Review: Yellowjackets, “Saints” | Season 1, Episode 6
Teen drama continues to flourish as two long-awaited climaxes approach
Yellowjackets has never quite felt like a “teen drama,” in the traditional sense. For one, half of the show focuses on characters in their forties. With four of the main characters existing in two timelines, it doesn’t feel like the “main” versions are their teen selves; Juliette Lewis has made Nat her own just as much as Sophie Thatcher, and Melanie Lynskey’s Shauna has gotten much more screen time than Sophie Nélisse.
It feels, instead, like there’s a continuity here across generations. With every episode of Yellowjackets, the two stories feel more inextricably linked, even as the actual central storylines don’t always directly inform each other. In fact, this is really just one story about one specific group of characters over time. Looking at the 1996 segments through that lens, they function like painful flashbacks to the moments that would come to define the rest of these women’s lives. It’s less a fun teen soap about kids stranded in the wilderness and more a story about how tra…