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How ‘Yellowjackets' brought the shocking ‘Pit Girl' hunt to life in Season 3
In Season 3 of Yellowjackets, the girls are no longer alone in the woods.
Ever since a plane crash left the Wiskayok High School Yellowjackets soccer team stranded deep in the Canadian wilderness, there's been speculation about whether the surviving members would encounter outsiders at some point during their 19-month stay in the woods. It turns out they would. While the girls are feasting on their freshly deceased assistant coach Ben (Steven Krueger) at the end of the sixth episode of Season 3, "Thanksgiving (Canada)," three hikers — frog scientists Edwin (Nelson Franklin) and Hannah (Ashley Sutton) and their wilderness guide Kodi (Joel McHale) — step foot into the girls' camp. In the remote area to research the mating habits of the rare Arctic Banshee frog, the scientists are lured by a barbecue smell coming from Ben's roasted corpse — unaware of just how much trouble they're walking into.
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The introduction of the scientists, which was part of series creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson's original pitch, is consequential in more than just one way. Not only does it lead to another surprising twist — the blood-curdling shrieks the Yellowjackets have been hearing all season aren't coming from the trees, as Travis (Kevin Alves) believes, but from the Arctic Banshee frogs that have woken up from a mating event — but it also introduces a new point of view into the show.
"[The Yellowjackets'] world becomes just them, and there is no objective perspective on everything that's happening," says Nickerson, the co-showrunner and executive producer of the Showtime series who made his directorial debut this season, helming both the premiere and the finale. He says the intention behind this new perspective was to "give maybe a hint, or a sense, of what a tremendous, shattering experience" the plane crash survivors' return to civilization would be.
The arrival of the scientists and almost instant demise of Edwin at the hands of Lottie (Courtney Eaton) then set off a chain of calamitous events that culminates in another long-awaited reveal in the finale, "Full Circle": the identity of "Pit Girl," the unidentified young woman who falls into a pit, dies, and is consumed by her teammates after being chased through the snowy forest in the flash-forward that opens the show. The girl is Mari (Alexa Barajas), who becomes the unlucky victim of a ritualistic hunt she helped orchestrate as part of a larger plan to take out rising "Antler Queen" Shauna (Sophie Nélisse).
Even though the "Pit Girl" hunt in the finale is a departure from the version of the event in the pilot, which appears to record the Yellowjackets at their most feral, Nickerson doesn't believe it's "any more or less savage or ecstatic." "In the pilot, the flash-forwards are meant to be very subjective. They sort of live within the minds of the characters, in a way that the wilderness storyline does not," he explains. "And so, it was trying to play with the real version of something that was kind of an impressionistic distillation. There's the feeling, tone, or the emotional summary of something, and there's the lived, granular experience of it."
In this interview with Gold Derby, Nickerson discusses how the introduction of the frog scientists marks an "inflection point" in the series, why the "Pit Girl" chase in the finale does and doesn't reconceptualize the story that was originally promised, how he brought said chase to life as the director of the finale, and more.
Gold Derby: The big twist in [Episode 6] is that a pair of frog scientists and their wilderness guide stumble upon the Yellowjackets while they're feasting on Ben. What I think is so interesting about their introduction is that it's the first time we really get to see the Yellowjackets from an outside perspective in the wilderness. How does that perspective figure into the larger story you're telling on the show, particularly in Season 3?
Bart Nickerson: What a fun episode that was for us to do, because the frog scientist thing was something we had pitched years and years ago, when we were originally pitching the show.
I think that that's also such an important inflection point, because ultimately, in the wilderness timeline, one of the things that we have tried to do is create and give the experience of a loss of perspective. Their world becomes just them, and there is no objective perspective on everything that's happening. And in the present-day storyline, you're really seeing that small aperture, subjectivity of the wilderness post-it being shattered. We kind of hinted at this a little bit in Season 2, like the shattering effect of the return to civilization.
One of the strange and fun things about this show is that there is a third timeline, the implied events between past and present. So then you get to work in the future and the past at the same time. And that's kind of what this moment was meant to do: give maybe a hint, or a sense, of what a tremendous, shattering experience the return will be.
Something that I've always liked about the show is that there's usually a logical as well as a supernatural explanation for anything that happens. So what really stands out about the shrieks [the Yellowjackets hear in the forest] is that the show does appear to endorse the logical explanation. So why did you and the other writers lean in that direction with this specific reveal?
The show is certainly one that traffics in mystery and leaving things kind of ambiguous. It did feel like with this one in particular, maybe because the effect it's going to have is so concrete, that having it better explained just sort of felt right. I think there's also an element, as we're moving through the season towards the apex of some of the wilderness stuff, to not close the loop, but to ground their experience.
Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with Showtime
The arrival of the scientists — and the ensuing demise of Edwin — then sets off a chain of events that culminates in the reveal of "Pit Girl," who winds up being our dearest Mari, in the finale. I have to confess, I didn't expect the reveal to actually come this early in the story. Was it always planned that "Pit Girl" would be the first victim of the second winter?
