‘Lord Of The Rings’ Star Cast In ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 2

Casting news for Season 2 of Showtime’s Yellowjackets continues to drop.

Spoilers follow.

Recently we learned that Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) would be joining the show, cast as the adult version of Van.

Young Van is played by Liv Hewson, but by the end of the crazy, intense first season, we weren’t even sure if Van had survived the forest. Simone Kessell has been cast as adult Lottie, who was revealed to still be alive (no surprise there) at the end of Season 1.

Yellowjackets is the story of a high school girls soccer team that crash-lands in the middle of nowhere, in a demonic forest filled with danger and mystery. It takes place across two timelines:

First, during the events following the crash, an 18-month fight for survival that only a handful of the girls (and at least one boy) survive.

The second timeline takes place in the present and deals with the adult survivors and their generally twisted and messed up lives. There are several dark threads of mystery woven between the two timelines, and Season 2 ended on more than one maddening cliffhanger.

Now that we know Van has an adult actor, we can safely assume she survived the crash and is almost certainly palling it around with Lottie and her cult, though that remains to be seen.

The latest casting news is that Elijah Wood will be joining the cast in Season 2 as a totally new character named Walter who, like adult Misty, is a Citizen Detective. According to Variety, he “will challenge Misty (Christina Ricci) in ways she won’t see coming.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m picturing Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci playing off of one another as socially awkward (to say the least) Citizen Detectives and I’m loving every second of it.

Alas, we will have to wait before Season 2 kicks off on Showtime. According to the show’s producers, filming should wrap in February of 2023 with the Season 2 premiere debuting sometime in Q1.

Yellowjackets is one of my top five shows of 2022, tied for my top pick with Apple TV’s Severance. If you haven’t watched it yet, please do. I’ve watched it twice and it’s a brilliant, terrifying, psychological thriller with some of the best writing and acting out there right now. It also happens to be a master class in writing strong, fascinating female characters. Don’t miss it.