Penned by Momita Jaisi
Ever felt your heartbeat stop and your entire being paused for a moment, for a little longer than just a moment, like a hammer hit you right at your chest and there is no way any part of you can come out of it, at least for a while. For me, that feeling lasted for more than 15 good minutes after watching Episode 7 of The Yellowjackets on Voot.
I started watching this innocent thriller fun series on Voot in November 2021 and was pleasantly surprised on finding anything that was not an average other than the multiple series on Anthony Bourdain which had made me subscribe to this platform in the first place.
“Yellowjackets is the story of a team of wildly talented high-school girls soccer players who survive a plane crash deep in the Ontario wilderness. The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to warring, cannibalistic clans, while also tracking the lives they have attempted to piece back together.”
This is exactly what Google will tell you when you read about this show on the internet.
No, I’m not gonna give away the details. This masterpiece of a show deserves to be watched, not just for its script but for how this power couple Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson decided to treat the story.
At the heart of the show, Yellowjackets is about trauma, survival, and the bonds and experiences it can breed. The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster and the Donner Party provided the base template for the show to center its story. The portrayals of PTSD are especially well done in this series themed around William Golding’s book The Lord of Flies.
When I began watching Yellowjackets in 2021, it started off as a 1996 story of a New Jersey high school girls' soccer team traveling to Seattle for a national tournament. While flying over Canada, their plane crashes deep in the wilderness, and the surviving team members are left stranded for nineteen months. The series went back and forth between the 90s as we see what lengths the group goes to in order to survive, along with present-day 2021 where the grownup survivors deal with their traumatic past.
It was torturous when the season ended with a cliffhanger with so many unanswered questions, don’t you hate that feeling?
But after a few weeks, amidst so many other brilliant movies and shows I consumed, I barely recollected the unsatisfying end to a show that kept me on my toes for 10 good weeks.
And just two months ago, the first episode of Season 2 dropped and so did my jaws. Suddenly it all made sense, there was no Season 1 without Season 2.
After I completed the second episode of Season 2, I just sat down all alone, just quiet, trying to absorb every tiny bit of what I consumed or rather what THEY consumed. No, I was not blown by how fucking amazing the story was getting, I was flabbergasted by the treatment of the script, the brilliance of the performances, and the vision of the director. It felt like my entire journey toward filmmaking made sense at that moment. So, this is how Inspiration feels like huh, weird how we always took a deep breath through our noses in an upright stance and a slight smile to express the feeling of inspiration in drama classes.
Week after week, I waited and watched patiently. It just kept getting better but now I was immune to its greatness. This was also the week that the very first episode of Season 4 of another killer show BARRY had dropped and I consumed it like a plate of hot Momos on a hungry stomach. What could top that?
Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 7.
Greatness was waiting for me.
As the episode progressed, I was in the scene, with them, through their anxiety, through their fear, through all of it, so much so that when it ended, my breathing had changed, my state of being had changed, and my behavior had changed. It wasn’t horror or any gimmick, just pure performance and brilliant storytelling.
Three more episodes to go and there’s a final Season 3 coming next year. This is again a hell lot of waiting, but you know what, it is all worth it. This is why we do what we do. Every once in a while, something so amazing comes along that everything we have been doing starts making sense.