Let’s dissect all the clues in the ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 trailer

Showtime’s Emmy-nominated, LGBTQ+ inclusive series Yellowjackets returns later this month, bringing a blast of wintry suspense to spring TV. Ahead of Season 2’s streaming premiere on March 24 (the season premiere will air on Showtime proper on March 26), the network just dropped a new trailer to get fans psyched — and maybe a little freaked out.

The preview contains all kinds of creepy scenes and teases of what’s coming up in the Babysitters Club-meets-Lord of the Flies-meets-the Donner Party (maybe) show. So, we’re cranking Florence + the Machine’s angsty cover of “Just a Girl” and taking a close look to see what clues we can piece together about Season 2.

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First, a brief refresher: Yellowjackets follows the story of a girls’ high school soccer team that must survive in the remote Canadian wilderness after a plane crash in the mid-90s. The show’s split timeline also follows the present-day survivors as they reckon with the possibly supernatural horrors they experienced. Spoilers ahead for Season 1!

The first season saw the Yellowjackets, plus their gay assistant coach Ben (Steven Krueger) and their coach’s two teen sons, survive the summer months after the crash. But the struggle to stay alive and the threat of the coming winter began to take its toll, particularly on Lottie (Courtney Eaton) who began to experience disturbing visions after running out of her anti-psychotic meds. A brief prelude in the series premiere teased their eventual descent into a possibly cannibalistic cult.

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Meanwhile, in the present day, survivors Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), Taissa (Tawny Cypress), Misty (Christina Ricci), and Natalie (Juliette Lewis) reconnect while struggling to keep buried the secrets of what happened to them as teens.

So, what can we glean about Season 2 from the trailer? Well, it’s appropriately cryptic. Who wants all the fun spoiled, right? But in the 1990s timeline, it’s clear that we’re in the grip of a full-on Canadian winter, which, if you’re not used to hunting down your own food, seems like not a lot of fun.

We also get young Van (Liv Hewson), one of the show’s queer characters, telling campfire tales about “The Wilderness,” which, she says is beautiful, violent, misunderstood, and waiting to “befriend whoever arrived.” We also get a flash of someone running through the snow and falling into a trap — possibly from the prelude in the series premiere.

Then we see what looks like the plane crash from the premiere.

Over scenes of the girls trudging through the snow, we hear adult Natalie and adult Lottie (played in Season 2 by Simone Kessell) talking about the “darkness” they encountered in the woods and the fact that they brought it back to civilization with them.

Then there’s a brief flash of young Misty (Sammi Hanratty) being hounded by reporters asking “What happened!?” This seems to indicate we’ll see what happened after the younger versions of the characters were rescued!

In addition to Kessell as adult Lottie, Lauren Ambrose joins the cast of Season 2 as adult Van. And here she is, folks, complete with those wolf attack scars!

We also get a tease of a reunion between adult Van and adult Taissa — they were girlfriends in the 90s timeline. Could they possibly rekindle their teen romance? Fingers crossed!

Meanwhile, it looks like the cops are onto adult Shauna, who murdered this guy Adam (Peter Gadiot) with whom she was having an affair in Season 1. Also onto Shauna apparently: her teenage daughter (Sara Desjardins).

Distrust seems to be growing between the adult characters, with Misty insisting that “she’s hiding something” to new character, Walter, played by Elijah Wood and described as “a citizen detective.” Could Walter possibly also be a new love interest for Misty? Or someone who ultimately threatens to expose the survivors’ secrets? Or both?

Possibly the most tantalizing tidbits we get are about adult Lottie. Season 1 culminated in the revelation that she was still alive and had established some sort of cult that ultimately kidnapped Natalie in the season finale. In the Season 2 trailer, we see both adult Natalie and her younger self laying her head in Lottie’s lap as a shadow with antlers emerges in the background. “Lottie can help us,” Lewis’s character says, implying that she comes under Lottie’s sway at some point.

“The Lottie who was committed to a mental institution?” Ricci’s character responds incredulously.

There’s also a shot of Ambrose, with Ricci nearby, seemingly gazing in awe (or maybe horror) at Kessel standing before a scenic lake. Seems like at least some of the adult survivors are headed for a showdown with Lottie. And the way the trailer is cut also seems to heavily imply that there’s some sort of connection between Van and Lottie that we haven’t seen yet. Both characters are very much foregrounded in the trailer — but then, that might just be because Ambrose and Kessell are new to the cast.

And anyone wondering where gay coach Ben is in all this, well, it looks like Season 2 is going to be rough for ya boy. In the one glimpse we get of him, it looks like he’s being attacked by a possibly rabid teen girl.

The last few minutes of the trailer are a flurry of shots of the teen characters going totally wild, running through the snow with weapons and wearing animal masks; also firey visions of Lottie as “the antler queen;” and all the girls chanting “We hear the wilderness and it hears us,” in some kind of ritual.

And while this last shot of young Misty and Van carrying an unidentified hogtied person wearing Converses through the snow doesn’t necessarily confirm they’ve gone cannibal, it sure does make a compelling case!