Showtime

Forget the hype likening Showtime’s Yellowjackets to Lord of the Flies. Pungent, witty, and downright disgusting, the hit series about a high school soccer team whose plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness is far more than a rigid gender swap. Yellowjackets, set to launch its second season this Friday, toggles between the past and the present, showing how the girls cope—or fail to—with their trauma. Featuring characters within whom savagery rages, the innovative program takes on maenadism—the practices of frenzied women, called maenads, who performed horrific rites to worship Dionysus (or Bacchus), the god of wine.

Read more from Sakhi Thirani at JSTOR Daily here.