‘Yellowjackets Season 2 Abandoned The Horror Elements That Made Season 1 So Scary Good

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28 May, 2023

‘Yellowjackets Season 2 Abandoned The Horror Elements That Made Season 1 So Scary Good

I thought for a long time about all the mistakes the Yellow Jackets made in their second season. I took out a few issues in the series leading up to the finale and then wrote a pretty good synopsis of that episode. But there's one (at least) other piece of the puzzle that needs to be addressed: Season 2 wasn't all that terrible.

It was dark, safe and deserted. So sometimes it was hard to see. But Season 1 had this incredibly heightened sense of fear and dread that was deep and raw.

When reviewing Doomcoming :

Yellow Jackets is a great show that does two things right.

Above all, it constantly increases the sense of dread and fear. Second, it shakes the secrets.

Much of this was due to the musical score composed by Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker, which made a huge impact in the show's first season. These annoying chorus sounds can cause panic. Along with the many terrifying horror movie moments in Part 1, it often left me deeply scared and disturbed.

In Season 2, the instrumental music is set to a number of (often excellent) 90s hits. It worked well at times, but I really missed the first season. Buffy Sainte-Marie's "God Is Alive Magic Is Afoot" was the only truly scary song in the finale, but it feels lost in such an ugly episode. Zombie "zombie" is overused in television and movies. It's a great song, but a little on the nose. I prefer it. A few versions of "Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen touched me a bit, and it's also a great song and fits this scene perfectly. I understand why it is used.

However, it's not just the music that disrupts the sense of dread. There are no big scary scenes, and the ones that should be scary seem rushed. Compare the heightened sense of fear and madness in " Doomsday " to the hunt for Natalie in the second finale . Doomcoming has a lot of excitement and suspense. The way Jackie and Travis have sex acts as the catalyst for Lottie and her gang's wild intrusion. Sexual intercourse turns into hunger when you start biting the skin. Thinking it was a deer, the terror chased it out of the forest. Shauna's inhuman screams to Javy " Run!" All of this leads to Shauna nearly slitting Travis' throat after Lottie puts the pinecone in Travis' mouth. Scary!

Season 1 had so many great moments. Ty eats dirt in front of the barn, Lottie falls on him; Tai is later seen eating dirt in a tree outside Sammy's room. Ty's entire episode is about the body being found in the attic and how he is now obsessed with discovering the doll and seeing the eyeless man as a child. It's cold! It's a disturbing moment when Simon discovers a decapitated dog shelter.

The horror was evident in Season 1, from Jackie's (or rather Shauna's) dreamy dream. Even at the end, when Nat is kidnapped and the woman Lottie leaves a message, you get the feeling that something very bad and terrible is going on.

Then at 2... . nothing. Loti is a New Age guru who runs a pretty boring religion. We don't learn anything about the blind person and we don't pay attention to him. There were some scary moments with Tai at the beginning of the other issue, but those were mostly erased for the rest of the season.

The scene where the girls chase Nat is definitely tense, but there's almost no build-up and we know she's doing it for obvious reasons, which takes away a lot of the dramatic tension. During the chase, they start to scream and rage again, but it feels forced and rushed rather than organic and scary. Perhaps the scariest scene is when Shauna watches the girls and eats Coach Ben's son, but it's just a dream! When Shauna comes close to Lottie's death, it's surprising that no one tries to stop her, leading the group to kill someone else to save Lottie's life and all. The world shrugs and agrees. There is no conflict, accumulation, tension between different voices.

Oh, and the adults' hunting scene - where everyone is slowly running through the woods - was hilarious.

In my review of Doomcoming I noticed a few other things. First, I had a lot of fun with this series of posts. It was great, so much fun to write. People think I love hate shows, and of course they can be entertaining, but I prefer horror and suspense shows that make me think and feel. I'd rather write about Game Of Thrones before the hiatus starts.

The second is this piece I wrote at the time expressing my fears about the second season.

There's only one episode of Season 1, then the long wait for Season 2, and all the worrisome fuss that Season 2 brings. I honestly wish they would have done a whole story that ended in one season.

We're happy that the limited series story didn't drag, that all the puzzles were solved, and that we didn't get more content. The dangers of choosing a multi-year approach are very real. We've seen it too many times to count.