Crime
Adolescence
In Netflix’s Adolescence, 13-year-old Jamie Miller is accused of a violent murder. And the motive behind this alleged crime haunts the people around him.
High school athletics are cutthroat.
And if you happened to be on Wiskayok High School women’s soccer team in 1996, that phrase might be hauntingly accurate.
The Yellowjackets were once a normal (albeit above-average) group of New Jersey soccer players. They performed at the top of their league, went to wild high school parties, became victims of a tragic plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, and eventually devolved into a murderous cannibalistic pagan clan before their rescue.
Okay, perhaps The Yellowjackets aren’t so normal after all.
You see something strange happened in the Canadian woods. Before the crash, they all fell into some nice stereotypical types: Jackie, the popular girl; Shauna the sidekick; Taissa the bully; Van the goalie; Natalie the burnout; Misty the outcast; and Lottie, the quiet one. And then the crash happened and suddenly Taissa is sleepwalking; Misty is amputating someone’s leg; Lottie is having prophetic visions; and the girls are performing occult-like rituals in the wilderness.
The girls were eventually rescued. But 25 years later, the remaining ex-Yellowjackets still have not transitioned back into normalcy. Though they certainly try their best.
Since coming out of the woods alive, Shuana is now a housewife and mother, Natalie graduated from a drug and alcohol rehab center, Misty works as a nurse, and Taissa is running for the New Jersey Senate.
Unfortunately, these façades are fragile.
Reporters and detectives begin to suspect deeply nefarious actions related to the Yellowjacket’s Canadian wilderness activities. And the women will do anything to hide the dark secrets from their stint in the woods. Even if it means unleashing the darkness still lurking inside of them.
Literary critics say that William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies while observing school-aged boys at his teaching job. Concluding that these unruly children were capable of savagery, Golding penned his famous novel, which suggests that even little choir boys are capable of murder and destruction. Golding even asserted that “Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.”
I imagine Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson (creators of Yellowjackets) hold an equally pessimistic view of human nature. After all, their plane-crash-prompted narrative about the erosion of civilized behavior in adolescents seems to mirror Golding’s premise. And perhaps Golding’s chilling comment about man’s propensity for evil inspired their series’ title.
However, unlike the novel where at least one boy preserves his humanity, Yellowjackets seems to suggest that pure evil waits to be unleashed in everyone. And the series’ content speaks volumes about this perspective.
The narrative depicts the teenage girls as bloodthirsty warriors. These young women commit murder, participate in cannibalism and allow the blood of their friends to spill liberally. And their adult counterparts are not much better, continuing to participate in violence to conceal the skeletons in their closets.
Emmy nominated for “Outstanding Drama Series” in 2022 and 2024 and renewed for a third season in 2025, the show clearly has public allure. After all, Yellowjackets asks compelling questions about human nature. But the show pulls no punches when depicting the fragility of these social bonds.
People and animals are brutally killed, dismembered and eaten, all of which are on full display. The girls in the wilderness practice occultist rituals and discuss making human sacrifices. Someone deals with an unplanned pregnancy and attempts abortion. Someone else considers suicide. Characters in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships engage in physical romantic affection and extra-marital affairs. And harsh language, including the f-word, “b–ch” and misuses of God’s name, is heard throughout the series. And all of this takes place with very few suggestions of hope.
You see, the thematic problem with shows like Yellowjackets is not its depiction of sin. I’d go so far as to say that Yellowjackets depicts evil in a manner that is frighteningly accurate to our world. Unfortunately, it fails to identify the solution. As Christ-followers, we recognize that the Good News begins with sin, but it culminates in redemption from that sin.
So does man produce evil as a bee produces honey? If you hold the same worldview that TV shows like Yellowjackets depict, you might wholeheartedly agree.
Thankfully, Scripture offers a worldview that recognizes genuine evil but identifies a Savior to rescue us from it.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
The show opens with figures wearing antlers and animal fur masks chasing a girl into a pit to impale and eat her. It’s horrific—and it sets the tone for the rest of the series. certainly sets the tone for the series.
The show takes place on, generally, three separate timelines in two different years: Back in 1996, the Yellowjackets are ecstatic to win their state championship game in soccer. The team dynamic starts to fall apart before nationals, though, and the audience gets a glimpse of the divisions that will cause issues later.
In the present day, surviving adults try to appear well-adjusted. Shauna, one of those survivors, becomes unnerved by the efforts of a reporter to find out what happened in the woods. She contacts her former teammate Taissa, who is running for state senate. The also discuss Natalie, who is wrapping up her time at rehab (and who ominously retrieves a large hunting rifle upon leaving). Misty is working as a nurse in an elderly care facility, and it is evident that she is sociopathic almost immediately.
Back in the past, the team sets out on a private plane to Nationals, but the plane crashes.
The strange animalistic clan we see at the beginning has marked some cultish symbols on the trees. The girl who is killed brutally falls on spikes and is later dragged bleeding, hung upside down from a tree and cut open. Later, parts of her are roasted over a fire and eaten by the clans-people, who are clearly her former teammates.