"Pit Girl" was always meant to be a kind of demarcation. "Going maximum wilderness" is how we talked about it in the room. [It was] like, when we get back up to this, just from a structural standpoint, even back in the pilot, the point was to build tension and to give you just a little bit of a flash, a sense of where this was going, to create a certain amount of tension that allowed you to maybe have a little bit of a slower build to it, to kind of keep saying, "Hey, this is going to get crazy. Just have the patience to go with us to get there." And so then, once you get there, there's a sense that you need to kind of exceed the expectation that you've been creating. That was always part of how the "Pit Girl" death was supposed to land, so that it's sort of the beginning of the end, or moving into something that is hopefully even more heightened than maybe was expected.
Yeah, I was thinking about how the "Pit Girl" chase was seemingly set up as a moment where the girls had fully descended into willful, irredeemable savagery, and the finale kind of turns that idea on its head. Because I think a lot of people, when they saw the pilot, thought that, "Oh, all of these girls will be in this ecstatic state after hunting and killing one of their teammates," and then what we see in the finale is obviously a very different version of that storyline. So how does — or doesn't — the finale then reconceptualize the story that was initially promised?
Cool question! I think it reconceptualizes by conceptualizing it, if that makes sense. In the pilot, the flash-forwards are meant to be very subjective. They sort of live within the minds of the characters, in a way that the wilderness storyline does not. And so, it was trying to play with the real version of something that was kind of an impressionistic distillation. There's the feeling, tone, or the emotional summary of something, and there's the lived, granular experience of it. One of the things that's really fun for us about this show is getting to do both. We start with the very long-lens version of it, far away, impressionistic. And then we get to move into: "What was it like to experience this?" So to me, it's not any more or less savage or ecstatic; it's just, "What is the real experience of those things?"
That kind of takes me to my next question, because obviously, the way the "Pit Girl" chase plays out in the finale is quite different from how it's teased in the pilot. And we understand now that's because it's supposed to be a retelling of the event. Because of adult Shauna's (Melanie Lynskey) journaling session in the finale, the theory among fans is that the pilot is kind of Shauna's recollection of the hunt, while the finale chronicles how it "actually" went down. What's your take on that?
I have not heard that! I like it!
It's especially interesting if we think back to the pilot, because after we see the crashed plane, it cuts to Shauna reading her journals.
[The show] is definitely kind of a double ensemble. All the characters are very important. But in the original inception of the show — which, of course, has grown and expanded — Shauna was meant to be the point-of-view character. And so, the idea that those flash-forwards would tend to favor her perspective — I definitely see where that theory comes from.
I am so consistently impressed by, and kind of admire, the fan base's depth of analysis. Having gotten wind of papers that people have written and different things that people have shown me — like deep, thoughtful analysis — that's just really gratifying and kind of exciting, to see that the show inspires that level of care and thoughtfulness.
Paramount+ with Showtime
The fans are very creative! Bart, you also directed the episode. How did you go about reframing the hunt in the finale, aesthetically, without straying too far from the flash-forwards in the pilot, to the point where people wouldn't recognize the sequence anymore?
Going in, the idea was — just, one, for the continuity of it, but also narratively — wanting to have the sequences be connected but have their own kind of identity. Those were the things that we were trying to balance. And then it really does just become a balancing act. And ultimately, balancing is kind of like, "A little more over here — no, it's starting to move too much!" You're just trying to feel your way into the equilibrium. And so, it was just about going as slow as you can [because] a television production is kind of moving very quickly, kind of always.
I would be remiss not to mention the opening sequence of the finale as well, which is accompanied by an original song from the composers [Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker], titled "Sleepwalking." This sequence is arguably the most unique one that the show has delivered to date. So talk a bit about putting that together.
That was very exciting because I feel like the teaser or opening is kind of often the place where you can get away with the most, or be the most, ambitious, sometimes with different narrative devices that you want to use. Here, one is to sort of give a tableau, or an image, of something that is pointing towards the core of what is beneath the wilderness experience, be that literal or metaphoric. What is the dream image? What is the face of Lottie's subconscious, be it connected to something or [not]. What is that going to look like? And then there's just also the hurdle of wanting to briskly move and tie together a dream-like present with a literal dream with a flashback that has either a shifting point of view or a point of view that lives outside of time.
The intent and some of the heavy lifting for some of these narrative devices, just in terms of how they could work and how they could work together, was done on the page [by Ameni Rozsa]. And then, of course, production and [the performers] get to expand on that. And then the song, man. Having composers like Craig and Anna, who are just so versatile and incredibly talented — it really is an embarrassment of riches on this show. Sometimes, just the amount of talent that we get to deploy in the creation of this show is staggering.
I completely agree. Bart, the show was renewed for a fourth season last month. Congratulations!
Thank you so much!
I know it's only been a few weeks, but just briefly, is there anything you can share or tease about the upcoming season — when production might start, what viewers can expect from it, or just anything? The fans would appreciate , I'm sure.
[Laughs] My deepest apologies, there's not really anything that I can share. We're very much in the early stages. Maybe you could just extend my hearty appreciation to the fans and [say] thanks for all the theories and the patience. And I can promise one thing: We are going to work our asses off to hopefully deliver another great season.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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