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12 hours ago
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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. More from GoldDerby 'Be open to the moment you never expected': How 'Road Diary' captured Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in full force 'Each season's got its own sort of flavor': 'Slow Horses' director on crafting a darker, more emotional chapter Sam Spector picks Alan Cumming's 5 best looks from 'The Traitors,' including that 'showstopper' wedding tuxedo dress 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. Best of GoldDerby Sam Rockwell on Frank's 'White Lotus' backstory, Woody Harrelson's influence, and going all in on 'this arc of Buddhist to Bad Lieutenant' Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh admit they 'never had the audacity to realize' a show like 'Deli Boys' was possible From 'Housewives' overload to the 'shadiest queens' alliance: The dish on 'The Traitors' Season 4 lineup Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
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Samantha Hanratty on Misty stepping ‘into her own' in ‘Yellowjackets' Season 3: ‘She is a lot more useful than I think a lot of people give her credit for'
In Season 3 of Yellowjackets, teen Misty proves she's capable of much more than you initially thought. "I think we got to see her actually step into her own a little bit," Samantha Hanratty, who plays the character on the hit Showtime series, tells Gold Derby. "[We get to see] how she is very talented and very smart, and she is a lot more useful than I think a lot of people give her credit for." After a plane crash leaves the Wiskayok High School Yellowjackets — a girls' soccer team from New Jersey — stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness, it's Misty, their geeky, socially awkward, and largely neglected equipment manager, who proves to be one of their most invaluable members. Having purportedly taken the Red Cross babysitter training course twice, she becomes the go-to medic for the crash survivors, as well as the primary carer for Ben (Steven Krueger), the team's assistant coach who loses part of his leg in the accident. More from GoldDerby SEE 'Yellowjackets' star Samantha Hanratty breaks down Misty's shot at 'redemption' and the most shocking moments from Season 3 In Season 3, Misty takes on yet another responsibility. After Ben is put on trial by the Yellowjackets for allegedly burning down their cabin, Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), the team's leader, persuades Misty to serve as his lawyer. Despite having no prior experience in the legal field — outside of having likely watched countless court cases on TV, as Hanratty surmises — Misty thrives in her newest role. "I think there's a part of her that — even though she was never technically on the team, she is a player herself," Hanratty says. "And I think she really sees this as, 'I want to win! I want to win!' She thinks of herself as the smartest person in the room. And so, I think it's also a weird exercise, in a way too, of manipulation, of knowing, 'When I talk to Mari (Alexa Barajas), what's gonna get Mari to confess this or that? And when I talk to Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), oh, I'm gonna go the angle of hurt and sadness. And when I talk to Lottie (Courtney Eaton), it's more logical and spiritual.'" But there is also something much more personal at stake for Misty here. Infatuated with the now-disgraced coach, Misty cares deeply about Ben and has made it her life's mission to keep him alive out in the woods. "I think that she has saved Ben's life now twice at this point, and this is her third time and third attempt to do so," Hanratty notes. "And I think that she takes it very seriously." "She's wanting so bad for him to give — what he ends up doing — but, like, a true performance of sorrow. And when he's not doing that, you can really see her cracks of frustration, of being like, 'Then, what the f--k are you doing, Ben? Like, why are we here?'" Hanratty adds. "It's fun for me to play her because she does try every angle of what she can do and what she can accomplish, but I do think there was a majority part of her just wanting to save his life — and also appease Natalie, because she saw that Natalie was also on their team." Photo credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with Showtime Despite Misty's efforts, though, Ben is found guilty after an increasingly authoritarian Shauna sways the vote against him. While he's provisionally saved from execution after Akilah (Nia Sondaya) has a vision that he is their "bridge" home, his condition only worsens from there on out. After being tied up in an animal pen, having his Achilles tendon sliced, and being force-fed by the Yellowjackets, who would go to any lengths to keep him alive at that point, Ben begs Natalie to end his life. Initially unwilling to, a guilt-ridden Natalie eventually honors the coach's wishes, sneaking into his camp one night and plunging a knife through his heart. It's an act of mercy that isn't received well by the other plane crash survivors — and one by which Hanratty was initially taken aback. "There was a part of me that was like, 'It was always supposed to be Misty! If somebody was gonna take his life, it was gonna be Misty,'" the actress admits. "And then reading it, I was like, 'Oh, God, OK, this is quite beautiful and tragic and kind in a way for it to be her and for it to be at the hands of somebody who truly cared for him.' And I think Misty has always tried to love and care for him, but in