“Yellowjackets” ended its chilling first season by further fueling the mystery in the 1996 winter flashback sequence from the pilot, which featured the Antler Queen a.k.a. Lottie Matthews (Courtney Eaton) and her ilk killing and eating one of the survivors. The finale closed with Lottie ritualistically placing a bear’s bloody heart in a tree-stump altar, flanked by Misty (Samantha Hanratty) and Van (Liv Hewson), foreshadowing what’s to come when the stranded teammates finally reach that stage from the premiere.
Showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson promise they will be heading back to this icy plot in Season 2, despite the fact the Showtime series is set to start shooting in “late summer.”
“We are definitely re-visiting the winter storyline,” Lyle told Variety. “We’ve been calling Season 2, ‘The Winter of Their Discontent,’” she revealed, a nod to John Steinbeck’s book of the same name, and the line from William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” that the title is based on.
For now, Nickerson says he, Lyle and fellow showrunner Jonathan Lisco “are in the writing process” with their staff and are “just getting started on the actual scripts.”
“We’ve been in the writers’ room for several months now, and we’re circling a late summer production start,” Lyle said and, because of that targeted filming season, “we will have to get very creative on a production front” to make “Yellowjackets” Season 2 as winter-heavy as the showrunners want it to be.
“But we’re starting those production conversations and we have some really amazing and creative people on our team,” Lyle said. “So this will be movie magic at play.”
Previously, Showtime Networks president of entertainment Gary Levine said in an interview with Vulture that the pay TV channel was looking to premiere “Yellowjackets” Season 2 “at the end of 2022.” It’s possible the second season could make that target if it begins filming in late summer, but best to not get your hopes up too much before getting official word on when “Yellowjackets” winter is coming from Showtime.