Yellowjackets Season 3 Explained: All About Yellowjackets & Where To Watch
Lost in the wilderness? We’ll guide you through!
Posted on Apr 11, 2025 | 09:00am
Yellowjackets may have wrapped its third season, but fans of the hit SHOWTIME® drama series are still wrapping their heads around all the detailed storylines and unsolved mysteries. Not that anyone’s complaining. Part of the fun of the show is drawing parallels between characters’ behavior in the 1990s timeline, and that of their 2020s counterparts, as well as theorizing about the meanings of repeated symbols and visions scattered through the show.
But sometimes even devotees of Yellowjackets need a little help remembering everything that’s been going on – not to mention a quick refresher on major events and key images. So, let's get into it: Here's a recap of the series thus far, plus a closer look at some of the show’s most shocking and pivotal moments. To be clear, we’re talkin’ SUPER-MAJOR SPOILER-ALERT WARNING for plot points from all three seasons. If you’d prefer to go into your Yellowjackets experience fresh, then put this article aside, and start your binge-watch now. Once you’re caught up, return to this explainer. We’ll make sure your brain is abuzz with all the relevant Yellowjackets info.
Ready to get back into the wilderness? Start reading!
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The second timeline takes place roughly 25 years later, and follows the lives of the Yellowjackets who made it out of the woods – and into the present day.
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Major cast members who joined in Season 3 are:
Though saved from a bullet at the last minute by a vision Akilah (Nia Sondaya) has indicating that he is the Yellowjackets’ way home, Ben is wounded, force-fed, and held captive in the animal pen. He begs Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) to euthanize him, and she acquiesces. Angry, her teammates replace her as their leader with Shauna, who demands that they prepare Ben’s remains for a feast. As the Yellowjackets dine on their coach, two frog scientists (Ashley Sutton and Nelson Franklin) and their guide (Joel McHale) stumble upon the ghastly scene. Lottie (Courtney Eaton) embeds an ax into the head of one of the interlopers, and though the other two attempt to flee, the Yellowjackets stop them. These trespassers could lead the way back to humanity.
Lottie, Shauna, and Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) suddenly change their minds: They’re not ready to leave the forest. Shauna, in control of the single gun, decrees that everyone will be staying at camp. Though the other Yellowjackets, led by Natalie, hatch a plan for the surviving frog scientist, Hannah, and the guide, Kodi, to lead them out of the woods in the middle of the night, Shauna catches the captives trying to escape, and demands to know where they think they’re going. Hannah stabs Kodi to death, professing her allegiance to Shauna and the Yellowjackets’ wild way of life.
The first snow of the season falls, and all of the animals that the Yellowjackets have been keeping in a pen, and subsisting off of, perish at once. Lottie determines that “it” is in need of another sacrifice – this time, of a Yellowjacket. Though Van and Taissa attempt to rig the deck so that Hannah draws the Queen of Hearts. Shauna sees through the trick and shifts the order of the drawing, which results in Mari getting the card. Mari falls into a pit, and is immediately killed. Shauna commands that Mari's corpse be prepared for a feast. Meanwhile, Natalie learns that Misty broke the airplane’s transponder, and that, despite this, Van has been attempting to use pieces of the transponder to fix the frog scientists’ broken satellite phone. Natalie manages to reach the top of a mountain with the repaired phone, and connect with another person – a man’s voice who says he can hear her.
Present-day timeline: Lottie (Simone Kessell) crashes at the home of Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), immediately striking up a bond with Shauna’s teen daughter, Callie (Sarah Desjardins). Meanwhile, Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose) rekindle their teen romance. When a playful dine-and-dash stunt results in a waiter dying of a heart attack, they feel remorseful – until they learn that Van’s cancer has gone into remission. Taissa believes the death and the remission are connected, and that “it” – the spirit that guided them in the woods – may need more sacrifices in order for Van to stay alive.
As this is happening, Shauna finds a mysterious phone in a restaurant bathroom, experiences brake trouble, and is locked in a freezer – events she thinks means that someone is trying to kill her. Spiraling, she accuses Misty of these actions and kicks Lottie out of her home. Later, Lottie is mysteriously found dead at the bottom of a New York stairwell. Shauna responds by going on a clue-hunting expedition with Walter (Elijah Wood). When Callie admits to her mother that she intercepted a cassette tape addressed to Shauna, the voice on the recording leads Shauna in a different investigative direction. This voice? Hannah, sending a goodbye message from the wilderness to her young daughter. Shauna tracks down her fellow Yellowjacket Melissa (Hillary Swank), who had faked a suicide after returning home from the woods, changed her name, and is now married to Hannah’s daughter.
