Everything to Know About Yellowjackets Season 3

The Yellowjackets are set to return for their third course, but not without an amuse-bouche.

Having accumulated 10 Emmy nominations so far — including acting nominations for Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci — and a dedicated fan base across its two seasons, Yellowjackets is set to return for season 3 in early 2025, according to Deadline. However, series co-creator Ashley Lyle also confirmed that there will be a bonus episode released to curb viewers’ appetites before the season 3 release.

The series follows the Yellowjackets high school women’s soccer team — along with Coach Ben and their other coach’s sons Travis and Javi — after their plane crashes and strands them somewhere in the Canadian wilderness in 1996.

The series operates on multiple timelines — while making room for plenty of ’90s nostalgia — as it shows how the events affected the survivors 25 years later and what’s happening in their lives now.

Lyle shared that there are still many questions to be answered in her coming-of-age survival drama thriller series in season 3.

“Are we gonna get weirder? Probably! Will the fallout of *redacted*’s death affect our (anti)heroes in massive ways?” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Will our girls’ struggle to survive against the elements (and themselves) get even down and dirtier? Do we still have to tell the story of Pit Girl? You betcha!”

Here’s everything to know about Yellowjackets season 3.

When does filming for Yellowjackets season 3 start?

The “Yellowjackets” cast in season 2’s sixth episode.
showtime

During an interview with Comicbook.com on April 3, 2024, Sophie Nélisse — who plays teenage Shauna — revealed that filming would start approximately one month from that day in early May.

“Yeah, we start in like a month,” Nélisse said. “Yeah, we go back to Vancouver in a month. I have my apartment there. We haven’t read any scripts. We don’t know anything. I wish I could tell you spoilers. I don’t have any.”

During an interview with Deadline in 2024, Lyle also confirmed that production would begin in May 2024. That same month, Ricci shared a photo on her Instagram Stories that showed her in costume as Misty, hinting that she was on set and that the show is filming again.

This intel was confirmed when the official Yellowjackets Instagram account announced that production had begun in a post shared on May 14, 2024.

The post featured several photos from the set along with a caption that said, “We know you’re starving… #Yellowjackets Season 3 is officially in production. 🎬🐝.”

When will Yellowjackets season 3 be released?

The “Yellowjackets” cast in “F Sharp” episode.
Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME

The writer’s strike took place the day after writers began writing Yellowjackets season 3. This delayed production and series co-creator Bart Nickerson has shared that fans can expect a 2025 premiere.

“I don’t think this year. I think early next year,” Nickerson told Deadline at the 2024 Emmys when asked about the premiere of season 3.

However, a bonus episode was announced that will help tide fans over until Yellowjackets return to screens next year. In June 2023, when a Yellowjackets fan on X told Lyle she was staying up in hopes of the release of a bonus episode, Lyle gave a response confirming that there will be a bonus episode.

“Noooo. Go to bed! Get some rest! There will be a bonus episode between seasons, but I love you guys and I don’t want y’all to lose sleep thinking it’s tonight,” Lyle wrote on X.

Which cast members are returning for Yellowjackets season 3?

The “Yellowjackets” cast in a season 2 promo photo.
Lorenzo Agius/SHOWTIME

Yellowjackets is known for its star-studded cast, which includes an Emmy nomination for Christina Ricci as adult Misty and two Emmy nominations for Melanie Lynskey as adult Shauna. Both actresses are set to return in season 3 and Lynskey previously told PEOPLE that she hopes to continue playing Shauna for years to come.

“Whatever [the writers] want, I’m up for it,” Lynskey said. “I’ll do this show for as long as I can honestly.”

One cast member who will not be returning is Academy Award nominee Juliette Lewis after the death of adult Natalie. However, Sophie Thatcher will be returning as teenage Natalie.

All the other major cast members who survived the first two seasons are expected to return, including Nélisse as teenage Shauna, Samantha Hanratty as teenage Misty, Jasmin Savoy Brown as teenage Taissa, Courtney Eaton as teenage Lottie, Liv Hewson as teenage Van, Kevin Alves as teenage Travis and Steven Krueger as Coach Ben. The surviving adults expected to return also include Tawny Cypress as adult Taissa, Lauren Ambrose as adult Van and Simone Kessell as adult Lottie.

Supporting characters Warren Kole as Shauna’s husband Jeff and Sarah Desjardins as Shauna and Jeff’s daughter Callie are also expected to return. Elijah Wood — best known for his role as Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings franchise — is expected to return as Misty’s musical-loving citizen detective sidekick and potential boyfriend Walter.

In August 2024, Joel McHale was revealed as a guest star in the upcoming season. The following month, Deadline reported that Hilary Swank had joined the cast as a recurring guest star and may the potential to become a series regular. So far, no details about either character are available.

One other potential cast member is Lynskey’s husband Jason Ritter, who was originally set to debut in season 2. Despite Ritter’s unaired cameo, it was confirmed to PEOPLE that he will have a cameo in the show at some point, although it is unconfirmed if that will be during season 3.

