Yellowjackets Season 3 Adds Community Star Joel McHale

The Starman and Animal Control star is ready to join Showtime's award-winning drama.

By Russ Burlingame

Community and Starman star Joel McHale is joining the cast of Showtime's hit series Yellowjackets. The second season of Yellowjackets came to an end on Showtime last May, and fans of the series have been eager for the third season, but like many prestige series, there's been a lengthy delay due to last year's WGA and SAG strikes. In addition to the planned Community movie, McHale will be balancing his Yellowjackets work with his time on Fox's Animal Control, which just got renewed for its own third season. He also produces and hosts some unscripted shows for Netflix, and appeared briefly in the third season of The Bear, so he's been keeping busy since his time as Starman wrapped up.

Variety, who first reported the casting news, says details on McHale's character are still being kept quiet. The Emmy-nominated series has been attracting some big guest stars, along with a main cast that includes elanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Ella Purnell, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Sammi Hanratty, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis.

Yellowjackets begins in 1996, as a team of New Jersey high school soccer players travels to Seattle for a national tournament. While flying over Canada, their plane crashes deep in the wilderness and the remaining team members are left to survive for nineteen months. The series chronicles their attempts to survive while also tracking their current lives in 2021. 

"Yellowjackets has been an unadulterated sensation for Showtime," Gary Levine, co-President of Entertainment, Showtime Networks Inc said at the time of its Season 2 renewal. "We are overwhelmed by both the acclaim and the audience response to our series, including several 'Best of 2021' lists, a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and snowballing viewership. Clearly there is a hunger for originality and audacity, and our incredible showrunners Ashley, Bart and Jonathan, along with their pitch-perfect cast, have delivered that and so much more."

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In addition to the third season, there is also a rumored "bonus episode" coming, although the details on that are pretty thin as well.

"I haven't been able to see it," Yellowjackets star Sophie Nélisse told us in April. "We weren't there when they were shooting and we were all back home. So I don't know anything that happened. I mean, I read the script. It's a great script. It's super cool. But I haven't seen it. I wish they would have shown us a special little screening, but no, we don't have any."    

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