Melissa explains that, yes, she sent Shauna the tape, but her motivation was simply to get the thing out of her life. She didn’t threaten Shauna with death, or kill Lottie. Maybe, Melissa suggests, Shauna needs to stop living in the past. Shauna pins Melissa down, sinking her teeth into her former teammate’s flesh. Melissa flees, but is intercepted by Taissa, Van, and Misty. Once back at Melissa’s house, Melissa pulls the flue on her chimney, filling the residence with carbon monoxide. Though Van rescues her fellow Yellowjackets from certain death, Melissa stabs Van in the chest, killing her before running out the back door.
Taissa buries Van in a wooded area, eating her heart for good measure. Misty pieces together that Callie was Lottie’s killer, and she gets Callie to admit to the deed. Callie discloses to Misty that she’d visited Lottie in New York after discovering that the cassette tape she’d pilfered from her mother had gone missing. Disturbed both that Lottie had stolen the tape, and that she was insisting Callie had the same wilderness evils inside of her that Shauna did, Callie pushed Lottie from the top of a set of stairs. Shauna, meanwhile, heads home, only to find that her husband Jeff (Warren Kole) has taken Callie to an undisclosed location. With Jeff and Callie unreachable, and her Yellowjackets peers against her, Shauna returns to her diary. In her first entry, she states that she is beginning to remember how much power and aliveness she felt in the forest, and that she likes reconnecting with the feeling …
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Lottie later discloses that Travis had confided in her that he was still haunted by the wilderness. He knew that both Lottie and Van, in their teen years, had gotten messages from “it” when they had come close to dying, and he wanted to get himself to the brink of death, too. Perhaps then he could communicate with whatever was haunting him. Lottie had driven to Willow Brook Ranch to stop Travis, but had found his neck already rigged up to a crane, candles arranged around him in the shape of the figure the teens had seen carved in the tree trunks all those years ago. Lottie had grudgingly agreed to Travis’s plan – to press the button that would lift Travis into the air, wait until Travis passed out, then lower him back to the ground. But when Travis lost consciousness, the button to the remote suddenly failed to operate, and Travis died.
Considering that Lottie isn’t always the most reliable of narrators, this story might not be entirely true. But as of this article’s publication, this is what viewers know about Travis’s death.
Javi attempts to lead Natalie to safety, but the two are intercepted and must pivot toward an icy lake. Javi falls through the ice, and though Natalie starts to rescue him, Misty stops her with a terrible truth: If Natalie saves Javi, Natalie will be killed. The wilderness just wants someone. So, Natalie and the rest of the Yellowjackets allow Javi to dip underneath the frozen water and perish. Yikes.
Though this figure is usually linked to Taissa, he has also been seen by Adult Van, who confirms to her lover that there is indeed an eyeless man in an old commercial for Ozzie's Homemade Ice Cream Parlor. In addition, the man with no eyes makes a cameo in a hallucination shared by the teen incarnations of Van, Shauna, and Akilah. As of publication, there has been no concrete explanation of what this character means, though he tends to appear in situations where death is imminent.
Get Started
But sometimes even devotees of Yellowjackets need a little help remembering everything that’s been going on – not to mention a quick refresher on major events and key images. So, let's get into it: Here's a recap of the series thus far, plus a closer look at some of the show’s most shocking and pivotal moments. To be clear, we’re talkin’ SUPER-MAJOR SPOILER-ALERT WARNING for plot points from all three seasons. If you’d prefer to go into your Yellowjackets experience fresh, then put this article aside, and start your binge-watch now. Once you’re caught up, return to this explainer. We’ll make sure your brain is abuzz with all the relevant Yellowjackets info.
Ready to get back into the wilderness? Start reading!
Where to watch Yellowjackets?
All seasons of Yellowjackets stream on Paramount+: Season 1 and Season 2 are available to binge-watch now on all plans; Season 3 streams on Paramount+ with the Paramount+ Premium plan.What is Yellowjackets about?
Yellowjackets is about a girls' high-school soccer team that’s en route to a national championship tournament when its plane nosedives into the woods. With the pilots and the head coach dead, and the aircraft’s recorder box smashed to pieces, the surviving athletes – plus the head coach’s two teen sons and the team’s assistant coach – find themselves forced to live in an unforgiving wilderness. Like the well-oiled machine they used to be on the field, the Yellowjackets work together. But as the weather worsens and provisions dwindle, the group devolves into savage clans. Fast-forward to the present day, and only a handful of the Yellowjackets have survived into adulthood. Even the so-called lucky ones struggle to keep their traumas, grudges, and sins buried.What is the Yellowjackets timeline?
