By Alex Nash
When spouses Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson sat down to create their television show, they had a simple question at the forefront of their minds — why was the public so skeptical of a group of girls descending into barbarism when they accepted that behavior in young boys? The year was 2017 and Warner Brothers Pictures had recently announced a now-abandoned, all-female adaptation of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies.” The internet at the time was not impressed.
Despite the backlash, Lyle and Nickerson were not quite so quick to dismiss the idea. They continued to riff on the concept, and their “metaphor for teenage hierarchy” became the hit show “Yellowjackets.” Three seasons in, they have yet to let up on the rage, violence and, yes, barbarism of their teen girls and adult women.
“Yellowjackets” follows the soccer star survivors of a fictional 1996 plane crash, as well as the present-day fates of those who survived the ordeal. Characters navigate their relationships with each other, the public at large in the present day and their survival in the wilderness in 1996. Without unraveling too much of the mystique of the show, the survival of (some) of the team is affected by forces not of this world, and none of the team is entirely who they seem.
The show has been well-reviewed for its atmosphere, storytelling and worldbuilding, and the suspense of its supernatural-tinged mysteries. This show has so much going for it, and it has absolutely entranced me as a viewer. It grabs the viewer’s attention without feeling contrived, keeps a fast pace without feeling rushed and portrays complex emotions without feeling melodramatic.
“Yellowjackets” has been popular prestige television for all three of its seasons so far, and the accolades are entirely deserved. As a piece of entertainment, it is beyond doubt that “Yellowjackets” deserves a place among modern TV greats. Without spoiling the show, I can assure you that it is a wild ride of hypnotic imagery. And those in the market for excellent performances by an incredible cast will love the young stars like Ella Purnell (Fallout) and Sophie Thatcher (Companion) and the well-established, beloved actresses like Melanie Lynskey (The Last of Us) and Christina Ricci (Wednesday).
But the paper is not going to pay me the big bucks just to tell you that I think a show is super cool and fun to watch. Therefore, this article is not merely a review of “Yellowjackets” but is a review of its reviews — and a defense of the show from being stripped of its complexity in favor of its online treatment of shallow, memeable engagement.
My concern is based on a conversation online that surrounds “Yellowjackets.” The show’s focus on violence, anger and the emotions of both its teenaged and adult female characters is what often grabs the attention of interviewers, fans and journalists. YouTube video essayists and culture writers have held the show up as an example of the growing cultural phenomenon of “female rage” in media.
“Female rage” has become a cultural shorthand for the unencumbered expression of negative emotions like anger, fear and sadness by women, both in the real and fictional worlds. Writers have spotted it in paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi from the 1500s as easily as they have in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Marvel’s “She-Hulk.” Women are finally angry, or maybe we are finally looking their anger in the face.
Indeed, there can be something refreshing about a female character who can scream and wail and roar in the face of the loving mother or faithful, doting love interest that has long seemed the factory default for women in media. A woman who is not demonized for acting self-interestedly, who is neither driven by her positivity or ice-cold and calculated in negativity, is cathartic for many viewers. And with so much to be angry about today, who can be mad at watching Gentileschi’s Judith violently slay Holofernes? Who does not, even a little bit, want to say “good for her?”
The girls and women of “Yellowjackets” smash and stab. They fight and argue and kick and scream their way through conflicts both major and petty. They literally eat each other (sorry, but I think we are beyond spoiler territory now). If anyone embodies female rage, the bloodstains alone should cement each player in that plane crash as a cover girl for Furious Female Monthly.
These portrayals of rage have netted the cast plenty of praise for their ability to show the once-called “fairer sex” at ugly and terrifying extremes of rage. It is a think piece almost requiring liberal-leaning publications to write about the anger of the girls in the wilderness and the women once removed from it. And the writers of “Yellowjackets” are, reasonably so, praised for believably and identifiably showing the outward and marked negativity of Shauna Shipman, Lottie Matthews, Natalie Scatorcchio, Jackie Taylor, Taissa Turner and Misty Quigley.
A cultural attitude that penalizes anger out of teenage girls leads to adult women who cannot healthily express themselves, but only if the girls do not rebel against it. And the girls in “Yellowjackets” are the picture of angry rebellion, embodying emotions their real-life counterparts might be afraid of. Why should they not? Maybe a teen girl watching the show will feel less alone in her anger. Maybe her parents will allow her space to feel what she needs lest it come back to bite later.
The issue manifests when portrayal becomes trope-ified. Tropes are not without their place in media — shorthands establish a cultural language that allows storytellers to connect with their readers without hours of setup and justification of why a story is progressing how it is. However, tropes for female characters have historically not leaned into negative emotion or violence without some positive justification for either.
“Well-worn characters like the mother who does whatever it takes to save her children or the faithful wife who gets roped into crime to save or avenge her husband are more digestible, women granted the appearance of being multidimensional and emotionally complex when they are just following a formula,” wrote Maya Philips in a 2023 piece for the New York Times — a piece that includes three different stills from Yellowjackets.
Therefore, it would have been expected for the writers and cast of “Yellowjackets” to create their women and girls to be above the actuality of the emotions they engage with. Instead, characters are angry and violent without “good” reason or provocation; like any teenager’s emotions, they spike unpredictably and lash out at each other in a way few would describe as “pretty.” In these actions, they subvert certain tropes.
But the way these characters are treated in today’s cultural language upholds another emerging trope — that “female rage” that we viewers so love to see and celebrate. The “Yellowjackets” characters’ faces, covered in blood and screaming, open many an article and thumbnail many a video about the sheer catharsis of angry teenage girls.
Tropes, while being mechanisms used frequently in storytelling, are rarely artificially manufactured. Even the commedia dell’arte and kabuki traditions of theater did not emerge with fully-formed alphabets that their audiences could read. Tropes grow over time, and with the rise of art like “Yellowjackets,” and characters like it boasts, “female rage” is quickly entering the shorthand of our culture and its breakneck evolution.
When “female rage” leaves the realm of writing choice and enters the realm of writing shorthand, it becomes a trope in the same echelon as the quietly-resigned, self-sacrificial woman that lovers of “female rage” despise.
Without spoiling the show, it must be stressed that the women and girls of “Yellowjackets” are so much more than the mere rage their bequeathed trope implies. They are, as all good characters are, complex in both their negativity and positivity. The nuance of how each character responds to their situation, not merely the blind or even justifiable ire they feel, is what makes the show so much greater than any quality of “female rage.”
As a trope, no matter how enjoyable, “female rage” does lose efficacy in papering over nuance. After all, “Lord of the Flies” is often dismissed in classroom discussions and online back-and-forths as being a simple portrayal of savagery and violence among young boys. Violence among boys removed from society has become one monster of a trope today.
But “Lord of the Flies” is a far more complex work — the motivations of its characters and the background of its author paint a deeper picture than “adolescent boys are violent without the intervention of society.” one sentence about what lord of the flies is REALLY about (theres a pig? one of them is a jesus figure i think) fat boy
“Yellowjackets,” too, is more nuanced than the internet or its tropes may make it out to be. Its characters are balls of rage all the time, and the skill with which the show builds realistic people is far greater than the simple messaging of “women are angry, too.” As “Yellowjackets” continues to see success, the cultural conversation around the show must find a way to grow beyond seeing only a single dimension of emotion.
Tropes, while useful to drive narratives, are harmful to comprehensive readings. While “Yellowjackets” is a worthwhile entry in the canon of “female rage,” it cannot be reduced so far that we lose the layers that make it a fantastic show in so many other ways.
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