‘Yellowjackets’ Finale: Courtney Eaton Explains Lottie’s Ending, Pit Girl & More

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Yellowjackets Season 3 finale.]

Yellowjackets Season 3 has been the season of answers. Well, the beginning of them, at least. Coach Ben’s (Steven Krueger) fate, the origins of their rescue, and the identities of Pit Girl and the Antler Queen have all been revealed as of the Season 3 finale, but the season has set up a whole new set of questions simultaneously.

After forcing the team to stay put in the wilderness, the finale showed Hanna (Ashley Sutton) fully integrated into their survival cult. They were deeper into the second winter in the woods, which we already know will be their last, and they were hungry for another hunt. Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) had complete control of the group, and she stepped in when sensing that Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Van (Liv Hewson) were trying to rig the results of the card draw that would trigger the next human feast. The couple was trying to make sure that Hanna would draw the queen so as to save their friends on the team, but Shauna’s interference led to Mari (Alexa Barajas) drawing the fateful card. The hunt was on.

A lengthy chase sequence served as the finale’s adrenaline rush, and multiple plans were coming together while the girls chased Mari down. Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), Misty (Samantha Hanratty), and Hanna hatched a plan to trick Shauna and give Natalie time to run away and use the scientists’ fixed radio to get a distress signal out to anyone who could hear them. The plan worked, and rescue seems imminent heading into the potential Season 4. But while Natalie was running up that hill, the team was hunting down Mari. She fell into the pit made by Travis (Kevin Alves) and became their next human sacrifice.

In the present-day timeline, Simone Kessell returned as adult Lottie to reveal how she really died. It was Shauna’s (Melanie Lynskey) daughter, Callie (Sarah Desjardins), who pushed her down the stairs. Here, young Lottie, Courtney Eaton, breaks down Season 3’s big reveals and the major events of the finale with TV Insider.

The finale ends on a literal cliffhanger, with Natalie on top of a cliff using the scientists’ radio to call out for rescue. We know that Lottie wants to stay in the wilderness and that she’s horrified upon their eventual return. Were you at all surprised by Lottie’s reaction to possible rescue in Episode 7?

Courtney Eaton: No. With Lottie it’s hard because she’s someone that doesn’t trust herself, has been put in situations with her family where she’s told something’s wrong with her. And I think her and Shauna are on a similar journey this season of realizing that there’s a freedom and to being out in the wilderness, and they get to be almost this natural version of themselves with no pressures of society and their darkness isn’t looked down upon. We see in her speech about being scared of going home and being unwell, and  her family immediately puts her in a psych ward, which we see in the second season. It just goes exactly how she thinks it will. Shauna’s monologue at the end with Melanie voicing over that we were having weird fun in the most dark place. I won’t say [fun] for Lottie because she’s killing people, but I think she feels like herself, not ashamed of anything.

I don’t know that the rest of the survivors would agree that they were having the time of their lives out there. I think Shauna might be the only one who thinks they were having fun, because Shauna loves being in control and having power. Does Lottie think they were having fun?

No, I definitely don’t think fun. I think the freedom and the chance to not be weighed down with second-guessing herself or not trusting her brain. Being out there, whether it’s healthy or not, has allowed her to be OK with who she is. Whether she has got something, a mental illness going on, or if it is the wilderness, those two things are just part of her.

And does she have an answer to that question? Is it me or is it the wilderness?

I can’t lean too much one way or the other. I have my answer, but I feel like people think they want to know the answer, but once they do, it might take away from some of her magic. But yeah, Lottie is a hard one to talk about.

I think I’m very similar to Lottie in the way that if you put me out in the wilderness, I would be in similar situations, not killing people and eating them [laughs], but I think the way that we would handle ourselves would be very similar. I would try to always know who I am. And when you’re in situations that are that desperate, sometimes you just find answers where you can, and they might not be true answers to things.

It’s impossible to put yourself in that situation and know what you would do. The trauma that would be inflicted on your brain in this scenario would change how you act, so none of us could really predict how we would be.

And minds are so complex that I think most people would go darker than they think they would.

How did you and Simone work on Lottie’s character development this season to calibrate your performances to each other’s, if at all?

Everyone has their own different take on how they share a character. I know Tawny and Jasmin a very intricate with it and will talk from scene to scene. Simone and I had dinner in the first season and talked about Lottie for maybe an hour, and then we could tell that the mutual understanding of who she was and the thread that would tie us together was there. For me, at least as an actor, it’s difficult to look too far ahead, especially with Lottie because there’s so much time in between that we don’t know about, of when she’s at a mental hospital, when she gets rescued, that I kind of have to be in the moment. And Simone does such a beautiful job with the present-day Lottie.

I knew from the moment we had dinner together that she understood Lottie and that we trusted each other and where to take her. So yeah, we never really talked about it.

Now we’ve got to talk about Pit Girl. When did you all find out who Pit Girl was? Have you always known?

We know nothing, ever, going into seasons. When we say we don’t know anything, we actually mean it because we’re figuring it out as we get the scripts. But I think there were murmurings of it on set [while filming Season 3]. Our ’90s cast is so annoying. We’ll go to someone and be like, what do you know about this episode? Because all the hair and makeup, costume [department], our producers get the episodes before us, so we’re trying to mine all the information we can. But I think we all found out at the same time around when Alexa [Barajas] found out. It had been this conversation going on from the time we’ve been shooting of who it was going to be. It was about which brunette it was, and then once Ashley Sutton came in, we were like, oh, it could be her! But no, I know Alexa was really excited to go out that way. And I think it’s kind of an iconic way for Yellowjackets. Everyone wants to know who Pit Girl is. And Mari’s storyline this season, you really start to feel for her.

