With a show like “Yellowjackets,” where the mysteries are everything, you can’t reveal too much too soon. David Lynch and Mark Frost learned that lesson with “Twin Peaks,” a clear inspiration for Showtimes‘s hit series in terms of tone and setting, which solved its central question halfway through its second season and then quickly faltered for the remaining episodes (until, of course, the divine “The Return,” two decades later, which defied all conventions). 
READ MORE: New ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2 Trailer: Showtime’s Cult Hit Series Returns On March 24, Premieres On-Air On March 26
Co-creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson said they envisioned their Showtime hit as a five-season series, and so far they are doing an excellent job of keeping up the momentum while also keeping the show as wild and weird as possible. The six episodes provided to critics from Season Two answer just enough questions to be satisfying while raising a whole bevy of surreal new ones.
At the end of ‘Yellowjackets’ S1, winter was coming for the team in the past. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) was pregnant, Javi (Luciano Leroux) was still missing after fleeing the orgy, Lottie (Courtney Eaton) had killed a bear, and Jackie (Ella Purnell) had frozen to death. Meanwhile, things were not much better for the team in the present. Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) had killed her boyfriend Adam (Peter Gadiot) because she thought he was a blackmailer, who turned out to actually be her husband, Jeff (Warren Kole). Misty (Christina Ricci) and the team helped her dispose of Adam’s body, Taissa (Tawny Cypress) had won her election, but her evil double destroyed her family, and Natalie (Juliette Lewis) got kidnapped by a mysterious group. 
Season two picks up all of these threads as it lays down new ones – and introduces new characters. These include a grown-up Lottie (Simone Kessell) – who it was revealed had emptied Travis’s bank account after his death – and adult Van (Lauren Ambrose). Kessell fully picks up the ethereal quality that Eaton brings to the younger Lottie, while also adding intricate layers of both charisma and self-doubt. After a stint in Switzerland for a psychotic break after their rescue, Lottie now runs a wellness retreat that looks an awful lot like a cult. She claims that overcoming her traumatic past helps her heal others, but slowly audiences realize she’s not as healed as she projects.
Van gets brought back into the fold by a freaked-out Tai looking for some help controlling her evil double. As an adult, Van’s a woman trying desperately to capture the past that was taken from her by trauma as she barely treads water emotionally and financially. Ambrose loses much of the playfulness of Liv Hewson’s younger version, instead imbuing the character with a rigidity laced with melancholy, a persona built on years of simply trying to survive in a world where happiness is a luxury she can’t afford. 
Meanwhile, fan-favorite Misty has two new besties in both the past and the present. Teen Misty (Sammi Hanratty) befriends theater kid Crystal (Nuha Jes Izman), who is almost as detached from reality as she is (the two bond when both admit to finding Jack Kevorkian attractive). Hanratty and Izman are wonderfully weird together, portraying the buzz of finding someone on your wavelength. 
Grownup Misty finds the same feeling when she teams up with Walter (Elijah Wood), a fellow Citizen Detective, to track down Nat. Wood and Ricci on screen together certainly could feel like stunt nostalgia casting, but proves instead to be a perfect matching of energies; they’re just two weird little people in search of a partner. Wood even has one of the most romantic lines I’ve heard in awhile, describing himself as a “Watson in search of his Sherlock.” Through a peek deeper into teen Misty’s time on the mountain with Crystal, we get a better idea of why she has no close friends or lovers, making this connection with Walter all the more bittersweet. 
In the present, Shauna and Jeff continue to patch up their marriage, which has at least been recharged sexually by their various illegal activities. In the past, audiences learn a bit more about their affair as teens, leading us to question whether Shauna ever was a good friend to Jackie. This guilt manifests in some quietly deranged behavior by teen Shauna — and some of the show’s most twisted imagery to date.
As Detective Kevin (Alex Wyndham) begins investigating Adam’s disappearance, Shauna and Jeff’s daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) gets drawn deeper into her parents’ mire. Yet, this situation also allows Shauna to quit hiding her dark side from everyone – including herself. In episode three, Lynskey delivers a chilling and ferocious monologue that should place Shauna very high in the pantheon of the greatest television anti-heroes of all time. 
While each plot thread is intriguing in its own right, by splitting the core four up, the first half of the new “Yellowjackets” season lacks the delicious chemistry the leads had honed by the end of S1. Introducing Lottie’s cult compound brings with it not only new characters (Nicole Maines as Lisa is a standout), but it also gives the women a destination to meet back up – and also places them back in a wilderness setting. Through years of therapy, Lottie rid herself of the Antler Queen and the darkness of the mountain – or so she thinks. As the women gradually all make their way to her compound, her visions begin to return, causing her to question whether she ever had a mental illness – or if it was always just the darkness manifesting through her. 
Like “Yellowjackets” S1, viewers spend plenty of time in the mindset of several characters, in both the past and the present, and there’s no one ultimate point of view of events. In the past, Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) begins fantasizing about what his life could have been if he’d chosen to live out and proud with his boyfriend, rather than in the closet as an assistant soccer coach. His reality and his fantasy blur, reminding us that almost everything we’ve seen from anyone’s point of view should be taken with a grain of salt. 
Throughout the season, events are shown as if they’re presented as facts, only to be later revealed as fever dreams, visions, or worse. ‘Yellowjackets’ thus asks its audience to contemplate just how much of what we believe is the truth is just consensus agreement, how much of our memories are mere stories we tell ourselves, and whether there is such a thing as reality at all. 
With a show like “Yellowjackets,” thousands of fan theories sprout after each new revelation. What makes the show so consistently engaging is how it offers enough fertile ground for those theories to keep sprouting, without ever really making any definitive statements. Like “Twin Peaks: The Return,” this show should keep itself rooted in the realm of dreams and nightmares, thus remaining open to a multitude of interpretations. While it may not reach the artistic heights of Lynch’s sublime summit (and really, what can?), “Yellowjackets” dances in the same surreal realm. And that should give the series enough cultural bandwidth to last its intended five seasons.[B+]