"She's falling apart." Melanie Lynskey on what to expect from Shauna in Yellowjackets season two.

Melanie Lynskey knows that Yellowjackets is a rare dream job.

The series, about a group of female high school champion soccer players whose plane crashes deep in the Ontario wilderness in the 90s, is one of the most exciting new shows of the decade so far.

Its critically acclaimed first season earned six Emmy nominations - including one for her in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series category - and gained a loyal following of fans dedicated to theorising and dissecting the mysteries of the show with a fine-tooth comb.

Watch: The Yellowjackets season two trailer. Post continues below video.

But it's also an opportunity for the Kiwi actor, alongside incredible co-stars like Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci, to act in a series with almost an entirely female cast.

Yellowjackets takes place across two time periods - 1996, with the teenagers in the months following the crash, and 2021, as the survivors attempt to outrun their mysterious pasts - with an all-female Lord of the Flies-esque tale.

From the friendship dynamics, to social pressures (and potential cult), to dealing with periods in the wild, Yellowjackets is intrinsically female.

For Lynskey, going to work with a group of other women makes the job all the more special.

"It is something that I don't take for granted," Lynskey tells Mamamia ahead of the Yellowjackets season two release.

"I think it's magical. You know, there are times when we're in the green room and the six of us - now there's six of us older actors [who appear in the 2021 timeline] - and we're all sitting there and I'm just like, the women and the female strength in this room, and the history of our careers and our lives, it feels so much bigger than me and it's really exciting."

Image: Paramount+.

Creators originally conceptualised the series as a five-season narrative, meaning there are plenty of mysteries left to unravel about what really went down in the Canadian woods.

In season two, Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell join the cast as adult Van and Lottie respectively, confirming that at least two more of the teens make it out of the woods alive, alongside Shauna, Natalie, Misty, and Taissa.

Elijah Wood also joined the series in a season-long guest arc as citizen detective Walter.

Whether we'll get any closer to figuring out the series' central mystery - which is currently the subject of theories as wide-ranging as 'supernatural, sentient forest' to 'mass traumatic delusion' - remains, like everything else, a closely guarded secret.

But Lynskey can give some insight into the very complicated feelings of her character, Shauna.

In season one, Shauna had long tried to keep her darker, destructive side hidden, but as the series went on, the facade crumbled.

In season two, she must grapple with that part of herself being 'free'.

"I think there is a certain element where she's trying to put the lion back in the cage, where something has been unleashed," Lynskey says.

"[But] she realises 'actually, I do need danger, I do need to feel alive in this particular way', and she's trying to grapple with that."

Luckily (or unluckily), Shauna is very likely to find danger, as the survivors continue to deal with season one's revelation that whatever happened in the wilderness is far from over.

Image: Paramount+.

Unassuming women with complex layers and dark streaks have become some of Lynskey's most celebrated roles in recent years: from Kathleen in The Last Of Us to Betty Gore in the biographical crime drama Candy.

Shauna's layers make playing her "very fun", she says.

"She's really pushing the limits a lot of the time. And then, her own personal trauma is repeatedly coming to the surface. At a certain point, you can't really ignore it anymore so she's falling apart even more, but trying to keep it together."

For the audience, part of the thrill of Yellowjackets is the questions and theories that arise with every twist and turn.

As part of the cast, Lynskey experiences that in a unique way.

She obviously knows what's going on long before we do, but that doesn't mean she doesn't get to experience any mystery.

"It was a few episodes in [to season two] where I got to talk to [creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson] about what their hope for the season was and what the arc was," she explains.

She's the kind of person who would love a big textbook full of every little detail about what went down in the 90s, but one of the most exciting things about this show is trying to uncover where the story is going before it does.

Plus, when you're playing someone with as many secrets as Shauna, it makes sense to be a little in the dark.

"I'm playing someone who's repressing so much, and not dealing with so many things," Lynskey says.

"And that is how memories resurface, you know, something kind of bubbles up, so it kind of works in a way to not have all the information."

Like Lynskey, audiences will have to watch the slow, satisfying unravelling of the Yellowjackets mystery as season two plays out.

Season two of Yellowjackets premieres March 24 on Paramount+.

Feature image: Paramount+.