‘Lost’ Fans Looking for a New Survival Series Will Love This Hit Show

Upon its premiere on ABC in September 2004, Lost became an instant success. In no time at all, the show was met with praise from critics and audiences. Widely considered one of the greatest shows of all time, it has garnered a massive fan following over the past two decades and continues to impress viewers who have discovered the series on streaming services such as Netflix. While there were plenty of fans who were inevitably disappointed with how the series concluded after its sixth season, its legacy and impact remain. The series was nominated for numerous awards during its six-year stint and won many, including a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005 and a Golden Globe for Best Television Series – Drama in 2006.

A survival series about a group of strangers whose plane crashes on a mysterious and seemingly deserted island, Lost includes elements of mystery as well as elements of a supernatural thriller. Rife with an extensive cast, the show successfully crisscrossed various storylines that spanned the past, present, and future lives of its characters. Lost might have ended in 2010, but it continues to impress audiences even today. For those who loved the series 20 years ago or just discovered it recently, there’s actually another adjacent show they would enjoy and should explore before its long-awaited third season premieres this month.

Showtime’s Yellowjackets certainly tells a different story, but its similarities to Lost can’t be denied. As such, it’s the perfect survival series for fans of the ABC show. Although it’s already entering a third season, viewers should be able to catch up on its previous seasons just before its highly anticipated return.

What Is ‘Yellowjackets’ About?

Now entering its third season, Yellowjackets follows a New Jersey high school girls’ soccer team who fly to Seattle for a national tournament. However, their plans don’t unfold as expected when their plane crashes while flying over Canada. Now lost in the country’s vast wilderness, the surviving members are ultimately stranded for 19 months. The series unfolds over the course of their struggle in 1996 and also chronicles their lives 25 years later in 2021. Clearly still traumatized by the events of their past, the show juxtaposes scenes from the past and present as viewers watch the teenagers resort to things like cannibalism in order to survive.

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What makes Yellowjackets more than just a simple story of survival is its added supernatural element. While such a horrific event certainly results in various levels of PTSD for the survivors, something more sinister appears to be at play over two decades later. Now in their 40s, those who managed to escape the wilderness remain haunted by whatever they encountered in the Canadian forest. No matter how much they might try to ignore what’s happening, a reckoning is unfolding, and the events of their past are once again creeping to the forefront.

As the show enters another season, Yellowjackets continues to up the ante on its narrative. Without spoiling anything for viewers who have yet to watch the show, Season 3 promises to explore more of what happened while the teenagers were stranded and how those actions are finally catching up to them 25 years later. Given the scope of its story, the series has an extensive cast that includes Melanie Lynskey, Sophie Nélisse, Christina Ricci, Samantha Hanratty, Tawny Cypress, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Juliette Lewis, Sophie Thatcher, Simone Kessell, Courtney Eaton, Lauren Ambrose, Liv Hewson, Elijah Wood, and even Hilary Swank, who will be joining the show’s upcoming season.

How Are ‘Yellowjackets’ and ‘Lost’ Similar?

Aside from the obvious themes of survival, Yellowjackets and Lost share a multitude of similarities, which is why fans of the latter would absolutely love the former. Both shows contain a supernatural element that isn’t explained right away. Instead, it unfolds mysteriously, which keeps viewers guessing as to what lies beyond the immediate story developing right in front of them. Also, the way both shows juxtapose scenes from various points in time helps to create an enigmatic narrative not often displayed in stories of survival.

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Yellowjackets and Lost aren’t so much about enduring and achieving freedom. Rather, they’re about the journey from point A to point B. The destination isn’t necessarily the goal of either series, instead it’s the treacherous odyssey each character faces that makes their stories so compelling. The shows answer questions such as how and why something happened rather than the simpler inquiry as to what “it” might be.

Both shows aim to be an elegant spider web of mysteries and not merely a single linear strand of yarn. The first two seasons of Yellowjackets are currently streaming on Paramount+, and the new season is scheduled to arrive on February 14, 2025. It will then air on Showtime beginning February 16, 2025, with new episodes premiering every Sunday.