‘Yellowjackets’ Buzzes Into Production on Season 3, With Showrunners Behind the Camera
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Yellowjackets knows viewers are literally starving for season three.
So on Tuesday, the hit Showtime series played on its cannibalistic (er, survivalist) series theme by sharing a coy announcement that production has begun on the forthcoming third season.
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“We know you’re starving… #Yellowjackets Season 3 is officially in production,” read a caption on Instagram (below). Among the series of photos is a shot of the episode 301 script.
The premiere of season three is written by the showrunning trio of co-creators Bart Nickerson and Ashley Lyle with Jonathan Lisco. Nickerson, making his directorial debut, helms the episode. Lisco will also be making his debut behind the camera when he directs episode 303.
Other shots in the set indicate a return to the wilderness, which is where the past timeline in the dual timeline series will continue to play out. Season three picks up after the shocking cliffhanger ending that saw the survivors of the 1996 plane crash (which stranded the Yellowjackets soccer team when they were teenagers for 19 months, pushing them to cannibalism and other violence in order to survive) losing their shelter when their cabin went up in flames. And the present-day timeline brought about an ending that shocked even more, when Natalie, played by exiting star Juliette Lewis, was accidentally killed by her friend Misty (Christina Ricci) when the adult survivors returned to the wilderness.
Lewis had remained relatively quiet about her arc since the finale released, but she reflected on exiting the series at the 2023 Emmys — and left the door slightly ajar to return for season three.
“I thought they wrapped up the characters really beautifully, and I just love good writing, so I was happy to be a part of it,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t know anything,” she added when asked about the idea of her character returning in a flashback or some other way, “but I think that’s a good idea. We’ll see what happens.”
When speaking to THR about handing Lewis this fate early in the show’s run (the co-creators have a five-season plan), director and EP Karyn Kusama said that, while the decision was hard and emotional, Natalie’s arc had been teed up in the pilot.
“Something I know the showrunners had always thought about, and that [co-creators] Ashley [Lyle] and Bart [Nickerson] had always thought about from the pilot, was that mysterious moment when Natalie hallucinates Misty at the kegger in the woods,” shared Kusama, who directed both the pilot and season two finale. “That was always this time-defying flash-forward to the notion that Misty was always going to be kind of an angel of death for Natalie.”
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