This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Texas chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.
To those with eyes and a brain between them, it comes as no surprise that on and off-screen, Hollywood has historically been a testosterone-riddled industry. So much so, in fact, that for over two decades, Dr. Martha M. Lauzen of San Diego State University has been monitoring female representation in film via her aptly named annual report It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top Grossing U.S. Films, and frankly, the statistics are dismal. In Lauzen’s 2024 rendition of the paper, she explains that the ratio of female speaking roles versus male speaking roles continues to be disproportionately skewed towards men, with essentially stagnant growth in the female category overall. Additionally, the cutoff for aging actresses on screen plunged in contrast to older males. And, to Lauzen, that was a good year.
But I am not here to rub salt in wounds you are all too familiar with. Instead, I offer salvation. Salvation in the form of a gritty, psychological horror franchise that follows the lives of a girl’s soccer team at Wiskayok High School and their unforeseeable marooning in the Canadian wilderness that may or may not lead to the consumption of human flesh.
Yellowjackets is a television series (loosely) inspired by both the real-world crash of Flight 571, which left an Uruguayan men’s rugby team stranded in the Andes for seventy-two days, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Upon reading comments beneath an article regarding a remake of said novel, Ashley Lyle, co-creator of Yellowjackets, noticed that many folks were skeptical that a girl could ever be driven to such gnarly extremes if placed in a similar situation.
“Lord of the Flies is about how socialization falls away and how society is a facade. We thought, who is more socialized than women? As girls, you learn early on how to make people like you and what the social hierarchies are,” Lyle says on the Hollywood Reporter podcast. “It’s a more interesting way of having things fall away. The mask is even thicker. It’s a more layered amount of preconceived notions of how to behave and act.”
Lyle is right. The show’s strength lies in its characters, more specifically, its vast diversity of female ones. Each girl on the team is rich and well-rounded, their role mirroring their personality as well as the social hierarchy.
Jackie Taylor, striker, team captain, and an admired yet insecure socialite.
Shauna Shipman, defensive midfielder, is emotionally repressed and chronically overshadowed by her best friend, Jackie.
Taissa Turner, central midfielder, is the logistical backbone and a stubborn skeptic.
Misty Quigley, equipment manager, social reject, team punching bag, and resident weird kid.
But Yellowjackets is more than simply a show about women. It’s about flawed women. Damaged women. About the intricate web of relationships spun by high school teens, all washed away in the face of tragedy, as passive-aggressive jibes slip through the cracks. Emotions boil over. Reason gives way to fear. The mask slips, as Lyle herself puts it. But despite the anarchy, from time to time, you can’t help but empathize with their situation. Soon, you find yourself justifying the rash decisions made by vulnerable teen girls who’ve been placed in an impossible situation, as well as their attempts to keep it covered up years later. These characters are far from perfect, and I couldn’t be more grateful. It’s interesting, it’s different, and it’s real.
Another plus is that we get to follow the surviving women into adulthood. Episodes bounce between the fateful year of 1996 and a contemporary 2021, post-crash and post-rescue, respectively. This format invites the audience to constantly speculate on the fate of each player. As we’re introduced to the distinct women that the survivors have grown into, you cannot help but ponder the fate of the girls unseen. Additionally, in cinema, the lives of middle-aged women are a criminally underutilized perspective, and our Wiskayok girls are all the more fleshed out for the inclusion. Each adult woman grapples with their time in the woods differently. Some turn to substances or religion, others to isolation, but almost all of them repress, repress, repress.
Be warned, Yellowjackets does not shy away from brutality. To the chagrin of a commenter beneath a Lord of the Flies article, femininity does not equate to passivity by any means. While they approach survival with relative order at first, in time, the team devolves. The girls hunt, kill, gut, ravage, and carve. They do their best to tame the wilderness, although the stakes soon drive them to madness. It is a powerful dismantling of chauvinist expectations. Despite what you may think, there is no societal construct that will prevent most human beings of any gender from doing what it takes to survive. Cannibalism is not exclusively male.
Besides our strong and, frankly, very intriguing female main characters, the show also provides us with a few supportive male characters distinct to the screen.
For one, there is Jeff Sadecki, a true wife guy through and through. He is sweet, supportive, strong, but most importantly, he is anything but an anchor to the agency of his wife. Although he wants what is best for his family, the writers refuse to let him stomp on the toes of the headstrong woman he married (who, for spoiler reasons, I will not name). She remains in control of her narrative.
Second on the chopping block is Walter Tattersall, a complement to Misty Quigley’s crazy. Again, Walter is a wonderful man whose primary purpose is to support our female protagonist. He does not commandeer her detective work, correct errors, or finish her sentences. Instead, Walter stands by this intelligent woman and trusts her to do what she does best.
If my pit full of pointed reasons has not trapped you yet, I can’t blame you. There is so much insanity I have yet to even touch, like the pseudo-forest religion, symbolism galore, and the never-ending plot twists that leave you hanging off a cliff every hour-long episode. However, with a final fourth season on the horizon, further discussion while evading spoilers would be impractical. Nothing compares to the show itself, so I urge you, give a moment of your time to the Wiskayok Yellowjackets. If you enjoy thrills, drama, and female narratives, you will not leave disappointed!
