personally I find that Yellowjackets succeeds where other plane-crash-stranded media falls short. and it's because if you peel back the layers of other shows in this genre, the story is basically the same: people will do what they have to in order to survive, roles will reverse. Yellowjackets does this too, but Yellowjackets isn't about a plane crash and it isn't about survival. it's about the singular, violent, inescapable wilderness of girlhood, not nature. the wilderness is a backdrop and though the girls use it to tell their story (literally Van beginning an origin story in the season 2 trailer), it isn't... really that important. before they crash they were already icing their teammates out, betraying one another, surviving brutally through youth. being a girl is just like that. yeah, the setting and the strange magic helps reveal that story to the audience in a shocking and palatable and larger-than-life way, it brings to view what that complex inner world of girlhood really felt like. but it has something to say other than "people will do horrible things to survive". if you were ever a teenage girl, you already know that.