The action of Yellowjackets takes place in two timelines. One timeline begins in 1996, the year the Yellowjackets’ plane crashes into the Canadian wilderness.The second timeline takes place roughly 25 years later, and follows the lives of the Yellowjackets who made it out of the woods – and into the present day.
Yellowjackets Season 3 release schedule
Yellowjackets Season 3 premiered on Feb. 14, 2025. The latest season consists of 10 episodes: "It Girl," "Dislocation," "Them’s The Breaks," "12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis," "Did Tai Do That?," "Thanksgiving (Canada)," "Croak," "A Normal, Boring Life," “How the Story Ends,” and, the season finale, “Full Circle."Yellowjackets Season 3 cast
Here's a rundown of the Yellowjackets Season 3 cast – and the characters they play:- Melanie Lynskey as Adult Shauna
- Sophie Nélisse as Teen Shauna
- Tawny Cypress as Adult Taissa
- Jasmin Savoy Brown as Teen Taissa
- Lauren Ambrose as Adult Van
- Liv Hewson as Teen Van
- Christina Ricci as Adult Misty
- Samantha Hanratty as Teen Misty
- Simone Kessell as Adult Lottie
- Courtney Eaton as Teen Lottie
- Sophie Thatcher as Teen Natalie
- Steven Krueger as Coach Ben Scott
- Kevin Alves as Teen Travis
- Jenna Burgess as Teen Melissa
- Alexa Barajas as Teen Mari
- Nia Sondaya as Teen Akilah
- Warren Kole as Jeff
- Sarah Desjardins as Callie
- Elijah Wood as Walter
Major cast members who joined in Season 3 are:
- Hillary Swank as Adult Melissa
- Joel McHale as Kodiak (“Kodi”)
- Ashley Sutton as Hannah
- Nelson Franklin as Edwin
Yellowjackets Season 3 recap (so far)
Wilderness timeline: Springtime has arrived, food is plentiful, and the Yellowjackets have built sturdy new dwellings out of branches. After a fight with Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), Mari (Alexa Baraja) runs into the woods, where she stumbles upon the hiding spot of the team's assistant coach Ben Scott (Steven Krueger). Ben briefly holds Mari captive, knowing that the Yellowjackets believe he’s burned down their cabin and that they may take revenge on him. He ultimately lets her go, however, and she and her teammates put the coach on trial to determine his punishment for setting their wilderness home ablaze. With Misty (Samantha Hanratty) acting as his defense lawyer, Ben denies the accusations. The team finds him guilty anyway and sentences him to death by firing squad.Though saved from a bullet at the last minute by a vision Akilah (Nia Sondaya) has indicating that he is the Yellowjackets’ way home, Ben is wounded, force-fed, and held captive in the animal pen. He begs Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) to euthanize him, and she acquiesces. Angry, her teammates replace her as their leader with Shauna, who demands that they prepare Ben’s remains for a feast. As the Yellowjackets dine on their coach, two frog scientists (Ashley Sutton and Nelson Franklin) and their guide (Joel McHale) stumble upon the ghastly scene. Lottie (Courtney Eaton) embeds an ax into the head of one of the interlopers, and though the other two attempt to flee, the Yellowjackets stop them. These trespassers could lead the way back to humanity.
Lottie, Shauna, and Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) suddenly change their minds: They’re not ready to leave the forest. Shauna, in control of the single gun, decrees that everyone will be staying at camp. Though the other Yellowjackets, led by Natalie, hatch a plan for the surviving frog scientist, Hannah, and the guide, Kodi, to lead them out of the woods in the middle of the night, Shauna catches the captives trying to escape, and demands to know where they think they’re going. Hannah stabs Kodi to death, professing her allegiance to Shauna and the Yellowjackets’ wild way of life.
The first snow of the season falls, and all of the animals that the Yellowjackets have been keeping in a pen, and subsisting off of, perish at once. Lottie determines that “it” is in need of another sacrifice – this time, of a Yellowjacket. Though Van and Taissa attempt to rig the deck so that Hannah draws the Queen of Hearts. Shauna sees through the trick and shifts the order of the drawing, which results in Mari getting the card. Mari falls into a pit, and is immediately killed. Shauna commands that Mari's corpse be prepared for a feast. Meanwhile, Natalie learns that Misty broke the airplane’s transponder, and that, despite this, Van has been attempting to use pieces of the transponder to fix the frog scientists’ broken satellite phone. Natalie manages to reach the top of a mountain with the repaired phone, and connect with another person – a man’s voice who says he can hear her.
