Everything You Need To Know About SHOWTIME's "Yellowjackets"

Bound for a national tournament and hailing from good old suburban New Jersey, the Yellowjackets—a high school girls' soccer team—is unstoppable. But one by one, ominous events begin happening. Little things morph into bigger things, like a teammate being severely injured "by accident."

In the small amount of time leading up to the tournament, there are physical, social, and emotional disputes between the teammates, which all come to a head at a party the night before their flight to Seattle. When Jackie (Ella Purnell), the team captain, is able to get everyone to mend things for the sake of the tournament, things settle down a bit—that is, until their plane crashes in the middle of a remote forest.

Yellowjackets premiered on November 14, and stars Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey, and Tawny Cypress as the adult versions of Natalie, Misty, Shauna, and Taissa, respectively. Sophia Thatcher, Sammi Hanratty, Sophie Nélisse, and Jasmine Savoy Brown play the younger versions of those characters.

The show flips between the girls during the time around the plane crash and the women they become in their present-day lives. As the 20-year anniversary of the crash creeps up on the team, some have chosen to forget what happened, while others never forgot. Because the crash received an immense amount of coverage in the news at the time, people have started coming out of the woodwork to prod into what really happened in those 19 months that the girls were stranded.

Shockingly gruesome at moments, Yellowjackets almost creates its own genre: it's like if Lost, Lord of the Flies and Freaks and Geeks had a child—with a sprinkle of mystery. It's dark at times (actually, most times), but at least judging by the first episode, there's some lightness given that there's everyday high school drama. Since the Yellowjackets are a team packed with a wide range of personalities and previously-established conflicts, it'll be telling to see who takes charge at the crash site.

As an aside, whoever was handling the soundtrack definitely knew what they were doing, with apt choices of Hole and Liz Phair being the perfect background music for the late-'90s, women-driven tv show. With 10 episodes in total, Yellowjackets will continue to air on Sundays at 10 pm on SHOWTIME—check it out if you're looking for something a bit off the beaten path of a regular drama.