The survivors are finally home, but the Yellowjackets season four teaser makes rescue look less like an escape than another reckoning. After more than a year of chaos in the Wilderness, the girls return to school, loved ones, and a world ready to call them heroes. What they did to survive makes that welcome hard to accept.
Season four is the show’s final season, and its ending will address whether the Wilderness draws some survivors back or claims their lives decades later. The teaser focuses on their return to ordinary life, while glimpses of the present suggest that those still alive have found little peace since leaving the woods.
Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” accompanies the girls’ attempts to readjust. Nerdist praises the soundtrack as one of the show’s strongest elements and calls the song a perfect choice: the public’s heroic version of their story clashes painfully with what they’ve done and witnessed. Sitting in a classroom or spending time with family doesn’t erase experiences far beyond the troubles most teenagers face.
Then comes a question about whether anyone else should still be searched for out there. It’s a small detail with unsettling possibilities. Is someone still alive in the Wilderness? How did the returning team manage to conceal its many transgressions? The teaser leaves those questions unanswered, making the homecoming as much about keeping secrets as adjusting to life outside the woods.
There isn’t much modern-day footage, but one image stands out: Shauna holding a shotgun. After the deaths of Van and Lottie last season, fewer survivors remain. Nerdist’s take is openly hostile toward Shauna, arguing that the teaser reminds viewers how awful she is and half-jokingly asking whether killing her might be the others’ route to peace. That’s the outlet’s judgment of the character, not an outcome the trailer confirms.
Yellowjackets returns to Paramount+ on November 20. The final season’s most unsettling prospect isn’t simply another encounter with the Wilderness. It’s that getting home may never have meant getting free.
