Yellowjackets Season 1 was one of the best debut outings in modern TV history.
"Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" was the tenth and final episode of the survival horror series. We went into the finale with a lot of questions and theories. Yellowjackets Season 2 has already been greenlit so we can talk about vicious pet birds, antler queens, and non-existent books clubs in the future.
The wait for more Yellowjackets won't be any easier because of the promise of more. We sat down with Jonathan Lisco, the executive producer of Halt and Catch Fire, to find out what he thought about our favorite new show. We're presenting everything he told us, so we can read into it.
Game on, theorizers. Buzz, buzz, as always.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
On joining the team.
Karyn Kusama let me know about the project. We go back. She directed Halt and catch fire for me. A year and a half ago.
She said that she had directed something that had potential. I'm working with two married series creators, who are your kind of people, and you are going to love them. You have to meet them and read the script. I told Karyn that I'm probably not able to do it. She says to meet them and read the script. I read it.
The writer said that art is a combination of fire and mathematics. The pilot script that Ash and Bart wrote was perfect and well put together. It had a right-brain thing that is beyond logic that pulls you in and doesn't let you go.
I felt like I had to work on this show. I met Ash and Bart and Karyn was correct. Her instincts were good. We had an immediate love fest, which doesn't mean we agree all the time, but these were the kind of people that I could trust and collaborate with. We decided to go on a crazy journey together after I became their partner.
On working with Bart Nickerson.
I don't want to speak for Ash and Bart, but they had reservations when they heard about me because they'd been working on it for three years with the other executive producers. It was like, "Who's this guy who's coming in?"
I know running a TV show is a whole thing and I have great respect for Ash and Bart who are very capable. One thing is writing. I remember when I ran my first TV show that it was a big deal to become the CEO of an airline, because it is a huge entity. The three of us have formed a triumvirate. We call ourselves JAB because of our names.
Kailey Schwerman is a television personality.
The three of us run the show together in the sense that we reach consensus on almost every decision. When we disagree, we will bring that disagreement back to the writer's room, and an even better idea will come.
To go back to the Borges analogy is when the better idea comes. We say that's the most compelling and riveting story. We're doing that. It comes from a lot of work, a lot of banging your head against the wall, and a lot of walking down the wrong roads. You need to trust your partners. It's a best idea room when you're in a writer's room.
The show find its audience by reading fan theories.
It's been very difficult. If you create and run a show that takes off, will that be a good thing? It's also very tiring. It's no longer just your show as our audience starts to allow the narrative to mushroom in their own consciousness and go on flights of fancy with their own theories. It's everybody's show after that.
We have to make decisions here. We can't hit everyone's theory at the same time. We have to hear all that, absorb it, love it, and then ask ourselves what our instincts are telling us. We hope that the audience that's so invested in the show will join us as we try to come up with a compelling narrative.
On the tragic friendship between Shauna andJackie.
Some people may disagree with how we dispatchJackie. Some people may say, "Oh, I thought they were going to eat her!" They may have ideas for what they want to do. We're not just about the plot. The emotional and psychological plot is the first thing we discuss.
When we were looking at the storyline and everything that we built, we wondered if the relationship between Shauna andJackie was about repair, or if it was about jealousy, resentment, and deep love for one another. They have a fight which is honest and organic. Just because they're both so stubborn, and neither of them can say a single word of apology,Jackie dies in the woods.
There is no other burden as deep and as traumatic for Shauna to carry into the 2021 storyline as that, so we're like, "That is the story." She could have avoided her death if she had just given her best friend an olive branch. It felt very rich to us. We don't just want to go for the shock value of an event in the show, we're not just about incident sensationalism or shock value.
Kailey Schwerman is a television personality.
The audience initially said that the show was very brutal. We don't deny that it has brutal moments, but we certainly weren't attempting to make a show that was just savage. We were trying to make a show about characters who are under great duress. We were trying to make a show about true freedom and its consequences in the woods, as the social conventions come down. We were not trying to shock people. Sometimes it's shocking because we have to show you some of the truth of what they're going through in order to give you this reality of what they're going through.
We weren't just trying to shock and surprise with the movie. The show has to feel gripping, but also inevitable and like the relationships in the show. We hope the audience agrees that it was a moving storyline. For those who don't, and for those who would've liked to see a bit more blood in that moment, our apologies. We will always do what we think serves the characters and the ultimate narrative the most.