Where did Yellowjackets season 2 leave off?

The “Yellowjackets” cast in season 2.
Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME

In the 1990s things took a turn for the worse as the Yellowjackets were starving during the winter and unable to find any animals to hunt and eat. They created a hunting ritual, in which whoever picked the Queen from a deck of cards would be hunted and eaten as they resorted to cannibalism.

“It was disgusting … but also kind of delicious. That’s all I’m gonna say about that,” Savoy Brown teased while speaking with PEOPLE about filming the cannibalism.

While Natalie picked the Queen, it was Javi who fell through the ice during the hunt and became sustenance for the group to survive the winter after the girls elected not to save him. After surviving the hunt, Natalie is anointed the new leader of the group by Lottie as she is picked to wear the antler crown.

Once Coach Ben sees what the survivors have done with Javi, he elects to isolate in Javi’s former hiding place before the remaining survivors’ cabin burns down in the season finale. While it wasn’t revealed who burned down the cabin, Coach Ben had become displeased with the teenagers’ treatment of each other — and was nowhere to be found and took matches from the cabin.

In the adult timeline during the 2020s, Lottie, Van, Natalie, Taissa, Misty and Shauna were all reunited at Lottie’s wellness compound. The reunion didn’t last long as Lottie convinced the adults their lives had become unmanageable because they brought the spirit of the wilderness back with them and needed to “feed” it.

In order to do so, they recreated the tradition of picking which of them would be hunted by picking a Queen from a deck of cards. While originally planning not to follow through with Lottie’s plan, the girls fell victim to their old trauma while recreating the ritual and began to hunt down Shauna after she picked the Queen from the deck.

Callie then non-fatally shoots Lottie to save Shauna and interrupt the hunt. When Lisa — a member of the compound who previously befriended Natalie — notices what’s going on and threatens to kill Natalie, Misty attempts to save her friend, but Natalie pushes Lisa out of the way to save her and is accidentally stabbed by Misty with a lethal injection.

In ShowTime’s Behind the Buzz featurette after the season finale, Nickerson shares that they like to leave climactic clues before showing a clip of adult Lottie saying that the sacrifice of Natalie to the wilderness will improve their lives. She then looks at Van — who has cancer — as Shauna’s perceived role as a suspect in Adam Martin’s murder is disappearing, which could imply Van’s cancer diagnosis is disappearing and the other adult Yellowjackets will experience good fortune.

What is Yellowjackets season 3 about?

The “Yellowjackets” cast in the season 2 finale episode.

Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME

While not many plot details have been revealed, there are many unanswered questions in both the 1990s timeline and the 2020s timeline.

“I will say we see season 3 as a little bit of a return to season 1 in terms of the vibe, though. All I will say is that the girls have been out there for a while and they’re thriving,” Lyle told TheWrap.

Season 1 saw more moments of the Yellowjackets simply being teenagers, getting involved in romance, enjoying nice weather, swimming in the lake and joking around whereas season 2 saw them in a more serious survival mode.

Yellowjackets showrunners have previously stated that their original plan was for the show to run five seasons. With the timeline of the Yellowjackets being out there for 19 months, this would mean that each season is roughly four months so with the girls having arrived during summer it is likely that the snow will melt at some point in the season.

Hanratty may have alluded to this in a double entendre during her interview on Entertainment Tonight in 2024 when she shared her expectations for season 3.

“Season 1 was chaotic and messy. Season 2 was still and cold and dark and it was winter and then [season 3] feels like it’s gonna be the meltdown,” Hanratty said. “We’re gonna see the melting of, like, what these people are.”

Another timeline that was introduced in season 2 was the survivors’ re-entry into the world after being rescued in 1998. There are many questions about this, including how they were rescued and the immediate aftermath of their reintegration into society, which series director Karyn Kusama teased will be explored in season 3.

“I’ve been so excited by this,” Kusama told Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast. “The concept of that immediate aftermath of re-entry into the world, to me, there’s a whole season worth of material there. And the fact that this is such a long game that each of these characters is facing, in terms of reorienting themselves to whatever normalcy is supposed to be. I’m sure we’re going to learn that their normal is a lot different than our normal … There’s a lot that needs to be figured out between season 2 and season 3.”

In a June 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ricci said that the upcoming season would be “even more shocking and surprising” than ever before.

“It’s definitely going to be brutal. But they also put a lot of comedy into it. So I think it’s just going to be … extremely Yellowjackets-y,” she said.

In an interview with Vanity Fair in October 2024, creator Ashley Lyle said that there are “at least two very big questions” that fans have that will be given “very clear” answers in the upcoming season.

“We are going to learn more about what happened in the wilderness that they are so afraid of coming out. We hope it will be both satisfying and at times unexpected,” Lyle said. “And I think that we have found ourselves—let me think of how to say this.”

She added, “The stakes are pretty high in the present-day storyline, perhaps in a way that they did not feel in season two, and that was really exciting for us to delve into.”

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