Planning a TV show built around a central mystery without knowing how many episodes you’ll get to make can be frustrating for both creators and viewers. A show like Severance would be considered a huge disappointment if it ended after its Season 1 cliffhanger, but much of the behind-the-scenes drama of Lost centered on the writers not knowing how to pace their mysteries because there was no end date in sight.
The solution seems obvious: plan for a specific number of seasons and episodes from day one, and stick to that plan no matter what. The only way that can go wrong is if viewership nosedives and the show suffers a premature cancellation, disappointing hardcore fans. But this is how one of the most thrilling shows on TV planned out its mystery, and a newly announced renewal suggests that it might just reach its goal.
According to Variety, Showtime has renewed the survival thriller series Yellowjackets for Season 4. This comes about a month after Season 3 ended, and is a welcome update to fans worried that the delay meant the show was ending.
Yellowjackets became a sleeper hit in 2021, and its tales of cannibalistic survival and cult-like paranoia captured audiences for two seasons after that. But there was something different about Season 3: multiple characters were unceremoniously written off, and the story finally reached the murderous hunt from the very first episode’s cold open. This worried fans, as Yellowjackets’ showrunners have always said they had a five-season plan for the story.
A renewal for Season 4 — and the possibility of more, since there’s no indication that this will be the final season — could be the reassurance fans need. Season 3 ended with the Yellowjackets stuck in the wilderness finally contacting the outside world, so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Fans will have to show up and support Season 4 to ensure it gets its fifth and final season, but if they do, we should finally get answers to the many, many questions the show has posed over the years.
