A mysterious plane crash started it all in Yellowjackets, but fans are almost more confounded by the circumstances behind another aircraft exploding later in the series.
Yellowjackets follows the same group of characters, both young and old. It mainly centers on a teen girls' soccer team who, after their plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness, are forced to grapple with what it takes to survive. However, it also tells a present-day story of the same characters as adults reconciling with their trauma.
Season 1 of the hit Showtime drama recently came to Netflix, opening it up to a whole new audience and spurring years-old conversations surrounding the series.
What Happened to the Plane in Yellowjackets?
Without the plane crash to start Yellowjackets, the rest of the series would have never happened, but that is not the plane crash that has some scratching their heads.
The plane exploding and coming down somewhere in the Canadian wilderness sets the events of the hit Showtime drama into motion, leaving its central team of teenage soccer players stuck in the woods and fending for themselves.
However, later in Season 1, the girls witness another airborne tragedy via the plane piloted by one of the main characters, Laura Lee (played by Jane Widdop).
In Season 1, Episode 8, Laura Lee and the girls decide it is finally time to try to execute a potential escape plan after discovering a downed Cessna plane stuck in the woods alongside them.
It is revealed that this plane was previously owned by a dead French Canadian pilot who mysteriously was forced to land around the same place where the girls ended up isolated as well.
They find out that the aircraft still, by chance (or is it?), has a full tank of gas. Laura Lee seems to have the experience to potentially fly it, having taken lessons from her grandfather in the summers before their crash landing, so it is decided she will be the one to try and fly the plane out of the woods to potentially go find help.
Once up in the air, though, things go wrong. As the girls watch on perplexed, the plane bursts into flames and explodes.
The exact specifics behind what took the plane down remain a mystery in the series, but fans know a few details about how it happened.
The aircraft shows that a mechanical fire seems to have started, lighting Laura Lee's teddy bear co-pilot blaze. From there, one can assume that the blaze became uncontrollable quickly and caused the vessel (and, in turn, Laura Lee) to meet its untimely demise.
Laura Lee is the first girl among the show's central cast to die following the initial plane crash. Still, she is not the last, as several episodes later, Yellowjackets kills off Ella Purnell's Jackie in dramatic fashion.
It is unclear what exactly started the fire that brought the plane down, but there have been some theories.
Some believe that simply because the plane was old and had been sitting in the wild for some time, the entire tragedy can be blamed on nothing more than mechanical failure.
Others think more nefarious forces may be at play. Yellowjackets has never been outright supernatural, but an underlying other-worldly tone permeates the show.
Instances of this beyond-this-world feeling have presented themselves in many ways over the show's two seasons, including Yellowjackets characters like Courtney Eaton's Lottie having bizarre visions.
This has caused some to think the plane was brought down by some mysterious, mystical force that could be haunting the girls and trying to keep them there in the woods.
Another theory is that the plane was sabotaged by someone to keep the team marooned. Perhaps it was one of the girls themselves.
The exact details of Laura Lee's plane crash remain a mystery even though Season 2 of the series has come and gone. However, Yellowjackets Season 3 is seemingly on the horizon, so fans may finally get some answers.
Yellowjackets Season 1 is streaming on Netflix.
