Yellowjackets Star Talks a "Completely Recreated" Lottie in Season 2

Yellowjackets returns this week for its second season and when the hit Showtime series returns, fans will get to meet the adult version of Lottie. The final episodes of the first season confirmed that Lottie did, indeed, make it out of the wilderness alive but what her story has been since then is a mystery. Now, Simone Kessell, who plays the adult Lottie, explains that fans will see a version of the character who has "completely recreated herself" from the person they first met in Season 1.

In Season 2, adult Lottie is something of a self-help guru and, Kessel told ET, it's a completely different place than where we saw young Lottie in Season 1.

"She's completely recreated herself from the Lottie that we know from Season 1," Kessell said. "She's been in and out of institutions. And the Lottie we see today is love and light and healing and spirituality."

"When we meet Lottie, she's a whole different person who's gone through this rehabilitation at a Swiss mental institution," co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco said previously. "This woman is a guru. But she's also, like many self-proclaimed gurus, very volatile. She's able to give you the scorpion's tail at any moment. That's part of the hold she has on her followers."

"We're hoping that even the Lottie you've seen so far in the wilderness can come across not as a cult leader or the overt founder of a new religion but rather as a kind of reluctant messiah through which the darkness can speak," Lisco added. "She doesn't want to be this person, it's not a choice, it's an inexorable feeling that she has that she must communicate to the others."

What is Yellowjackets Season 2 about?

Yellowjackets begins in 1996, as a team of New Jersey high school soccer players travels to Seattle for a national tournament. While flying over Canada, their plane crashes deep in the wilderness and the remaining team members are left to survive for nineteen months. The series chronicles their attempts to survive while also tracking their current lives in 2021. The series stars Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Ella Purnell, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Sammi Hanratty, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis.

Reports have already confirmed that Lauren Ambrose will be joining the series as the adult version of Van, with  Simone Kessell as adult Lottie, and Elijah Wood as a new character named Walter, Nicole Maines as Lisa, Francois Arnaud as Paul, and Nia Sondaya as teen Akilah.

"Honestly, in season 1, every scene that I got I would be like, "Oh fun." Like, I get to work with Juliette Lewis, I get to work with Tawny Cypress, I get to work with Christina Ricci, I get to work with Warren Kole and Sarah Desjardins, I get to work with Peter Gadiot," Lynskey said of what excites her the most about Season 2. "Like, everyone was fun. I just loved that everyone was so different. People's approaches are so different, and it just was a very, very creatively fulfilling time. So, I just hope that I get to have scenes with all of them again. Well, not Peter because he died. RIP. But everybody else, I just love working with all these people. So, I'm just excited for all of it."

Season 2 of Yellowjackets will return starting Friday, March 24 on streaming and on demand for all SHOWTIME subscribers, before making its on-air debut on Sunday, March 26 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.