SPOILERS: This post contains details about the Yellowjackets, Season 3 episode ‘Thanksgiving (Canada)’
Three seasons in, Yellowjackets is sticking to the playbook.
Ahead of this week’s jaw-dropping episode of the hit Showtime series, Deadline caught up with co-creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson to discuss the latest heartbreaking death scene and what it means for the bigger picture of Season 3 and the rest of the series.
“I feel like things really start to ramp up, six onward, and I’m very curious how people would respond,” said Lyle. “I think we do start answering some big questions, and I think the finale is really fun, so I’m just excited for people to watch it. You never know, especially the bigger the move, the more room you’re leaving for divisiveness, but we’re all about making big moves on this show.”
Although Lottie (Courtney Eaton) saved Coach Ben Scott (Steven Krueger) from execution, thanks to Akilah’s (Nia Sondoya) vision that he’s their way home, this week’s episode sees Coach begging Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) to put him out of his misery. If the mercy killing wasn’t a big enough of a twist, the introduction of three outsiders who stumble upon the girls’ cannibalistic feast will do it.
Noting it was her “favorite moment in this season,” Lyle explained that the characters played by Nelson Franklin, Ashley Sutton and Joel McHale were part of her and Nickerson’s original pitch.
Nelson Franklin as Edwin and Ashley Sutton as Hanna in ‘Yellowjackets’ (Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with Showtime)
Read on to see what went into this week’s long-gestating episode of Yellowjackets, now available to stream on Paramount+ with Showtime. New episodes stream Fridays on the app before airing Sunday at 8pm ET on Showtime.
DEADLINE: What’s it been like bidding farewell to Lottie and now Coach Scott?
ASHLEY LYLE: Man, it’s always hard. I don’t think that fans and viewers totally appreciate just how intense the working relationship is, and particularly with Coach, just because we’ve known Steven Krueger for so long. We worked together on our very first episode of television we ever made, back in the Originals days, and he’s the best. We just love him so much, we will put him in any show we ever make, and so it was a real hurter for us. I’m like, “Oh no, I’ve lost one of my best friends in Vancouver when I’m up there.” We kind of really ran the thought experiment in the writers’ room, like, “Is there any way to not kill him?” Because we want to be around Steven, he’s so good. But we just knew that it was the story that wanted to be told.
BART NICKERSON: Yeah, and in addition to the personal of the actors—Simone is great as well—it’s such a bummer to sort of lose the register of that character because for so long, we kind of live inside the heads of these characters and each has a different kind of flavor and so, it’s kind of a lot like getting rid of a room in your house that you can no longer go into that is full of all these great memories and textures. And so, at least with Lottie, there’s still a team version, but with Coach Scott, that’s ballgame, so it’s a bummer.
DEADLINE: Part of me is like hoping that his boyfriend comes back in the future as a revenge daddy or something.
LYLE: It’s funny though, because when you stop and think about it, the very first thing you see in the show, the very first scene of the series is someone dying. And so, we knew when we were starting this journey that that was going to be a big part of the show was, there are going to be character deaths, there are consequences for our characters actions. And now we made our bed and now we have to lie in it.
Silvana Estifanos, Anisa Harris, Jenna Burgess, Vanessa Prasad, Sophie Nélisse, Nia Sondaya, Courtney Eaton and Alexa Barajas in ‘Yellowjackets’ (Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with Showtime)
DEADLINE: Can you tell me about the scene of Nat mercy killing Coach and the emotional weight of that after the ups and downs of the trial?
NICKERSON: That scene just came out so well as far as I know we were concerned. I mean, the performances were incredible, the direction by Pete Chatmon, the editing, the song choice, it was all beautiful and really came together. And one of the ways that we had been thinking about that moment was in some ways, the character of adult Natalie that you meet in the present day storyline in Season 1, that scene where she’s sitting in front of the rehab, this was the moment that that version of her was kind of made, this is the sort of core wound to a certain extent. And so getting to play that out in the third season with all of the intensity and kind of consequence of that was… “fun” is the wrong word, but we’re really glad that we got to do it.
LYLE: We’ve long said that we feel like Natalie is sort of the moral center of the show, and I think that she very much has her own personal sense of of right and wrong, and feels it very strongly. And so, in this particular case, while technically she’s murdering somebody, it is, as you said, a mercy killing. And she feels in that moment it is absolutely the right thing to do. It’s something that, as Bart said, I think really affects her character. And that was part of moving into Season 3 with adult Natalie’s death, the moral center has disappeared for all of our characters, and, that felt like a very important shift to us, moving into what we see is that the back half of the series, as it were.
DEADLINE: Well, the back half has been really fun so far. The scene at the end, when they’re eating Coach and the scientists arrive and see his head, I think I literally shouted at the TV. Tell me about writing that twist and bringing it to fruition.
LYLE: I think that that is my favorite moment in the show, it’s my favorite moment in this season. I was telling Nelson Franklin, who plays poor Edwin that it’s my favorite, and I actually showed it to him. We were out to dinner one night, and they don’t get to watch the cuts the way that we do, and we watch it over and over again. I was like, “You just have to see the last 10 seconds of this episode. It is my favorite thing that’s ever happened.” And I showed it to him. And I think it was also kind of adorable, one of my favorite stories from that moment is that Rich Monaghan, who’s one of our writers, he was on set for this particular moment when they were filming it, and the note that he gave to get Nelson to give that performance was “do the Chris Tucker version,” which I think is so funny. And I mean, Nelson nailed it. I just think it’s such a hilarious “holy shit” moment, and it’s so big because this changes everything.
NICKERSON: And it was super fun for us too because the moment that moment precedes, what’s gonna happen in the next episode, that’s something that we pitched on like 50 years ago when we were doing the pitch of the show. It’s like you’re just pitching a show, and you have no idea if you’ll get deep into all the moves and plot points that you’re pitching. So, it was just really cool to just have this big tentpole moment from the pitch kind of so many years ago come to life and to be kind of executed, kind of even beyond our wildest optimism.
LYLE: Yeah, I remember because when we were pitching it — the process is that you pitch to your studio and then you take it out to the networks and hope that somebody is gonna buy it and actually make it. And so, the original pitch to the studio was a little bit shorter, and then we worked with them and we told them all the other stuff. We had a big meeting after they had bought it, and we started laying out the rest of the the series, and I remember the moment we said, “and then the frog scientists,” and they were like, “The what? Hold on a second.” And so, to have something that we’ve been thinking about and wanting to do since 2018, seven years ago, and to be able to finally do it when, as Bart said, when you’re in those first stages, the odds are stacked against so you probably will never get to do this. And so to have finally gotten there and get to introduce the world to our frog scientist vision is very satisfying.