And so it was a different actor who filmed the pilot’s opening scene where we first see Pit Girl?

Yeah, none of us except for Samantha [Hanratty] were there for that shoot. I think they shot it in Big Bear. And so we didn’t know what characters were what, who was wearing what mask, who really was the Antler Queen. It was all a secret to us.

Wow. You must have been just like fans then dying to find out who the reveal was.

It’s like that on set for sure. The writers and everyone get annoyed with us. They’re like, “We can’t tell you.” I’m like, “but we’re making the show!”

Did you also find out in Season 3 filming that Melissa was the eighth survivor?

Yes, we did. Once we had heard that Hilary Swank had just got cast, and we were like as who? And then we kind of put it together. We’re really lucky to have her this season. This show, as much as things get answered this season, I feel like it just as equal amounts new questions of what happens when they get home and rescued. What happens when they do get rescued? Is there a fight? Fight? Do more people die?

But now there’s the question of does Akilah [Nia Sondaya] survive, because Melissa [Jenna Burgess and Swank] survived unexpectedly. Akilah is the new mystery.

She’s a mystery for Nia and I, because the last scene we filmed together was in the cave and you last see her holding a rock, and then you don’t see her at the feast. So we had some questions. We were like, where is she? Did I kill her? We don’t know.

Oh God, I’m so scared for Akilah. We have to get her out.

I know! Same.

What does Lottie think of Shauna’s control of everyone in the wilderness? Is she aligning herself to Shauna as a means to an end because she wants to stay out there and so does Shauna, or does she believe that Shauna is really the right leader for them right now?

This whole season we see Lottie struggling with the fact that she has lost her connection to the wilderness and thinking back on what consequences that caused, like Javi [Luciano Leroux] and her guilt with that. But I talked to the writers, and Lottie’s attachment to the wilderness this season is almost like an addiction and that she’s chasing this drug because it’s something that makes her feel whole and who she really is. The trial scene is a good example of when she sees a slight reflection of the wilderness and the rage and whatever that encompasses for her in Shauna, and so she directs her energy that way. The same as she has been pushing Travis too far. I think she knows that Travis is playing a bit of a game with Akilah, but she’s willing to go ahead to get any answers that she can. And I think this season she’s just trying to find answers wherever she can.

I imagine this is something you can’t talk in detail with me about, but I have to ask anyway. How the hell did she walk over that hidden pit?

I know! I haven’t talked about this. I just had an interview and I forgot about that scene.

It almost looks like she knew that Travis planted a trap and she survived it.

I think she went into the situation knowing that there was something off with Travis, and there has been since he palmed her off to Akilah. I can’t explain why it doesn’t collapse, but I’ve been reading a book and there was something in a chapter the other day about luck and risk and how they’re siblings and equal. Is it that something miraculous happened or is it that it just something messed up while he was resetting it and it didn’t go off? And I think it not going off when she realizes she’s standing on something, empowers her more that she’s going in the right direction.

There’s a moment during the Mari hunt where it rewinds and shows the Pit Girl scene from the first episode. It shows a Yellowjacket wearing a fur hood, but then it cuts to what I guess was really happening, which was just Shauna wearing a hat. I have a theory that there was never anything supernatural in the woods, and it was all just the girls doing this the whole time. That video edit and the frogs reveal in Episode 7 are all hints of this. What is your interpretation of that record scratch, freeze frame shot?

I also think there’s another moment that kind of breaks their illusion of what they think is going on. It’s when we’re dancing around the fire and we’re almost singing and the theme song chorus kind of comes on, and you can tell we’re all harmonizing to that. But then it cuts to the scientist perspective and it’s all just a bunch of girls just out of their minds. I do think that they’re telling themselves a different version of what’s actually happening out there. I think that’s the most interesting, what the human brain can do. And the fact that cannibalism in our show isn’t the darkest thing. Somehow it’s not. It’s the least almost. You’re expecting that, oh wow, Shauna almost killing Melissa, Lottie killing an outsider man. Now there’s different stakes. So I think the human mind is a very interesting thing, and especially on this show.

And especially in the future, it’s almost as if you can’t escape the past with Melissa killing Van [Lauren Ambrose].

Or Shauna being delusional again, that these situations are happening and maybe they’re not.

We’ll wrap up with adult Lottie’s death scene, when we see how Callie killed her. This belief Lottie has that Callie is their baby from the wilderness, can you explain what that means?

It’s hard. I think [Lottie’s] gone her whole life tossing up whether there’s something wrong with her or she should trust herself. And then these women come back into her life and completely flip that over again and trigger something. She starts sticking her nose into things that she should probably just leave behind. I had an inkling that it would be Callie, just with how intrigued and similar she is to she has a darkness within her. But yeah, I don’t know with the baby thing. There’s so many things this season at the end of the season when we see Lottie in the cave, talking to someone and making a promise until her last breath. I’m like, what is that? What is that promise? What did I just promise? [Laughs] It ends up coming full circle later on, like how in Episode 8, Lottie doesn’t want to go home. And in Season 2, we see her screaming as she gets on the plane and the rage in her, and then that kind of clicks. I kind of just wait until I get a script, and then I’m like, ah! There’s the click.

Yellowjackets, Seasons 1-3 Available Now, Paramount+, Season 3 Finale, Sunday, April 13, 8/7c, Showtime