Stephen King Meets Mean Girls In Showtime’s 3-Part Psychological Thriller Series

Mean Girls made the viciousness of teenage girlhood into an iconic comedy film, and Showtime's delightfully unhinged thriller series explores the same themes with a Stephen King-esque twist. Teen social warfare is a subject of fascination for the King of Horror, with some of King's best novels depicting brutal high school bullying.

As great as books like Carrie and IT are, though, their teen girl bullies tend to be a bit one-note. On the other hand, Mean Girls shows how complex its titular characters are, from the way they target their victims to their own hidden vulnerabilities. 17 years after the hit Tina Fey comedy was released, Yellowjackets tapped into that same idea, only instead of a new student wreaking havoc on a high school, an entire soccer team of teenage girls sees their entire social hierarchy upended when their plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness, and they are stranded for 19 months.

Though Yellowjackets is best known for its depiction of cannibalism and other scenes of violence, teenage insecurity and the need to be accepted, and how that spills over into adulthood, are what really drive the plot. It's how Yellowjackets has lasted for three incredible seasons, with a fourth on the way, and why Mean Girls and the works of Stephen King remain iconic to this day.

Yellowjackets Is Like If Stephen King Wrote Mean Girls

One of the most memorable scenes in Mean Girls is Janice showing Cady her cafeteria map of all the high school cliques: the burnouts, the sexually active band geeks, the Plastics, etc. Prior to the 1996 plane crash, the teenage Yellowjackets main characters had similar labels: Jackie was the queen bee; Shauna was her loyal follower; Natalie was the delinquent; Taissa was the overachiever; Misty was the geek and team punching bag.

All of those tried-and-true roles were thrown out the window after the plane crash. Misty's survival skills instantly upped her social capital, while Jackie's princess persona, which the Yellowjackets all respected in civilized society, had no place in the wilderness, making Jackie a quick target for the girls' ire. It's like the girls were living in a post-leaked Burn Book world — with life-or-death consequences.

Now, throw in some Stephen King-level horror elements — a spooky, isolated location, mounting dread, dark rituals, descent into primal savagery, etc. — and the result is a show that is as terrifying as it is thrilling. Whereas Mean Girls ends with most of the characters still in high school, Yellowjackets is told in dual timelines, with the adult survivors grappling with their sins and trauma from the past. Like with IT's Losers Club, these survivors are forever bound together by the horrors they endured... and inflicted.

Yellowjackets Season 4 Could Go Mean Girls-Level Unhinged

Just like outsiders Janice and Damian waged war against Regina George, Yellowjackets season 3 ended with the girls in the wilderness divided into two clear factions: the Antler Queen and her followers who have embraced the wilderness, and those who wish to escape and be rescued. Though Shauna the Antler Queen had maintained control throughout most of the season, Natalie was able to escape her grasp and use a satellite phone to make contact with the outside world.

There's no going back now, and the tribal warfare that could transpire before the rescue could make the "full-tilt jungle madness" of the leaked Burn Book look like a tea party. There's also the present to consider. While the Yellowjackets of the '90s are forced to grow up way too quickly, the adult survivors are proving that nobody really leaves high school behind.

The once-overlooked Shauna has now become Yellowjackets' answer to Regina George, with her former allies Taissa and Misty turning against her. Adult Shauna even starts writing her own Burn Book-esque manifesto of sorts, romanticizing the control she had in the wilderness and vowing to take it back in the present. Whatever that looks like in Yellowjackets season 4 will surely make Regina proud.