“Yellowjackets” is a dark survival mystery-drama about a talented high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes in the remote wilderness, and how that trauma follows the survivors into adulthood decades later.

Core Premise

In 1996, the Yellowjackets soccer team is flying to a national tournament when their plane crashes deep in the Canadian wilderness, leaving a group of teens and a few adults stranded for 19 months with almost no hope of rescue. The show jumps between their brutal fight to survive in the woods and their lives 25 years later, where the remaining survivors are still hiding what really happened.

What it’s really about

At a surface level, it’s a survival story with horror elements: starvation, harsh winters, wolf attacks, and ultimately cannibalism as the group fractures into cult‑like factions. Underneath that, it’s about trauma, guilt, friendship, and how a single horrific experience can twist people’s identities long after they’re “rescued.”

Key themes include:

  • Coming‑of‑age under extreme circumstances (sex, power, jealousy, shifting alliances).
  • Group psychology and cult dynamics as some girls start to believe “the wilderness” itself wants sacrifices.
  • Adult fallout: addiction, self‑destructive relationships, political ambition, and crime as the survivors try to keep their past buried.

Tone and vibe

The show mixes:

  • Gritty survival horror (injuries, body horror, disturbing deaths, cannibalism).
  • 90s teen drama and black comedy, with messy friendships, romances, and infighting.
  • Mystery-box storytelling (like “Lost”): strange symbols, possible supernatural forces, and slow reveals about who did what in the woods.

Because of graphic violence, sex, and heavy mental‑health content, it’s rated for mature audiences only.

Is it based on a true story?

It’s not a direct true story, but the creators have said it’s inspired by real survival tales like the Andes plane crash depicted in the film “Alive,” where stranded survivors resorted to cannibalism.

TL;DR: If you’ve heard people ask “yellowjackets what is it about,” it’s about a girls’ soccer team that crashes in the wilderness and slowly becomes something like “Lost meets Alive, but with teenage girls and a lot more psychological and supernatural‑tinged horror.”

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.