My Classmates Ate Each Other, Too

Yellowjackets and Growing Up in the Wilderness of the 90s

I avoided Yellowjackets for as long as I could. I tend to steer clear of any narratives that prominently feature cannibalism, scalping, infidelity, and cancer. The first two are easy to explain: I’m squeamish and have never been able to handle anything even close to the horror realm. Infidelity ties back to a few relationships that ended before I knew they were over, with one of us getting laid a lot more than the other. Cancer—well, no one needs to see any more cancer than life already offers. But eventually, you run out of shows to watch and re-watch, and over Christmas, as my wife and I toured Ontario, I relented.

Turns out, Yellowjackets isn’t about cannibalism at all. It’s about growing up in the ‘90s in middle-class Ottawa.

Okay, admittedly, it’s not a 1:1 adaptation. I’m not going to tell you who the Nat of my friends was (it was me.) There was no Antler Queen (it was Joe.) Our varsity soccer team’s private charter did not crash en route to nationals (we were not jocks) There were no teen pregnancy scandals at my high school (that I know of, but abortion is easier to access, less stigmatized, and free in Canada.) And I have no idea who would’ve delivered a baby in the wilds (Phil, he’s a doctor, and everyone knew he would be from childhood.) We never cannibalized our friends (though if we did, it would’ve been Dave, and he would’ve understood.)

Gen X is an anomaly of generations, especially in Canada. The parents of our American cousins would’ve likely fought in the Vietnam War and been affected by the traumas that haunt the Boomers who endured those years. But Canada didn’t join the war effort in Southeast Asia, and so my generation’s parents raised us without that collective trauma. Instead, they were offered homes and careers, marriages, families, and divorce; freedom from religion; and the prospect of a brave, peaceful future. And yet they reveled in the cultural movements and manifestations of an America torn apart and put back together: the music, the film, the art, the literature, the sexual revolution, and feminism. They had the best of both worlds and as their children, we benefited greatly. Our parents left us alone to grow up and to find independence far earlier than in the helicopter/bulldozer parenting of today, perpetuated—oddly—by those of us who reveled in that freedom and independence but then had kids.

Yellowjackets situates its characters, born around the same time I was in the mid-70s, stranded in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash. My friends and I grew up in the Canadian wilderness of the ‘90s, figuratively and at times literally. To be a teenager in Ottawa at the time was to be alone in the hinterland. By the time we were 16 years old and licensed to drive, we immediately aspired to adulthood. We got nearly full-time jobs while still (occasionally) attending high school. We bought beater cars. We drank and smoked. We fell in and out of love. We saw our parents for the odd meal here and there, and, of course, on holidays. God knows where they all were, but when I think back to that time, it is defined by their absence. It was the 1990s. Both parents had jobs. They had lives. Their parents had been burdened by war and the Depression, and they had this sort of freedom they gifted to us. It was generous. It was honest. We spent as much time outdoors as we could because outdoors was alone. We skied and camped and roadtripped and hiked and got lost. We were recklessly adulted and alone. It was bliss.

The (mostly) girls of Yellowjackets, once abandoned by way of tragedy, quickly build a community. Leaders are appointed, and just like in high school, that position is inhabited by different characters. However, as the realities of the girls’ situation evolve, so does that leadership position. Jackie (Ella Purnell), the captain of the team, is quickly relegated to a supporting role. Misty (Samantha Hanratty), the team manager and social outcast, ascends because of her survivalist skillset. Coach (Steven Krueger) has agency because he’s the oldest (just), in a position of authority (but in the “real” world), and, well, he’s a man. Ultimately, Lottie (Courtney Eaton) assumes the role of the Antler Queen, a result of delusion, chaos, and faith.

As we binge-watched the first two seasons, I couldn’t help but wonder why someone wasn’t nominated to simply walk in one direction until they either found a peak to scout from for civilization or simply eventually found it. This, of course, puts aside that even if Spirit Airlines flew from Newark (the girls’ home) to Seattle (the site of the Nationals), they’d be hardpressed to find and crash into a completely unpopulated Canadian wood. They could’ve found Thunder Bay in like two hours Eventually, I realized why, with the exception of one ill-fated attempt, the girls don’t try to find their way back home: They don’t want to. What else do teenagers crave but freedom from their parents and to feel important? In 2025, that freedom is found in iPhones and social media, where they find privacy and community. In my 1995, it was found in distance, in abandoned lands, in house parties unoccupied by vacationing parents, and often in the literal wilderness.