Natalie practices meditation on a mat, and her younger self drinks and does several forms of drugs. A soccer team member prays before the scrimmage and quotes the Bible several times. Adult Taissa’s wife asks her if she wants a shot of tequila or to have sex in the bathroom to help her relax. The teens go to a party filled with lots of beer and drugs, and characters discuss hooking up. Teen Jackie gives Shauna some Valium she stole from her mom to help her go to sleep on the plane.
Adult Shauna masturbates to a picture of her daughter’s boyfriend. Teenage soccer player Jackie is shown for an uncomfortably long time in a sexual encounter with her boyfriend.
The f-word is used over 10 times, b–ch, and the s-word are also said repeatedly alongside crass words for the male and female anatomy. Jesus’s name is misused once. A–hole is said once.
Taissa slides into a teammate in the scrimmage and accidentally breaks her leg so badly that it is seen through the skin. Taissa and Shauna get into a fight, but Jackie breaks it up. Shauna sleeps with Jackie’s boyfriend (and has clearly done it before). Adult Shauna stabs a bunny in her yard. Adult Misty takes away an elderly patient’s morphine because she threw her tray.
In 1996, before the plane crash, the teen girls are dealing with the aftermath of the chaotic party they threw the night before, which developed into something much more sinister. It becomes clear the Misty drugged them with hallucinogenic mushrooms, which leads the girls to act violently. Shauna and Jackie are fighting viciously over distant and recent events.
In the present, the former teammates dismember a body and clean up the crime scene to cover up a murder Shauna committed. They agree to go to a class reunion with Misty in exchange for her help in dealing with the murderous mess. Taissa is wrapping up her run for state senate. Shocking discoveries are made, and Natalie is taken by a group of mysterious members of what seems to be a cult.
Back in the past, teen Natalie tries to help Travis, the head coach’s son who was in the crash with them, and was threatened with a knife the night before, because they have a romantic connection. They discuss the fact that he slept with Jackie but that he didn’t want to.
Someone holds a knife to another character’s neck and nearly kills him. Another character stabs a bear in the neck, and she and others cook and eat it. The girls pray for the gift they have been given by the bear’s soul and the spirits in the woods. Teen Misty admits that she tried to drug just the soccer coach because he was leading her on despite being gay and ended up drugging them all.
Characters talk about a supernatural presence in the woods and out-of-body experiences. Several relationships, including same-sex ones, are referenced. Someone freezes to death. A character gets unexpectedly pregnant. We hear about orgies, wolf attacks and attempted murder.
In the present, two characters discuss dismembering a body. Parts of that body are placed into someone else’s coffin and burned.. There is a discussion that adult Travis may have killed himself or been killed. Someone contemplates suicide, but she is abducted before she has the chance to carry it out.
We learn that an adult character was cheating on her husband. Someone is chained to a bed and is later poisoned with a cigarette. A character finds a creepy hidden shrine with a doll, a human heart and a dog’s head sitting on a table.
Shauna gets drinks for women at a bar. The f-word is said over 10 times and b–ch is used several times.
The adult Yellowjackets cope with the tragic death of their friend, and some are handling it better than others. While Van and Taissa are rekindling their romantic past, Misty breaks down in anguish. Meanwhile, Shauna deals with her troubled teenage daughter, Callie, who was suspended from school.
Back in the past, the teen Yellowjackets experience relative peace now that spring has come. Unfortunately, Shauna’s grief about her stillborn child makes her irritable toward her teammates, one of whom she targets with emotional and physical belligerence.
After separating from her wife, Taissa attempts to rekindle her romance with Van (another Yellowjacket). These two women kiss passionately and share sensual moments. Women mock someone by implying that she had sex with a parrot. A teen girl gossips about another teen’s use of sexual toys. Other teens spread a rumor that the Yellowjackets were involved in an orgy. A teenage girl is briefly seen in her underwear while she changes. In another scene, teen girls lounge in their bras and underwear.
In a gruesome flashback scene, teens are seen hunting, cooking and eating other human beings. Later, the adult Yellowjackets make a joke about cannibalism. Callie gets revenge on people by throwing animal guts at them in school. Shauna affirms this frightening behavior. A man experiences a heart attack. Two teenage girls physically fight one another.
Harsh profanity is used frequently including over 27 uses of the f-word, 15 uses of the s-word, three uses of “b–ch,” two uses of “a–,” a single use of “d–k” and numerous misuses of God’s name (in its various forms). Characters also make rude gestures.
A teenage girl smokes cigarettes. Later, her mom sneaks into her room to steal some of these cigarettes for herself. It is implied that both women were smoking marijuana. Teen girls giggle about a story in which someone overdosed on fentanyl. A character gets high, causing him to experience nightmarish hallucinations.
Women go to a bar, where they take shots of alcohol. In another scene, a woman gets drunk at a bar and ends up assaulting two men there. Teen girls at Callie’s school suggest that they should get someone drunk so that he will share Callie’s secrets.
A funeral takes place at a Catholic church. Women briefly whisper and use profanity during the funeral. Someone makes a casual joke about going to hell. A character discusses (and has demonstrated) psychic powers. In the woods, the Yellowjackets participate in a ritualistic ceremony for the dead, which causes the forest to respond to them supernaturally.
Two women dine and dash. A character battles cancer, and she discusses her fear of dying from the disease.
In Netflix’s Adolescence, 13-year-old Jamie Miller is accused of a violent murder. And the motive behind this alleged crime haunts the people around him.
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