Yellowjackets: SPOILER’s Death Was Foreshadowed in Series Pilot

The Season 2 finale of Yellowjackets dropped on the Showtime app on Friday and there were some major surprises in the episode, including a major character death. However, while fans of the series may not have seen that stunning death coming, it turns out that it’s something that was foreshadowed in the series’ pilot, according to director Karyn Kusama. Warning: spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Yellowjackets, “Storytelling”, beyond this point. Turn back if you haven’t yet seen the episode and don’t want to be spoiled.

In the episode, adult Natalie (played by Juliette Lewis) dies, accidentally killed by Misty (Christina Ricci) when she steps in front of Lisa (Nicole Maines), protecting her from Misty’s lethal injection during a confrontation at Lottie’s cult-like retreat. The moment happens as, in the 1996 timeline, young Nat (Sophie Thatcher) is being crowned Antler Queen. It’s a surreal bit of symmetry and a stunning turn of events, but according to Kusama, Nat’s death was hinted all the way back in the pilot.

“Something I know the showrunners had always thought about, and that [co-creators] Ashley [Lyle] and Bart [Nickerson] had always thought about from the pilot, was that mysterious moment when Natalie hallucinates Misty at the kegger in the woods,” Kusama told The Hollywood Reporter. “That was always this time-defying flash-forward to the notion that Misty was always going to be kind of an angel of death for Natalie.”

Kusama also said that Natalie was always meant to fill this very specific role.

“She was always meant to be a character who fulfilled a role that we’ve come to love in television, which is the transgressive, self-destructive, self-sabotaging… the shit-stirrer,” Kusama said. “The tension was always that we understood that people like to watch those characters, but the reality is that they literally or figuratively self-destruct.”

She continued, “What I love about these past two seasons is that we’ve been given all the information about Natalie. We’ve been told over and over again that there’s part of her that flirts with the death instinct in a pretty big way. Whether it’s her own addiction issues, whether it’s what she’s gone through in the past. We’ve watched this character cheat death, come close to death, be foiled in attempting her own suicide, and now that sense of inevitability is finally answered by this terrible mistake. Just like a messy, human mistake. Which is similar to the finale in season one with Jackie dying almost out of poor judgement. That’s something the show does really well in exploring. And I think that was something always intentional about Natalie’s arc.”

Has Yellowjackets Been Renewed For Season 3?

It was announced in December that Showtime has already renewed Yellowjackets for a third season which hopefully means the show’s creators will get to finish out its five-season plan. However, there might be a bit of a wait for the next season due to the Writers Guild of America’s current strike. 

What do you think will happen in the third season of Yellowjackets? Tell us in the comments!