her own way, that's obsessive and scary." In Ben's final weeks, Misty no longer regards him as a human, but as "her patient," Hanratty argues. "He was her property that she needed to keep safe. And then all of a sudden, somebody just stripped her from that. And it was like — she doesn't do well with change, and she doesn't do well with things being pulled under the rug from her." After Natalie walks out of Ben's camp with the bloody murder weapon still in hand, a perturbed Misty rushes into it to bid farewell to her former crush. Processing the loss, she sits up Ben's corpse, crosses his arms on his chest, and gently caresses his hair. As the realization of his death subsequently hits her, she begins sobbing, but she doesn't allow herself to dwell in her grief for long. She promptly hits herself in the head and instructs herself to "stop it." "I found a pattern with Misty where she doesn't allow herself to really get too emotional. She does a lot of self-talk that's very negative and very like, 'You're so stupid, you do this all the time!'" Hanratty shares. "And so I wanted to kind of keep that same thing, where it was like, all of a sudden, emotions are getting too heightened, and I need to ... self-regulate and be like, 'Stop it!' But also, 'If you don't, it could be a life or death situation. If you go out there and you're this hysterical, then they're not going to take you seriously. You're then going to be looked at as a target in some way.'" Before Misty finally departs Ben's camp, she kisses him on the lips — a move that Hanratty knows is "quite controversial" but for her was a "sweet" moment that also carries a lot of narrative significance, especially as it marks Misty's first kiss. "It was a way of saying goodbye to somebody that she truly loved," she says, "and also doing what she thought other people do. Like, when you say goodbye to somebody, that's what you do!" Photo credit: Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with Showtime Even more controversial than Misty kissing a deceased Ben, though, is her decision to prevent the Yellowjackets from being rescued early on by destroying their plane's black box in the second episode of Season 1 — and it's one that comes back to haunt her in Season 3. In the ninth episode, "How the Story Ends," Natalie catches Misty with the transponder from said box as she's trying to reclaim a cord from it. The only person besides Misty's now-perished friend Crystal/Kristen (Nuha Jes Izman) who's learned about Misty's fateful decision, Natalie, though overcome with rage, chooses not to rat her teammate out to the rest of the group. Though Misty has tried Natalie's — like everyone else's — patience more times than you can probably count, Hanratty maintains that the two character share a special bond. "They are both true outsiders," the actress says. "Natalie beats to her own drum — and always has — and is not there for the bullsh-t. And even though Misty tries so hard, she's an outsider, and it doesn't matter how hard she tries, she's never going to get it quite right, especially with this group of people. Besides Walter [the foil to Christina Ricci's adult Misty who's played by Elijah Wood], I don't think anyone really understands her. And so, I think with Natalie and Misty, there's always been this kind of invisible tie between the two." In the Season 3 finale, "Full Circle," Misty tries to make it up to Natalie by helping her call for rescue. She uses an antenna from the aforementioned transponder to fix a broken satellite phone that has been brought in by a pair of frog scientists (Ashley Sutton and Nelson Franklin) and their wilderness guide (Joel McHale), and Van (Liv Hewson) has been trying to repair, but to no avail. While Shauna and the other Yellowjackets are distracted with a ritualistic hunt, Natalie climbs to the top of a mountain so she can use the fixed phone to call for help. After newly crowned Antler Queen Shauna picks up on Natalie's absence the morning after the hunt and the ensuing feast of its victim, Mari (aka "Pit Girl"), the camera cuts to Misty, who takes off her mask, puts on her glasses, and slowly breaks into a smile. Viewers will recognize the moment from the flash-forwards in the show's pilot — except it looks and feels quite different this time around. "Bart [Nickerson, the co-creator of the show and director of the finale] kept having to remind me it's not the same as the pilot," Hanratty admits. "This is the retelling. This is a different version of it. And I appreciate that so much, because it did give me some relief of, like, 'Oh, OK, it doesn't need to be completely exact.'" Indeed, in the pilot, Misty appears to be in a state of ecstasy after hunting, killing, and devouring one of her teammates. But in the Season 3 finale, her smirk represents her satisfaction over knowing not only that a rescue plan is successfully underway, but most importantly, that she is in on it. "That smirk meant so much to me, because I never knew what it was about. I always thought, in the back of my head, 'I know something that you don't know!'" Hanratty, who was the only original cast member present during the filming of the pilot scenes, reveals. "And now getting to be a part of it and be like, 'I know something you don't know, Shauna — and we pulled it off.' And getting to be the sidekick to the hero in that moment was, for me, very exciting as somebody that has played the, quote, unquote, 'hated, crazy character.'" All three seasons of Yellowjackets are now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime plan. Best of GoldDerby Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article.
