The Yellowjackets season 2 premiere is for the fan theories

polygon.com:

It’s been a little over a year since Yellowjackets took our TVs by storm with a juicy Lost-style mystery that brought us all back to our days of fervent speculation. Showtime’s psychological thriller about a high school girls’ soccer team stranded in the wilderness in the mid-’90s, and what became of the survivors, had it all: multiple timelines, psychological horror, suburban comedy, and, of course, the dreadful knowledge that many of the girls who survived to the present day probably had a dark cultlike dalliance with cannibalism.

Now the show is finally back. After a season 1 finale that left us longing for more (in ways both good and less so), what’s most remarkable about the season 2 premiere is that it just feels like… the next episode in the first season. This isn’t necessarily bad — Yellowjackets is a pretty stuffed show, and easing back into things so viewers can remind themselves of everything in play before leaping into new dilemmas is a solid approach. It just feels a bit slow, given all the anticipation — perhaps giving plenty for fan theorists to chew on, but leaving others wanting more.

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen,” as the premiere is called, moves as quickly as it can in its introduction to the many plates Yellowjackets has left spinning in midair since last year. In the present day, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) has a murder to cover up with her husband Jeff’s (Warren Kole) help, Tai (Tawny Cypress) is celebrating her success in local politics while simultaneously losing her family thanks to a condition that’s causing her to do disturbing things in her sleep, and Nat (Juliette Lewis) got kidnapped by a cult.

Nat’s kidnapping is where the real forward momentum happens in “Friends, Romans, Countrymen,” as