Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 4.
Yellowjackets‘ Season 2 finale made it clear that no one was safe, so it was inevitable that we’d be saying goodbye to at least one Yellowjacket by the time the show made its return. It’s just surprising that it happens so soon. Yes, in only the fourth episode of Season 3, Lottie Matthews (Simone Kessell) is killed off. We have no idea who or what killed her; we just see her dead body lying at the foot of some stairs — the very stairs that she once saw during her baptism, mind you. The entire thing is shocking and tragic, but looking back, it may have actually been foreshadowed earlier in the season, and cleverly so.
‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Foreshadows Lottie’s Death
In Episode 3 of Season 3, the wilderness timeline is a bit chaotic. The team goes on the hunt for Coach Scott (Steven Krueger) and ends up being subjected to a poisonous gas within the cave, which causes Akilah (Nia Sondaya), Van (Liv Hewson), and Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) to experience individual hallucinations that eventually culminate in a shared one where the three find themselves back in high school — they’re even back in their soccer uniforms! But things aren’t as normal as they seem. First of all, Jackie (Ella Purnell) is alive and well, and Lottie (Courtney Eaton) is the teacher, rather than a fellow student. The entire hallucination is filled with symbolism, including a reading on how Jackie’s death has affected the team. But now that we know Lottie meets her end as an adult by the following episode, this hallucination may also have cleverly foreshadowed her death.
When the high school hallucination begins, Lottie is writing a quote on the blackboard that reads, “Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” Shortly after this moment, Jackie is also revealed to be present, so at first, the reading of the moment is that the quote is about Jackie. However, in hindsight, it may have actually been referencing Lottie, with Jackie’s presence in the scene being nothing but a clever ruse to distract from any foreshadowing. Lottie stands by the blackboard the entire time, right beside the quote, but with all that’s going on in the scene, it doesn’t raise much of a red flag. Now, with the addition of Episode 4, an interpretation can be given for both sides — one where the quote is about Jackie and one where it’s about Lottie.
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Lottie First Sees Her Death in ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 1
While Episode 3 may have foreshadowed Lottie’s death, Season 1 actively showed it — or rather, the location where it occurs. After Lottie has her first vision, Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) suggests she be baptized. During her baptism, Lottie has more visions. She’s in a tunnel, where she sees a stag. She follows it, and it leads her to a staircase that is adorned with candles. In the present day, Lottie is found dead at the bottom of a staircase; the only difference is the candles aren’t lit. It appears to be the same, if not a similar, tunnel to the one that a younger Lottie once saw, meaning she unknowingly had a vision of where she would die.
During the baptism, she abruptly interrupts things and tells Laura Lee that she saw “fire and light,” which Laura Lee interprets as the “Holy Spirit,” but was the light a hint regarding her ultimate demise in that very tunnel? Initially, it seems as though the moment is just another one of Lottie’s visions, especially with the addition of the stag, which has been a constant point of symbolism in the show. The possibility that this moment was actually foreshadowing Lottie’s death two seasons later — while she was being baptized, no less — is gut-wrenching.
‘Yellowjackets’ Has Foreshadowed Character Deaths Before
The series playing the long game with foreshadowing Lottie’s death is not out of the realm of possibility, in part because Yellowjackets has done it before, all the way back in Season 1 with Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) and Misty (Samantha Hanratty). Toward the end of the pilot, Natalie is high at a party and hallucinating, and she ends up seeing Misty across the way, standing alone and bathed in neon lights. She’s not entirely sure if it really is Misty she’s seeing, considering she’s also hallucinating her friends with distorted faces and other strange things. In the Season 2 finale, however, this moment comes back to haunt an adult Natalie (Juliette Lewis). After Misty (Christina Ricci) accidentally kills her with a syringe to the chest, the scene changes to a haunting callback to Natalie’s hallucination from the pilot. As the medics arrive and load Natalie’s body into the ambulance, we see Misty standing all alone as the lights from the ambulance and various cop cars flicker all around her.
Given those early teases, it’s very likely that Yellowjackets purposely included these details in Lottie’s scenes all the way back in Season 1 in order to subtly hint at her death. And it’s also likely that, just like with Natalie’s death, once we learn more about the circumstances surrounding it, we’ll be able to pinpoint more details that hint at not only what happened, but why. One thing is for certain, nothing is accidental in Yellowjackets, and everything, no matter how small, comes back — for better or for worse.
New episodes of Yellowjackets Season 3 premiere Fridays on Showtime.
Yellowjackets
- Release Date
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November 14, 2021
- Network
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Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime
- Showrunner
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Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Jonathan Lisco
- Directors
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Benjamin Semanoff, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Deepa Mehta, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Liz Garbus, Scott Winant, Eva Sørhaug, Jamie Travis
- Writers
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Liz Phang, Sarah L. Thompson, Ameni Rozsa
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