Starvation, cannabilism, and cults are just a few of the traumatic events that unfold throughout Yellowjackets. But the buzzy series from Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson turns subverts the queer trauma trope, at least when it comes to the love story between teen Van (Liv Hewson) and teen Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown), a romance that heats up against all odds following their high school soccer team’s plane crash that strands them in the wilderness.
Historically, LGBTQ+ characters have been made to suffer for their alleged transgressions with loneliness, heartache, and death with the “Bury Your Gays or Queers” trope that proliferated on TV circa 2016-2017 with 62 queer character deaths on shows including The 100, Pretty Little Liars,and Orange Is the New Black. With queer actors Hewson and Brown starring as the teen sapphics, even amid the freezing and carnage, Van and Tai’s love story is one for the ages.
“Our characters are the bright spot in a show about trauma. And we are the queer characters,” Brown tells The Advocate. “So often the queer characters are the trauma or going through the trauma of coming out, the trauma of overcoming a parent who kicked you out of the house, whatever,” she adds. “But the trauma is this plane crash, and these girls are in love, and that's lightness within that darkness. I am really grateful to the writers and showrunners for that and really grateful for what that means for fans who get to watch the show and see themselves on some level.”
Jasmin Savoy Brown and Live Hewson in Yellowjackets Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Yellowjackets premiered in late 2021, dovetailing with a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation throughout the United States from “don’t say gay” to drag bans. At the same time, shows like Dickinson, Genera+ion, and Sex Educationcentered queer teens alongside Yellowjackets. Nearly four years after Yellowjackets premiered, with Donald Trump back in office and attacking trans and queer people, especially teens, Van and Taissa’s love story is crucial and radical, even if adult Tai (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose) are just now finding their way back to one another.
Regarding the visibility they and their characters bring for queer, trans, and nonbinary young people, Hewson says, “It's incredibly significant. It's not lost on either of us and it never has been. It's always mattered to us both very much.”
"Right now, I'm conscious of my own determination to be present and front-facing and very grounded and calm about that, where it's like I am here,” Hewson adds. “Here is my work, and here is my life, and this is what I offer. And I'm not going to entertain arguments about it or limitations on it. Here it is, and there's no debate about it.”
Jasmin Savoy Brown and Live Hewson in Yellowjackets Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
The series has captured the attention of legions of fans, but it’s also followed Brown and Hewson as they navigate an on-screen relationship and an off-screen friendship that’s included “a global pandemic, multiple career experiences,” Hewson says. The friends worked together in 2022 on Netflix’s first podcast, The Homo Schedule, where they welcomed queer guests including actor/director Natalie Morales, Scream and Arrow star Bex Taylor-Klaus, and The L Word: Generation Q’s Leo Sheng.
“[We were] starting on this show when nobody knew if it was going to get picked up, what it was going to be, how people would respond to it. I couldn't necessarily have foreseen what's come our way since then and what we've done together since then,” they say. “We've really watched each other become ourselves and this show has been the backdrop of the backend of our 20s.”
Brown adds that they’ve seen each other through “so many changes, from physical changes amongst births and bodies and surgeries and into relationship changes into getting on and off meds, things that are really big things to see someone go through and to go through with them.”
“It's very cementing,” she says.
Watch our interview with Yellowjackets stars Melanie Lynskey and Simone Kessell below.
Jasmin Savoy Brown and Live Hewson in Yellowjackets Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Jasmin Savoy Brown and Live Hewson in Yellowjackets Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