I remember high school as a wasteland of lawlessness, filled with menace and infidelity. Ritual hazing dominated our freshman year, where seniors were given the school and community’s blessing to kidnap us, throw is vans, beat us, and cover us in shaving cream, but in a timely manner so as to wear our chaos to first-period after lunch. One kid, Donnie, habitually would light fire to the hair of the poor kid who had to sit in front of him in homeroom. His buddy Brian would cheat on his girlfriend Janey with reckless abandon (it was the 90s, AIDS was scary) and then threaten his partner in adultery with death if she were to snitch. High school dances were drunken, debaucherous affairs that began with moshpits and ended with fights in the parking lots as our teachers smoked pot in their cars and drove away in alibi. Nearly every weekend featured booze-filled soirees inevitably broken up at 3am by the cops but without penalty or repercussion from the constabulary or parents.

And every moment of it was beautiful.

It is this beauty I believe the girls of Yellowjackets are enchanted by. They don’t try and find their way home because what they’ve found in the wilderness is better. There are no parents to judge Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) for her pregnancy born of an affair with best friend Jackie’s boyfriend, and no predetermined social hierarchy for Jackie to hold over her. There are no repercussions for Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) deliberately injuring a lesser player because she wasn’t up to her standards. There’s no abusive home for Nat to be burdened with. There’s no need for Coach, Van (Liv Hewson) and Tai to stay in the closet because there’s none of the bigotry and intolerance of suburban Jersey. There’s no medication or frustrated parents to keep Lottie trapped in the guilt of her mental illness. Travis (Kevin Alves) and Nat can fuck, because that’s what teens do. Hell, even outcast Misty has a friend before she pushes her off a cliff. There are no adults, no rules, no accountability. It’s perfect.

But in turn, the wilderness allows the Yellowjackets to be their true selves. Shauna is stronger than the dynamic of her friendship with Jackie has allowed. Nat has value (as a hunter), something her homelife tells her she doesn’t. Lottie is the Antler Queen, unburdened by medication. Misty is a sociopath no longer relegated to watching animals die in privacy. Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) can fully embody her Christian faith. Melissa, Gen, and Akilah can still be random background characters who I forget exist until season two insists they were always there. Is this newfound freedom problematic? Sure, but that’s the fun of teenagedom.

Whenever the girls stray too far from camp, they are confronted by either strange iconography or The Man with No Eyes. The symbols are a representation of faith, a religion born of their freedom. I can remember finding that kind of faith as a teenager. I was surrounded by a multitude of religions, my friend group was populated by Baptists, Catholics, Jews, and Danes. I grew up without any religion at all. We often found ourselves deep in discussions of religion of morality, and through those conversations discovered our own doctrine, a denomination we would take into adulthood. This is what the girls find, not a cultish representation of Lottie’s delusions but a contextual faith to appease their moment. Lottie isn’t their God. They’re all Gods. The Man with No Eyes is often interpreted as Death (since Tai recalls seeing the apparition as a child). I see it as a death in a way, but rather the death teenagers associate with true adulthood, with aging. We are never as immortal as when we were 18, and returning to New Jersey represents a death of sorts for the stranded.

The realities of being stranded force the girls into building a primeval community of hunters, gatherers, and elements of folklore. They find an abandoned cabin for shelter. They harvest what they can from the plane’s wreckage. They kill and dress deer and rabbits. And when food is scarce, and unfortunate events befall Jackie, she ends up being smoked like a brisket and her soccer team devours her.

But they don’t really. They’re not cannibals. They’re merely a representation of the horror that was teenagers in the 1990s—they wear whatever is around and never wash. I got lucky. I love my friends and we’re still in touch. The kids who were outside of my immediate friend group were absolute monsters. They stole, they cheated, they fought, they set fire to kids’ hair, they fucked each other’s boyfriends and girlfriends; they felt burdened by the very idea of loyalty, and turned on each other like shroom-dosed high school girls in a pagan forest. I don’t know where they are now— I’m not on Facebook. I can only assume most of them are preparing for ministerial positions in Pierre Poilievre’s government.

