After a relatively quiet few months dominated by “The Last of Us,” the prestige TV landscape is about to get very, very crowded. With Emmy eligibility deadlines looming on the horizon, cable networks and streaming services are rushing to ensure that their biggest shows are fresh in everyone’s minds when the voting starts.
The action starts this weekend, as both HBO and Showtime are kicking off new seasons of their biggest awards contenders. The final season of “Succession” premieres Sunday night on HBO, and “Yellowjackets” is making its long-awaited return to Showtime. But Showtime’s unique release strategy makes it easy to stagger your viewings of the two shows.
The Season 2 premiere of “Yellowjackets” is set to air linearly on Showtime on Sunday, March 26 at 9 p.m. ET. But it is already available to stream on Showtime’s streaming platform. The rest of Season 2 will unfold in the same way, with new episodes streaming each Friday before airing on Sunday nights. It’s an approach that Showtime has employed used for years on its biggest shows like “Billions” and “Ray Donovan.”
The mystery-laden first season of “Yellowjackets” has left fans on the edge of their seats for the better part of the last year as they await answers about the show’s most secretive elements. But early reviews suggest that Season 2 is unfolding at a more leisurely pace by prioritizing character development over bombshell plot twists.
“Where Season 1 bombards the audience with action and information, Season 2 is nearly pure continuation, introducing fresh tidbits here and there but mainly holding firm to pre-established arcs and mysteries,” IndieWire’s Ben Travers wrote in his review. “There are still secrets as to who survives (and, more significantly, how), but Season 2 wisely doesn’t try a hard reboot: There’s no retconning last year’s events by jumping further back in either timeline to add twists, and the producers don’t try to recapture the early shock and awe of Season 1’s plane crash with another eye-popping spectacle. (There’s no topping that moment, and it’s best not to try.) Season 2 keeps moving forward… but the giddy buzz once driving ‘Yellowjackets’ has been replaced by a snail’s pace. Through six episodes, Season 2 appears to be approaching aptly complex quandaries for its core cast members, but the path to their confrontation is padded in too much snow.”
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