ShowtimeAntlers at the ready! Yellowjackets Season 3 is just around the corner, so what better time than now to delve into the horrifying true story behind Showtime’s violent thriller series.
It might be hard to believe there could be any truth to the show. Yellowjackets follows two timelines, the first being in the 1990s, when a girls’ high school soccer team’s plane crashes into the remote, North American wilderness. When the cold, harsh winter kicks in, they descend into a Lord of the Flies-style order, where cannibalism is the only way to survive.
In the present day, the survivors are still grappling with the trauma of their time in the Wilderness, but their bond runs deeper than mere shared experience. As they reconnect, it becomes clear that whatever dark forces took hold of them in the past never truly let go.
Season 2 ended with rituals, secrets, and a shocking death, leaving plenty of questions to be answered in Season 3. But as wild as this plot may be, the story is in fact inspired by real-life events.
The true story behind Yellowjackets
Although Yellowjackets isn’t a beat-for-beat re-telling, the show’s creators have confirmed that it is loosely inspired by the 1972 Andes Flight Disaster.
On October 12, 1972, 45 passengers and crew – many of whom were connected to the Old Christians Club amateur rugby team – boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile.
Creative CommonsHowever, along the way the plane crashed into the Andes mountains. 12 of them died instantly, while several more died soon after due to the freezing temperatures and severe injuries. The remaining passengers were left to fight for survival, enduring extreme weather, sub-zero temperatures, starvation, and an avalanche.
They were stranded for a total of 72 days, which led to the deaths of 13 more passengers. When they were rescued, the 16 survivors made worldwide news. It was later revealed that they resorted to cannibalism in their starving state.
Their story was documented in the 1974 book ‘Alive: The True Story of the Andes Survivors’, which was later adapted into a 1993 movie of the same name starring Ethan Hawke. The case was retold in the 2023 film Society of the Snow.
Yellowjackets co-creator Ashley Lyle told NPR that the fictional Lord of the Flies and the Alive movie were “absolutely” inspiring to her when it came to creating the show, but that she wondered what would have happened if it was a group of female athletes who were stranded.
“I was like, that will get very dark, but in a very different way, I think,” she said. “So it felt like a new story to be told.”
Yellowjackets also has ties to the Donner Party
Another famous case of cannibalism is the Donner Party, which was also cited by Lyle and fellow co-creator Bart Nickerson in a conversation with Forbes, although they said their “aim was really to dissect the oftentimes ferocious depth of female friendships.”
Creative CommonsThe Donner Party was a group of nearly 90 pioneers who set out from the Midwest to California in 1846 but became trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains during a brutal winter. After taking an ill-advised shortcut through the Great Basin, they encountered treacherous conditions, depleting their supplies and leaving them stranded in deep snow for months.
As starvation set in, some members of the group resorted to eating leather, tree bark, and eventually the bodies of those who had died. However, it’s reported that they also murdered and ate two Native American guides.
By the time rescuers arrived in early 1847, only 48 people had survived, with firsthand accounts confirming that cannibalism had taken place. The harrowing ordeal became one of the most infamous survival stories in American history, and its psychological impact continues to be studied today.
Like Yellowjackets, the Donner Party’s descent into desperate measures raises questions about morality, group dynamics, and what people are truly capable of when pushed to the brink.
Yellowjackets Season 3 debuts on February 14, 2025, on Paramount+ with Showtime. Until then, read about the Season 3 theories, the other Yellowjackets team members, and the Season 2 soundtrack.
