“Each survivor must determine if the darkness is coming for them or from them,” reads Showtime’s official description for Season 2 of “Yellowjackets” and the writers this season reveal they were not holding back as they embarked on this follow up to their explosive debut.
Executive producers Jonathan Lisco and Drew Comins teased the themes of trauma and ptsd explored in Season 2 of Showtime’s thrilling drama “Yellowjackets,” and how it will affect the present-day players at the second season premiere held at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theater on Wednesday night.
With new cast members including Simone Kessell and Lauren Ambrose, who portray adult Lottie and Van, the teenage and adult yellowjackets crew along with creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson walked the red carpet to the theater for a special screening which was followed by a brief Q&A segment.
“We realized early on that the keeping of secrets, and people being traumatized from the past was not itself an engine for storytelling. We needed to do something more. We did a lot of research, like we always do and we realized that PTSD — what it is really, is that when something triggers you, the same neurotransmitters, the same feelings that you had when you were actually experiencing the event in the past, you have again,” said Lisco.
Lisco continued: “That doesn’t happen to all of us, but it happens to these characters. And we then felt the unpacking of that can be vivid. The last thing I’ll say is that despite what they went through, despite how harrowing it was, and horrible, these young women — actually now in the middle age sort of box that they’re in — still, oddly long for that time, because there was an ecstatic and rhapsodic freedom in that madness.”
The new season picks up with with the younger yellowjackets facing a freezing winter in the middle of the woods. In the present day, viewers will watch as the adult characters come to grips with their past as it comes back around to surprise them in the present day.
“I remember one of the most profound things that Jonathan said to me was that, the yellowjackets, as much as they tried to bury the trauma, each of them are in their own individual ways, calling back that feeling and this notion that you’re never more alive than when you’re right on the edge of death, is something that has sort of been threaded through the show in a lot of really interesting ways.”
“Yellowjackets” Season 2 will premiere on March 24 on Showtime.