Yellowjackets is often compared to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a novel all of us read in high school when I was a kid. I was reminded of the most Lord of the Flies moment of my adolescence during my holiday binge, which serendipitously was back where I grew up. In the early Spring of 1995, some girl in my class decided to have a party at her parents’ cottage up near Renfrew. (And yes, loyal readers, it was a boy-girl party and I was invited and Adam Taylor didn’t go.) My friends and I were planning on heading up to Dave’s parents’ place in the Algonquins anyway, so we thought we’d stop in. The girl, in the age before cellphones and Google maps, handed out bright yellow fliers on Friday afternoon in the halls, with a detailed route to the party. This, in hindsight, was a horrible mistake. About half the senior class showed up, with cars stretching the long winding dirt road to the highway, blocking everyone in—over two hundred teens in the woods with not an adult for miles. Things escalated quickly. That kid Donnie got tired of setting fire to people’s hair, and began urinating on everything and everyone. A drinking game deteriorated into a game that could best be titled, “Smash Your Empty Bottle on the Floor.” The toilet, since it was apparently no longer needed, was removed from its foundation. A barbecue was used to destroy the deck. Every window was smashed. About 40 feet from shore, a small speedboat was moored. Brian thought it would be fun to see how many beer bottles he could throw into the boat. The masses joined in. The boat sank. The host thought it would be a good idea to drive her Chevette into the forest in search of more beer. It was quickly totaled. A bonfire was built of furniture and decking and grew to a reckless fervor. Then we murdered Dave, roasted his body over the fire, and ate him.

Okay, so not the last part.

When the sun rose, and escape routes appeared between the trees, I drove us to safety, hungover and rattled from the scenes of the night. We made our way to a McDonald’s up the highway. We sat and ate McMuffins and drank coffee and tried to untangle what we had witnessed. Then Donnie and Brian came in, laughing and reveling in the absolute destruction of their debauchery. We exited quickly, heading up the deserted highway into the Algonquins, chain-smoking in my parents’ new car and blasting Neil Young or Nirvana or The Hip to drown out our bewildered silence. At some point, we got to the top of a hill, and I swerved the car to the side of the road. We all got out. Before us was the seemingly endless expanse of Canadian wilderness, untouched by man and untethered to reality. We breathed it in. We reveled in it. I have never in my life felt that free. We were, in that moment—and I bet my friends will tell you the same—absolute Gods, in control of everything that would come next in our lives.

What would come next, like for the characters set in Yellowjackets’ present, was a mixed bag. But similar to Shauna, Tai, Nat, Misty, Van, and Kevin, we all confronted our youths in the wilderness in our own way. And, look, trauma is perhaps too strong a word, but it has been diluted by the zeitgeist anyway, so I’m using it. In present day, and at my age, the characters have pushed through whatever they hold onto from their adolescence in different ways. Shauna (the brilliant Melanie Lynskey) married Jackie’s boyfriend (Warren Kole, who does so much with a relatively small role—“There’s no book club?!”), had another child and an affair. Nat (Juliette Lewis Juliette Lewising) an addict, in and out of rehab. Tai is a politician and suffers from a personality disorder. Lottie is still the Antler Queen but has monetized it. Van (scarred literally and figuratively) retreats to a small community and runs a video store, unable to leave the 90s behind. Misty (Christina Ricci in perhaps her best role) is a serial killer dating Frodo. They murder a bit.

I won’t bother telling you where my friends and I ended up. We definitely haven’t murdered anyone, but we also avoided our high school reunion. But, in the abstract, we have all confronted and adjusted to the freedom our generation was offered by our parents. We have built lives despite challenges and trauma, portrayed in Yellowjackets to the extreme, but certainly in ways I think we can identify with. I felt kinship with the characters in season two, when they’re finally all in the same place, at the same time. Despite lives that have forked and splintered, my friends and I are still close. I’ve known them for forty years. We still love each other. I feel that love in the heightened extremes of Yellowjackets, and I find comfort in it. And while we’ve never had to cut up a lover’s body and then bury it in the park, they would be my first call.

All these years later, when we get together, when we reach out to each other from the parts of the world we’ve made home—to reunite, to remember, to recall,—we tend to meet in the wilderness. The Florida Everglades. The Carolinas. The Pontiac. The Bow River. We meet in the quiet of the hinterland to be alone again, to forget about the world so for one more moment, so we can be together, so we can be Gods again.