The footage opens with a warning that the past will come back to "hunt", and the words are superimposed on someone wearing the infamous cannibalism mask of the survivors of the Yellowjackets team, indicating where creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and co showrunner Jonathan Lisco have already warned us: More cannibalism is coming.
Yellowjackets follows two timelines in the past and present to tell the story of a team of highly talented high school football players (the Yellowjackets) who become the unfortunate survivors of a plane crash deep in the remote northern wilderness.
In the past timeline, the teaser shows the wilderness survivors at their lowest point yet after the end of season two, leaving the starving group without shelter. “I can't believe we didn't eat them first,” says Sophie Nélisse, who plays young Shauna (played by Melanie Lynskey in the current timeline), as the group continues to argue over who's in charge.
Season two's wilderness story, from 1996, left behind several corpses (including one that led to a celebration for the whole family; another, a poignant mourning; and a third that remains in limbo) and saw the teens appoint a new leader as they turned to cannibalism to survive as they lost the house they lived in and found themselves in their most precarious position yet.
In the teaser footage for the modern-day timeline, the survivors, played by Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell, are once again threatened by their past. “Someone wants to kill us,” says Lynskey's Shauna. “The only people who know about this are either us or dead,” says Ambrose's Van. In the teaser, even ghost Jackie (played by Ella Purnell) returns to haunt modern-day Shauna.
The first season brought the adult survivors together when someone threatened to expose their past. But this time, the reunited group takes on their next enemy without any of their own. Missing from the season three cast list is one of the leading actresses, Juliette Lewis, who - spoiler alert! - was killed when her character, the adult Natalie (played in the past by Sophie Thatcher) was accidentally fatally hit by Misty (played in the current timeline by Ricci and in the past by Samantha Hanratty).
When speaking about her departure from the series, Lewis left the door open for a possible return in some form, but she also said goodbye to the series. “I thought they wrapped up the characters really nicely and I just love good writing, so I was happy to be a part of it,” she said.
Guest star Hilary Swank also makes her debut at the end of the teaser. She whispers "shit", looks terrified and runs away from something horrific.
The Yellowjackets season three cast also includes Warren Kole, Sarah Desjardins, Elijah Wood who returns in a recurring role, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, Kevin Alves and Steven Krueger (who plays the Yellowjackets' coach). Joel McHale also joins in a guest role.
Here's the synopsis: "The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to fierce clans, while also following the lives they try to piece back together nearly 25 years later, proving that the past is never truly past and that what began in the wilderness is far from over.”
The first-look photos also provide more insight into season three, including showing the teens in survival mode and the modern-day cast at what could presumably be Nat's funeral (pictured at the top of the news report).
