucinations, and multiple ritual sacrifices. The violence of the show
moved from survival to an extracurricular activity, as we watch the girls’ mental state deteriorate.

We also saw new character Melissa (Jenna Burgess), who had, up until season 3, been a
background character in wilderness sequences, take the stage, with Hilary Swank playing her
adult counterpart. In the show, she engages in a romantic (I hesitate to describe it this way –
perhaps psychosexual is a better term) relationship with main character Shauna in a move from
the writers that shocked fans, and me in particular, to the core. While lesbianism is a prominent
theme in Yellowjackets, with Tai and Van dating in both timelines, this move marked the first time
popular pairing ‘Jackieshauna’ gained any concrete narrative weight. By confirming Shauna as
bisexual through her relationship with Melissa, a whole new context clouds her mourning of best
friend Jackie, who has haunted the narrative since her death in season 1.

So, what can we expect from the final season of Yellowjackets? With multiple massive deaths in
season 3, including both Lottie and Van, it’s clear that no one in Wiskayok is safe. As the
survivors are killed off one by one, it’s hard to predict who the ‘final girl’ will be – that is, if there’s
one at all. In a surprise and secretive move, June Squibb joins the cast of Yellowjackets for
season 4. The catch: we do not know who she will be playing. While 80s queen Molly Ringwald
joins the show as Van’s mother – most likely to attend her funeral early in the season – Squibb’s
role remains a mystery. Will she be playing one of the girls in old age? This rules out Taissa as
the final girl but leaves both Shauna and Misty (or god forbid, Melissa) as options for surviving
the lingering threat of the wilderness. In an ideal world, I would want all the Yellowjackets to die,
with Shauna’s death as the last scene of the show, but with Squibb’s casting it’s looking likely
that this will not be the case. So, I’ll place my bets on Shauna Shipman outliving the rest of her
soccer team; I know some more casual fans won’t be happy, but I think it would be nice to see
such an unlikeable female character allowed to live in all her immoral glory.

Season 4 brings a plethora of questions waiting to be answered. In a show so shrouded in
mystery, showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have their work cut out for them when it

comes to sticking the landing. At this point, I’m going to assume that we’ll never find out who
burned down the cabin; this seems to have been left ambiguous to assert the new power
dynamics amongst the group. Similarly, fans will probably have to drop any questions around
Cabin Guy. An additional episode of season 2 detailing his background was filmed but ultimately
never released. Whether this is because the episode would contradict the story told in season 4,
or because Cabin Guy is simply not relevant anymore, is open to speculation. One question I
believe will be answered, though, is the meaning of the symbol that has haunted the characters
in both the 90s and 2020s timeline. Popular fan theories include maps, chemical warnings, and
the occult, but I suspect the writers will leave us with something a little less concrete.

There will also be questions around character returns. Will we see Jackie taunting Shauna one
last time? It’s almost certain that we will see the girls immediately post-rescue, as season 3
ends with the coming of the girls’ final winter in the wilderness. Perhaps Shauna’s return to
Wiskayok will bring back some painful memories of her best friend.

Maybe the most pressing question, however, is whether we will get a definitive answer for
anything. The show has spent its episodes toeing the line between the supernatural and the
realistic, with most occurrences having both an otherworldly and a logical explanation. Can
Lottie really speak to the Wilderness, or is she off her meds? Did the girls have a collective
hallucination, or was it trapped gas from past mining? I doubt the show will give us an
explanation. It’s up to the viewer whether the wilderness spirit is real or not, as it is for the girls
themselves.
As I prepare for one of my favourite shows coming to an end, it’ll be a bittersweet goodbye.
While I hope it will stick the landing, shows that centre women, and particularly queer women, in
genres other than contemporary drama are few and far between. I’m not quite ready to let go of
these girls, despite their cannibalistic nature. But maybe I’ll finally find out what happened to
Javi’s tree friend.