When Yellowjackets premiered on Showtime, viewers didn’t really know what to make of it. Its dual-timeline survival thriller structure was already experimental enough, but on top of that was a strange, otherworldly plot that may or may not be supernatural. As a result, it became something that is becoming rarer and rarer in the streaming TV era: a word-of-mouth hit, a series that found success over time as its audience spread the word of its intriguing mystery box storyline.
Now, the series is coming to an end before many fans expected it to, but a glimpse of the latest cliffhanger proves it's the right decision.
The Season 3 finale circled back to the Season 1 cold open, signaling the beginning of the end.
According to Variety, Yellowjackets will end with the upcoming fourth season. “We’ve always known there would come a point when the story would tell us it wants to end, and it’s our belief that our job — our responsibility — is to listen,” showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson said in a statement.
However, most Yellowjackets fans expected this series to at least be renewed for Season 5. When the show was initially pitched, it was laid out as a five-season plan, so this ending point is a whole season before the initial plan. Lyle and Nickerson claim this is when the story “wanted” to end, so perhaps as the show has come to life, a faster pace was more necessary.
The Season 3 finale showed Nat contacting the outside world, meaning rescue is on the horizon.
The series does seem to be reaching an endpoint. Because of the series’ two timelines, we knew the series would probably end with the stranded Yellowjackets being rescued from the Canadian wilderness and struggling to re-adjust to their old life. The latest season, Season 3, brought the show full circle by bringing the story up to the hunting scene in the very first scene of Season 1, and ended with young Nat (Sophie Thatcher) using a sat phone to contact the outside world for the first time.
That reveal suggested we’d soon see the end of the 19 months the Yellowjackets had to survive on their own, and therefore the end of the show itself. Maybe this cliffhanger made it clear there was only one season of story left to tell, or maybe there was a change to the initial pitch. It may be disappointing to get one fewer season than we were expecting, but at least the showrunners can end the story on their own terms.
