‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2: Who might die in the wilderness?

While the question at the centre of most TV shows is what’s going to happen next, with Yellowjackets it’s all about what’s happened already.

What did the girls do in the wilderness that’s traumatised them all so much? What lengths did they go to in order to survive? And, crucially, who actually did survive?

With that last question, at least, we can start to put the pieces together. Below we’ve outlined the characters that we know are still alive in the present day, as well as the ones that are at risk of perishing in the woods back in 1996.

Which Yellowjackets are still alive in the present day?

Shauna

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1996 Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is pregnant and vulnerable following the death of her greatest friend, Jackie (Ella Purnell), but we know for a fact that she still makes it out in one piece. Present day Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is married to Jeff (Warren Kole), has a teenage daughter, Callie (Sarah Desjardins), and seems to have put her life back together — well, at least besides murdering her lover and covering up her husband’s blackmail plan.

Misty

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Everybody’s favourite sociopath, Misty (Samantha Hanratty), is just as needy and terrifying in 1996 as she is in the present day (Christina Ricci), where she’s very much still alive and working as a nursing home carer by day, online ‘citizen detective’ by night. We know from the flashbacks of Season 1 she was an active participant in the cannibalism the girls resorted to in the wilderness, just as we know she’s always been happy to do whatever it takes to survive.

Natalie

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The Natalie of the present day (Juliette Lewis) may not be doing so good, but we at least know she’s still fighting as hard as she did hunting game in the wilderness in 1996 (Sophie Thatcher). Having just got out of recovery, present day Natalie links up with her fellow survivors in Season 1 in an attempt to track down the person sending them all mysterious postcards. She may have been kidnapped at the end of Season 1, but she’s alive.

Taissa

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Present day Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is both alive and a big deal, having finished Season 1 by winning the New Jersey State Senate seat. On the downside, she’s suffering once again from the same sleepwalking issues she exhibited in the wilderness as a teen (Jasmin Savoy Brown).

Lottie

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Though she manages to single-handedly take down a bear as a teen (Courtney Eaton) in the woods, Lottie doesn’t appear as an adult in Season 1, so it’s unclear whether she’s alive or not. But right at the end of the season, we hear Lottie’s name mentioned as the person who cleared Travis’ bank account right after he died. In the Yellowjackets Season 2 trailer we see our first proper glimpse of her in the present day, portrayed by Simone Kessell.

Van

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Another teen survivor (Liv Hewson) who doesn’t appear as an adult in Season 1, Van (Lauren Ambrose) is very much alive in the present day. We don’t know much about her yet, but like Lottie she appears briefly in the Season 2 trailer.

Which Yellowjackets could die in Season 2?

Unlike the team members above, all of the following characters have yet to be shown or mentioned in the present day — meaning they could all die in the wilderness in 1996.

Mari

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Mari (Alexa Barajas) may be a close ally of Lottie’s, but she’s nowhere to be seen in the present day. This makes her both a) a strong candidate for a wilderness death, and b) a possible answer to the question of “Who is that dark-haired girl running through the snowy woods in the opening scene of Season 1 that falls into a lethal pit trap and ends up eaten?” There aren’t many other girls with straight dark hair left alive, after all.

Akilah

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Played by Keeya King in Season 1, Akilah has been recast in Season 2 — she’s now played by Nia Sondaya. She’s yet to appear in the present day, but we do know Akilah’s got solid knowledge of which wild plants are edible and which aren’t — sadly, the long winter doesn’t make that an advantage for now.

Ben

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Yellowjackets Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) is probably one of the most prominent characters in the past who has yet to be mentioned in the present day. Surely he’s going to be killed and eaten at some point? If we had to guess, we’d say Ben is one of the likeliest candidates for a death scene in Season 2.

Crystal

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We don’t know much about Crystal (Nuha Jes Izman) yet, aside from the fact she loves singing and gets bullied about it by the other girls (Gen tells her to shut up in episode 1 when she keeps humming). The good news? It looks like she may have found a companion in fellow social reject, Misty.

Gen

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Another character who’s been lurking on the fringes, Gen (Mya Lowe) looks like another possible candidate for dark-haired-girl-who-runs-through-the-forest-and-eventually-gets-eaten. In episode 1, she shows she’s not afraid to gossip and moan about the other girls, so maybe this will make her some enemies.

Melissa

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Melissa (Jenna Burgess) is friends with Gen, but aside from that and the fact she loves wearing baseball caps on backwards we know little about her. She certainly doesn’t get a mention in the present day, though, so we’d say she may well end up as wilderness fodder.

Honourable mention: Javi

Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Showtime

We’re yet to find out where Javi (Luciano Leroux) went after escaping the “Doomcoming” on Shauna’s command, and whether he’s alive or not, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for a triumphant return.

Yellowjackets Season 2 begins streaming March 24 on Showtime, with new episodes streaming weekly on Fridays(Opens in a new tab). Episodes also air every Sunday on Showtime at 9 p.m. ET, starting March 26.