In Showtime’s smash hit Yellowjackets members of the eponymous New Jersey girls’ soccer team resort to acts of barbarism and brutality to survive their unscheduled 19-month stay in the wilderness after a plane crash in the ’90s. Here’s a look at the varied influences, both real and fictional, behind Yellowjacket‘s twisted narrative.
Yellowjackets Takes Inspiration from the Donner Party and Andes Flight Disaster
In 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes Mountains in Argentina, a tragic event often referred to as the Andes Flight Disaster. Yellowjackets creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have referenced the historical tale of survival as a “jumping-off point” for their fictional series (via Forbes). Those familiar with the 1972 crash will easily recognize similarities in Yellowjackets‘ inciting incident, as the survivors of the Andes Flight disaster were likewise members of a sports team, Old Christians Club’s rugby team, who had chartered a flight for a match. Out of the 45 passengers aboard Uruguayan Flight 571, 16 were miraculously rescued from the Andes after roughly two and a half months of searching. However, their survival came with a traumatic price.
Though Yellowjackets‘ violence is stylized and often hyperbolic, there’s a basis in the real trauma it takes to survive harsh conditions and a further analysis of the human condition to be found within. The show’s girls’ soccer team has to adapt to uninhabitable winter weather and resorts to cannibalism out of food scarcity, both reflecting the true harrowing circumstances faced by the survivors of the Andes Flight Disaster. This combination of bitter cold and cannibalism may also remind audiences of the Donner Party, perhaps one of the most infamous historical instances of cannibalism as a means of survival. Though Lyle and Nickerson cited both morbid pieces of history as influences for Yellowjackets, the show reflects on more than just the precedented circumstances that can lead to the shocking act of consuming human flesh.
Works of Fiction Such as Lord of the Flies Equally Influence Yellowjackets’ Story
Lyle describes Yellowjackets as “a metaphor for teenage hierarchy”, specifically through the lens of girlhood. The series co-creator may prove an exception to the notion that nothing productive can come from reading a comment section, because skeptical responses to the planned gender-swapped remake of Lord of the Flies ended up serving as a major inspiration for Yellowjackets. “There was a girl in my high school who poisoned another girl’s food for fun,” The New York Times quotes Lyle in opposition to online commenters who found an all-female adaptation of William Golding’s novel implausible, “only showing girls getting along is not painting a full picture”.
Lord of the Flies is far from the only work of fiction among Yellowjackets‘ panoply of influences. Though she did not provide the title, Lyle recounted another book from her formative teenage years that helped her recontextualize cannibalism, telling Forbes: “In that story [cannibalism] was actually the highest form of honoring a person. It was better than letting a sister rot in the earth. In consuming her, she became immortal”. The novel in question focused on teenage witches, which is likewise notable because Yellowjackets teases a handful of supernatural elements within its narrative. Whether or not audiences view Lottie’s prophetic visions, Taissa’s Man with No Eyes, and the notion of an anthropomorphic wilderness as metaphorical or literal within the world of the show, their existence nods to a vast well of creative inspiration that extends beyond the true survival stories that gave the show a jump start.
Yellowjackets is as much a modern retelling of Lord of the Flies as it is the events of the Donner Party or Andes Flight Disaster, which is to say the series is not a direct adaptation of any one tale but a collage of influences both real and fictional.