The Yellowjackets have finally come home. But this reunion is a reckoning.
On Tuesday, the hit Showtime series released the official teaser trailer with the first footage and first photos of the fourth and final season (below), which premieres on Nov. 20 and will introduce the third timeline to the survival series when the Yellowjackets soccer team is finally rescued after 19 months in the Canadian wilderness.
The day prior, the series had teased the long-awaited moment by “reporting” the Yellowjackets rescue via MTV News, using advanced editing technology with collaborating anchor Serena Altschul, and celebrating their return with a twist on Alanis Morissette‘s MTV Unplugged performance of “Ironic.”
Morissette again features in the first look with her hit song “Ironic,” but the new version signals a tonal shift for the series. Morissette, who has previously covered the show’s theme song “No Return,” recorded original audio for the teaser, THR learned, and audio tools incorporated her new intro into her MTV Unplugged performance of “Ironic.”
So after three seasons of tracking the high school New Jersey teenagers and the horrific things they did to survive after their plane crash stranded them in the wilderness — and showing the repercussions for the surviving adults in present day — the trailer signals that the fourth season will play out like a horror psychothriller.
The teens are rescued and they return home. But they have to face what they did, the people they lost (and took) and the secrets they will kill to protect. The footage shows moments the series has been building to — like Teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) being brutally dethroned — and promises to fill in the missing time to explain how those teens became the adults we met in the pilot, played by Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress and (formerly) Juliette Lewis.
Here’s the official logline: “They’re finally home, but at what cost? The official teaser for the fourth and final season of Yellowjackets teases the survivors home at last, and haunted by the price of getting out alive. Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, Yellowjackets is the saga of a team of wildly talented high school girls soccer players who become the (un)lucky survivors of a plane crash deep in the remote northern wilderness. Equal parts survival epic, psychological horror story and coming-of-age drama, the series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to savage clans, while also tracking the lives they’ve attempted to piece back together nearly 25 years later, proving that the past is never really past and what began out in the wilderness is far from over.”
Season four stars Lynskey, Ricci, Cypress, Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, Warren Kole, Kevin Alves, Sarah Desjardins, Nia Sondaya, Jenna Burgess and Hilary Swank. Guest starring are June Squibb, Elijah Wood, Molly Ringwald, Devon Sawa, Sam Braun, Dulé Hill and more.
Lyle and Bart Nickerson created the series, which is produced by Lionsgate Television. They are co-showrunners and executive produce with Lisco, Drew Comins of Creative Engine, Jeff W. Byrd, Sarah L. Thompson, Ameni Rozsa and Julia Bicknell.
Yellowjackets returns to Paramount+ with the Premium Plan on Nov. 20, and is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution. Here’s a refresher on how season three ended.