Attempts to summarize the Showtime series Yellowjackets often lean on creaky comparisons: A female Lord of the Flies? A 90's Stranger Things? Teen Lost, but in Canada? 

In any case, the coming-of-age horror story is as addictive as it is perceptive. The show follows a championship-bound girls soccer team that crashes in the wilderness in 1996, threading their story with that of the surviving members as adults in 2021. Yellowjackets takes the life-or-death feeling of high-school to its furthest extreme, with the pilot episode teasing a cannibalistic cult that the girls become after nineteen months in the wilderness.

Episodes have kept viewers rapt and spawned dozens of theories about the show’s many mysteries: Who are the ‘pit girl’ and the ‘antler queen?’ Who’s blackmailing the adult Yellowjackets? What does the cult’s strange symbol mean? And Is Christina Ricci’s Misty the best character on television?

Shirley Li, Megan Garber, and Lenika Cruz break down the first season.

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