Showtime’s Yellowjackets became a smash hit after premiering in November of 2021, capturing the attention of critics and audiences alike with every episode. The show tells the story of a high school girls' soccer team and their coaches whose plane crashes in the remote wilderness in 1996. The show splits its time between 1996 and the present day, where it follows the survivors some 25 years on from the crash as they continue to battle with the demons developed during their time spent stranded in the wilderness.
The show stars 90s icons Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci in the scenes in the present, and Sophie Nelisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Ella Purnell, Sophie Thatcher, Sammi Hanratty, Liv Hewson, Courtney Eaton, Steven Krueger, and Kevin Alves in the past. They all do a great job of balancing the show’s more grounded dramatic scenes with elements of the unknown. Showtime’s president of entertainment, Gray Levine, has told viewers that they can expect season two of Yellowjackets in late 2022. Until then, those looking for something similar to Yellowjackets should check out these great shows.
Updated June 8, 2022, by Tom Bowen: There's still no word on when exactly season 2 of Yellowjackets will begin filming, though senior figures at Showtime remain hopeful that it will all be wrapped and ready by late 2022 or early 2023. With that in mind, it seems safe to assume that fans of the hit series still have quite a wait on their hands until season 2 of Yellowjackets is ready to premiere. For those looking to fill the void until then, these fantastic television series are a lot like Yellowjackets, exploring many of the same themes and ideas while also putting out some very similar vibes.
The Wilds
This series premiered on Amazon Prime in December 2020. The Wilds also follows a group of teenage girls who get stranded alone after a plane crash. In this series, however, they crash on an island, and the nature of the crash itself is not what it seems. Like Yellowjackets, the show stars an ensemble cast of young women as the crash survivors.
The Wilds similarly explores themes of survival, humanity, reality, and the relationships between teenage girls. However, it is a very different series both in terms of tone and storyline and is its own excellent viewing experience and a must-watch for any Yellowjackets fans. The show recently finished filming its second season, which will be released sometime in 2022.
The Terror
The first episode of this horror-drama anthology series premiered on AMC in 2018. The first season–starring seasoned actors like Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies, and Ciaran Hinds–is a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to the arctic in 1845.
Franklin and his ships find themselves trapped in the ice, trying to survive while feeling the threat of an unknown menace. Like Yellowjackets, the season features themes of survival, superstition, fear, and the question of what is real and what is not. The second season is also excellent, taking place at a World War 2 Japanese internment camp.
Sharp Objects
This 2018 psychological thriller miniseries aired on HBO to rave reviews. Based on Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name, the show stars Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, and Eliza Scanlen. Sharp Objects follows a reporter, played by Adams, who returns to her hometown to cover the murder of two young girls. While there, she must also deal with her complicated relationships with her mother and younger sister.
The show maintains a grim atmosphere, with a constant sense of tension, and plot reveals that would thrill many Yellowjackets fans. Like Yellowjackets, the miniseries also does an excellent job at exploring complicated relationships and hierarchies between women, as well as exploring the different ways trauma can manifest.
Fear Street
While not technically a television series, this Netflix trilogy of films was released within three weeks, so firmly entwined with each other that it resembles a miniseries more than a film trilogy. Based on R.L. Stine novels, Fear Street 1994, Fear Street 1978, and Fear Street 1666 follow a group of teenagers terrorized by an ancient evil that has plagued their town for centuries.
The series stars a large cast of teenagers, including Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr, Maya Hawke, and Sadie Sink. While more heavily horror-focused than Yellowjackets has been so far, the creepiness and physical horror should still appeal to fans of the series. The first film should also appeal to those who enjoy the nostalgia of the 1996 scenes in Yellowjackets.
The Society
This Netflix series was a social media sensation when it premiered in 2019. In The Society, the teenagers of a small town return home from a canceled field trip to discover that the rest of the town’s population has disappeared. Unable to leave the town or contact the outside world, the teens must figure out how to survive on their own and with dwindling resources.
Along with sharing the teen drama elements of Yellowjackets, The Society features themes of survival, hopelessness, community, and growing up. Unfortunately, the planned second season of the show was canceled due to complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the first season is still worth a watch.
Lost
Those who enjoyed Yellowjackets' use of multiple timelines would do well to check out Lost; assuming, that is, that they haven't already. Despite focusing on a more mature and diverse group of survivors, both shows begin with a tragic plane crash before spending much of their first seasons exploring supernatural elements while gradually picking off the remaining survivors.
Although Lost's first season focuses on flashbacks to explain how the survivors came to be on Oceanic Flight 815, subsequent series flash not only forwards, like Yellowjackets, but also sideways as well. Granted, not all of the show's mysteries are explained before its polarizing series finale, and many of those that are still leave one or two lingering questions unanswered. Even so, Lost remains a great watch for anyone who's looking to kill some time before Yellowjackets' sophomore season hits the airwaves.
The Stranded
Though most of the best shows on Netflix are developed in the west, the streaming platform has plenty of fantastic foreign-language shows available for its subscribers to enjoy. Squid Game is perhaps the most notable example of this, but The Stranded is every bit as compelling as Hwang Dong-hyuk's hugely successful battle royale series and will likely appeal to fans of Yellowjackets due to the obvious similarities between the two shows.
As the title might suggest, The Stranded tells the story of a group of teenagers who are trapped on a small Thai island after a major tsunami hits the region. Much like in Yellowjackets, there are subtle (and at times, not so subtle) hints at supernatural forces being in play throughout the show's debut season and a huge emphasis is placed on the relationships between the show's young yet talented cast. Sadly, there's still no word on whether a second season of The Stranded will ever see the light of day, but there are certainly plenty of mysteries left to explore should Netflix ever decide to go down that route.
Season 2 of Yellowjackets is slated for release in late 2022.