Yellowjackets Season 2 Trailer Promises More Kidnappings, Cults, Death

It's been a long, snowy hiatus for the characters on Yellowjackets, stuck in the frigid and terrifying confines of their memories of being stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash. Something happened in those woods, and the Season 2 trailer promises we're going to get closer to finding out the whole story of what that was.

The first season of Yellowjackets was a big hit for Showtime, garnering the best ratings for a debut season on that network in years. The show also picked up 7 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama and acting nods for Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci. Both actresses return this coming season, alongside Tawny Cypress and Juliette Lewis as the adult survivors of whatever mysterious (possibly supernatural or maybe just cult-y) events happened on that mountain. It's Lewis's character, Natalie, who kicks off the first teaser, undergoing some kind of hypnosis at the hands of a character who appears to be the adult version of Lottie. Our teenage antler queen, played by Courtney Eaton in the flashbacks, was revealed to be the head of some kind of cult in the present-day timeline. Simone Kessell was cast in the offseason as her adult version. "Darkness," a hypnotized Natalie croaks. "We brought it back with us."

That ominous tone pervades the initial teaser, which offers a ton of quick glimpses at both the teenage-mountain-snow-trauma scenes, as well as the present day as Natalie, Shauna (Lynskey), Taissa (Cypress), and Misty (Ricci) try to cover up whatever happened back then.

The Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood joins the cast this season as a character connected to Misty in some way. It seems like he's learning Misty's sordid history for the first time — "Kidnappings, cults, death… your friendships are a little more complicated than most" — but with this show, nothing is for certain.

Amid the quick flashes of antler masks, carvings on walls, and electroshock therapy, the one thing we don't see that many were looking forward to was any sign of Lauren Ambrose, who was cast between seasons to play the adult version of Van. Showtime proved to be saving her for the full trailer, released March 9. Watch here:

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.