As a lover of gore and mystery, when I saw the trailer for the Showtime series “YellowJackets” I knew that I had to watch. This thriller left me on the edge of my seat wanting more after each episode. The mix of mystery and dark humor that I was drawn to did not disappoint in the first season. 

The show follows two main timelines: 1996 when a private plane carrying the New Jersey State Champion soccer team crashes in the Canadian wilderness. The team is then left to fend for themselves for 19 months. In their attempt to survive, the high school drama leads to something much darker. The second timeline is present day when four of the survivors battle with what happened while in the wild while balancing seemingly normal suburban lives and trying to hide how they really survived. The blend of teenage drama and horror made it hard to wait an entire week for a new episode. 

The show’s mystery is largely centered around the first scene of the show where a young girl is running through the snowy forest barefoot then falls into a trap filled with sharpened sticks. A person disguised in fur and other garments looks into the trap to observe her kill. The episode continues to get darker from there when a group of similarly dressed people cook then consume the girl in a ritual-like feast. Questions about who was killed and who was ordering the killing remain a part of the mystery. 

While two timelines can sometimes be messy and confusing, the writers used it to their advantage to show how the characters developed over the decades.Young Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) is portrayed as one of the leaders of the team when she demands to go off into the woods in order to find her team help. The same attitude and leadership can be seen in her adult counterpart (Tawny Cypress) when she turns her suburban life upside down to run for state senate. Both Brown and Cypress do an amazing job of showing how something so traumatizing would affect you while keeping the same characteristics in both timelines.

Throughout the show there are many supernatural elements that add to the mystery of what is really going on in the woods while not relying too heavily on ghost stories. The true horror is what the team has to do to survive. “Yellowjackets” had some of the best and most horrifying imagery I’ve seen in a show that was enough to send shivers down my spine. The pilot’s opening scene set the tone for the rest of the show in just how gorey it would get. With animal sacrifice and an attempted murder, the show did not come up short on the horror. 

This series packed so many plot twists back to back that there is always something more to find out. It truly is addictive; just when you think you have found the answer to one question another is raised. With the constant twists and turns the show never got boring and truly entertained every second. 

Overall the first season of “YellowJackets” was jam packed with action, drama and gore. I’m excited to see where the writers take the show next as it was renewed for a second season. This show is a must watch if you love mystery and will leave you in suspense the entire season.