On Taissa's election victory.
You could say, "Oh, they're trying to make a comment about politicians, how bad they are, and how two-faced they are, because Taissa's got this alter ego." It's easy to do that. We're not trying to do that.
For the longest time, Taissa has been trying to suppress her alter ego, which is a dark force within her, because she is so driven, so type A and ambitious. She wasn't aware that she was the lady in the tree when we started the story. She didn't know that Sammy was seeing out his window or that she was still suffering from sleepwalking trauma. The question is, did she not know it?
Kailey Schwerman is a television personality.
When we get to that beautiful shot where Taissa has that look of justice and understanding on her face as she is realizing that she has an altar in her house, I think we should ask ourselves if we should be. Taissa is seeing the advantages of having a dark alter ego, instead of thinking it was a bad thing. Is it something that she could use to achieve certain things in her life?
She's also going to be a state senator. So what will happen to a person like that who has the ability to tap into a true darkness? Some of us can't comprehend a darkness that she went through in the woods.
On that bear.
She was a potential super secret weapon. You have great plans for how things are going to go when you're making a TV show. You have to open yourself up to the feedback loop of television. It's like when you're trying to create a great romance, but you realize that the two actors don't have chemistry. What do you do? We wanted to see how the ensemble gelled before we made a decision about having Lottie play a major role.
One of the themes of the show is to play with the question of "What is the supernatural?" and we thought that Lottie could be a seminal character. You could be walking in the woods and feel an energy that is beyond your control and be afraid that something is going to come out of the brush. There is a monster that is hidden in the darkness. It turns out that it's just dark.
Kailey Schwerman is a television personality.
Where does the energy come from? Is that produced by the ones and zeros in our brains? Is there an actual darkness that is affecting these young women? In the show, we're looking at the question of whether the supernatural comes from forces outside of them or from forces within them.
Take Lottie. When the plane crashed, we knew that Lottie was on medication for a mental illness and had been suffering for a long time. She's a person who's run out of her medication and is in the woods. She's a quiet type who listens to people's emotional states. She's very attentive. As we watched the ensemble gel, we thought thatLottie was the kind of person who could affect the other people in an almost supernatural way.
Is there a darkness that is affecting these young women?
We tried to get that when the bear came in. That scene is based on science. If you approach a wild animal and you don't fear it, it's because it might not attack you. The animal thinks that he is being met by an equal force. The audience should think, "She's got a gift" in that moment. She was able to stab the submissive bear because she was supernatural. Maybe it's just that she approached the bear in a way that the bear is rarely approached by humans.
She stabbed the bear because it got down on its haunches. We're going to explore the idea of two different explanations for the same thing in the show.
On "Misty Fucked Quigley".
There's a wish fulfillment quality to her arcs and we love it. "Oh my god, I've been so brutalized through my adolescence that things are changing for me now that I'm out here", said Misty over the course of Season 1. A lot of my skills have become indispensable. For the first time in my life, I'm being seen with a capital S. I think people are identifying with someone who has no boundaries because she is a bit of a sociopath.
Everyone can identify with the idea that you would just do anything you could to make things better and be seen and valued as an adolescent. When she ripped the wires out of the tracker at the end of the second episode, you were like, "What are you doing?" This is the only chance you have to survive. For the first time in her life, the other girls are actually seeing her for who she is and valuing her. By the end, I would just ask you this question, but it's very interesting to us as writers that she shows up as one of the acolytes at the end of episode 10.
Kailey Schwerman is a television personality.
A lot of our viewers will ask, "What's Misty doing there?" Van has been talking about the darkness. Van has been affected by the idea that there's a supernatural quality to what's happening here, but Misty hasn't been. I think one interesting thing to play with in Season 2 is whether or not the darkness is real, or whether she's seeing which way the wind is blowing and deciding to stay with the other girls. Heading into Season 2, I think that will be an interesting thing to play with.
On Natalie and her abductors.
Kailey Schwerman is a television personality.
One of the hallmarks of the show is to ask the question of whether or not trauma defines us, and whether we can ever escape the shackles of trauma that we experience in our younger years.
It doesn't take a genius to suggest that after everything you've seen in the woods, the Yellowjackets will take Natalie. Some of the survivors are still alive. It's going to explode as we move forward in the next seasons, maybe they've just been on a slow boil, but it's really going to explode.
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