We’re heading back to the wilderness for Yellowjackets season 4. The show is coming back for another season of trauma-inducing teen cannibalism and angsty adults dealing with all that trauma. The Showtime horror-drama series tells the story of a high school girls’ soccer team that survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness in the 1990s. It usually follows two timelines: one in the past, as the girls fight to survive, and one in the present day, showing them as adults. But now that Yellowjackets has been renewed for a season 4, there’s some speculation that they’ll throw a third timeline into the mix.
So far, in the first three seasons, there have been hints of a third timeline where we see the girls after they get rescued. We’ve seen really brief flashbacks or references to this timeline, like the scene of reporters swarming the girls as they board a rescue plane or Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) alluding to “the things we did when we got back.” But now that (spoiler alert!) rescue seems imminent at the end of season 3, it looks like season 4 might delve into that post-rescue time for the girls even more.
The Yellowjackets creators have hinted at the addition of another timeline to the series before. “What has always excited us is there’s also a third timeline, which is the in-between,” producer Drew Comins told Collider. “There’s something very exciting about seeing, like, how did these relationships evolve in the time between their rescue and where we pick up with them in the present day? How does one really readjust to polite society when you’ve gone to, as Bart once said, the factory default settings of what human beings are capable of?”
Here’s everything we know about Yellowjackets season 4, including how the post-rescue timeline might shake out.
Yellowjackets Season 4
What happened at the end of Yellowjackets season 3?
At the end of season 3, we finally learned the identity of the Antler Queen: Shauna, who’s definitely been harboring her darker side. Meanwhile, Natalie managed to get a signal on the repaired SAT phone by climbing high into the mountains. The season ended with the cliffhanger of her making contact with someone in the outside world. It seems like the beginning of a rescue mission for the Yellowjackets team.
What’s Yellowjackets season 4 about?
With that possibility of rescue on the horizon at the end of season 3, it looks like season 4 will explore exactly how the girls get back into the real world and readjust. Showrunner Ashley Lyle told the Los Angeles Times, “These girls have changed remarkably, for better or for worse, in their time out there, especially because of their age. They’re so malleable to begin with, and they’ve become very different people. And to see those people readjust to a world that is almost — I wouldn’t say insignificant to them; it’s obviously very significant — foreign to them now in a way that we think would be really ripe for storytelling and to dig deeper into their characters.”
Who’s in the cast of Yellowjackets season 4?
Although we don’t have the official cast list, we can assume most of the main cast will return for season 4. That includes Melanie Lynskey as older Shauna, Sophie Nélisse as younger Shauna, Christina Ricci as older Misty, Samantha Hanratty as younger Misty, Tawny Cypress as older Tai, Jasmin Savoy Brown as younger Tai, Courtney Eaton as younger Lottie, Sophie Thatcher as younger Natalie, Liv Hewson as younger Van, Nia Sondaya as Akilah, Warren Kole as Jeff, Jenna Burgess as Melissa, Sarah Desjardins as Callie, Elijah Wood as Walter, and Ashley Sutton as Hanna.
When does Yellowjackets season 4 premiere?
There’s no official premiere date yet for Yellowjackets season 4, but we’re probably looking at a 2026 release.