Yellowjackets Finally Reveals the Antler Queen and Girl in the Pit in Season 3 Finale — Grade It!

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11-04-2025

So, were they who you thought they'd be?
Yellowjackets' Season 3 finale, which began streaming Friday, finally brings the teens' story to the point where we first met them: the hunt in the woods that kicked off the series' premiere. (Take a walk down cannibalistic memory lane here.)
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From the way that sequence was shot, and given that most of the girls were wearing face coverings, we couldn't see who the victim was nor who was underneath the leader's antler crown. And those identities remained a mystery — and fodder for lots of fan discussion — throughout the Paramount+ With Showtime drama's first two seasons.
But this week's episode reveals that the girl who died in the hunt was Mari, who'd drawn the Queen of Hearts card, marking her as the latest sacrifice. Van and Tai had tried to rig the draw so that newbie Hannah would be picked. But Shauna, sensing that something fishy was going on, changed her place in the circle so that Mari wound up with the death card.
What might throw viewers at first is that, when the hunt begins, Mari wears pants, a jacket and shoes, and the girl in the series premiere was barefoot and wearing only a short nightgown. But as the chase goes on, Mari takes off many of her layers, including her footwear; she's left in just the nightie and Jackie's necklace, which Shauna had fastened around her neck moments before. She cuts her foot as she runs, accounting for the bloody footprints. And when she accidentally steps on the camouflage hiding the pit's opening, she falls in and is impaled on several sharp stakes. Is it important that, just before she plummets to her death, she runs into Lottie? Who even knows with this show anymore?
After the kill, Shauna orders Natalie to butcher their former teammate, who is dragged, naked, through the snow back to camp. And that night they all eat, while Shauna — in her new Antler Queen getup — presides over the affair.
Unbeknownst to Shauna, though, Natalie has slipped away with the newly refurbished radio. She climbs to the highest point she can find and is successful in turning it on. 'Can anyone hear me?!' she screams into the microphone. 'I can hear you,' a man's voice answers through the static. Are we on the precipice of actual salvation here?!
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Meanwhile, the adult versions of the survivors have quite an episode, as well. Tai buries Van's body, but not before ripping into it, cutting out an organ (her liver?) and taking a big, bloody bite. Misty confronts Callie about killing Lottie, and the teen confesses. Turns out, when she came to Lottie's apartment building to get Mel's tape back, Lottie led her into the stairwell and started talking about how 'It' is in the teen the same way that its darkness is in Shauna. Callie then pushed Lottie, causing her to fall backwards down the stairs to her death. After Callie tells Jeff about her part in the death, he packs her up and they leave without telling Shauna where they were going. In a rage, Shauna journals about how the reason that the survivors have had such a hard time remembering exactly what they went through out there was that they didn't want to face the fact that 'we were having so much fun.' She laments that 'I was a warrior. I was a f–king queen' and 'I let all of it slip away from me. It's time to start taking it back.'
At the end of the hour, we see Tai in a restaurant, talking to someone about how Shauna is responsible for Natalie and Van's deaths, and how Shauna will be the last woman standing unless they do something about it. She asks the other person if they want that outcome. And when the camera angle changes, we see that her companion is Misty. 'No, I definitively do not,' Misty replies. Outside, Walter watches them from his car.
Now it's your turn. What did you think of the episode? Grade it, and the season as a whole, via the polls below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
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