Present-day timeline: Lottie (Simone Kessell) crashes at the home of Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), immediately striking up a bond with Shauna’s teen daughter, Callie (Sarah Desjardins). Meanwhile, Taissa (Tawny Cypress) and Van (Lauren Ambrose) rekindle their teen romance. When a playful dine-and-dash stunt results in a waiter dying of a heart attack, they feel remorseful – until they learn that Van’s cancer has gone into remission. Taissa believes the death and the remission are connected, and that “it” – the spirit that guided them in the woods – may need more sacrifices in order for Van to stay alive.
As this is happening, Shauna finds a mysterious phone in a restaurant bathroom, experiences brake trouble, and is locked in a freezer – events she thinks means that someone is trying to kill her. Spiraling, she accuses Misty of these actions and kicks Lottie out of her home. Later, Lottie is mysteriously found dead at the bottom of a New York stairwell. Shauna responds by going on a clue-hunting expedition with Walter (Elijah Wood). When Callie admits to her mother that she intercepted a cassette tape addressed to Shauna, the voice on the recording leads Shauna in a different investigative direction. This voice? Hannah, sending a goodbye message from the wilderness to her young daughter. Shauna tracks down her fellow Yellowjacket Melissa (Hillary Swank), who had faked a suicide after returning home from the woods, changed her name, and is now married to Hannah’s daughter.
Melissa explains that, yes, she sent Shauna the tape, but her motivation was simply to get the thing out of her life. She didn’t threaten Shauna with death, or kill Lottie. Maybe, Melissa suggests, Shauna needs to stop living in the past. Shauna pins Melissa down, sinking her teeth into her former teammate’s flesh. Melissa flees, but is intercepted by Taissa, Van, and Misty. Once back at Melissa’s house, Melissa pulls the flue on her chimney, filling the residence with carbon monoxide. Though Van rescues her fellow Yellowjackets from certain death, Melissa stabs Van in the chest, killing her before running out the back door.
Taissa buries Van in a wooded area, eating her heart for good measure. Misty pieces together that Callie was Lottie’s killer, and she gets Callie to admit to the deed. Callie discloses to Misty that she’d visited Lottie in New York after discovering that the cassette tape she’d pilfered from her mother had gone missing. Disturbed both that Lottie had stolen the tape, and that she was insisting Callie had the same wilderness evils inside of her that Shauna did, Callie pushed Lottie from the top of a set of stairs. Shauna, meanwhile, heads home, only to find that her husband Jeff (Warren Kole) has taken Callie to an undisclosed location. With Jeff and Callie unreachable, and her Yellowjackets peers against her, Shauna returns to her diary. In her first entry, she states that she is beginning to remember how much power and aliveness she felt in the forest, and that she likes reconnecting with the feeling …
How long are the Yellowjackets stranded?
The teenage Yellowjackets are stranded in the woods for 19 months.Who kills Travis in Yellowjackets?
In the present-day timeline of Season 1, the body of Travis (Andres Soto) is discovered by Misty (Christina Ricci) and Natalie at Travis’s workplace, the Willow Brook Ranch. Though his death looks like a suicide – he’s hanging from the barn rafters near a note that says “Tell Nat she was right" – Natalie swears that Travis wouldn’t kill himself.Lottie later discloses that Travis had confided in her that he was still haunted by the wilderness. He knew that both Lottie and Van, in their teen years, had gotten messages from “it” when they had come close to dying, and he wanted to get himself to the brink of death, too. Perhaps then he could communicate with whatever was haunting him. Lottie had driven to Willow Brook Ranch to stop Travis, but had found his neck already rigged up to a crane, candles arranged around him in the shape of the figure the teens had seen carved in the tree trunks all those years ago. Lottie had grudgingly agreed to Travis’s plan – to press the button that would lift Travis into the air, wait until Travis passed out, then lower him back to the ground. But when Travis lost consciousness, the button to the remote suddenly failed to operate, and Travis died.
Considering that Lottie isn’t always the most reliable of narrators, this story might not be entirely true. But as of this article’s publication, this is what viewers know about Travis’s death.
How does Lottie die in Yellowjackets?
In the present-day timeline of Season 3 – in Episode 4, to be exact – Misty learns from the Bureau of Citizen Detectives website that Lottie is dead, having been discovered at the bottom of a stone staircase lined with candles. As of the finale of Season 3, we know that Callie pushed Lottie down these stairs.Who burns the cabin in Yellowjackets?
In the wilderness timeline of Season 3 – also as revealed in Episode 4 – a jury of Yellowjackets sentences Coach Ben to death for the crime of burning down the cabin, but he denies having done it, and viewers do not see him performing the act. So, once again, we don't really know if we have the real answer yet.How does Jackie die in Yellowjackets?
In the wilderness timeline, as depicted in the Season 1, Episode 10 episode of Yellowjackets, Yellowjackets captain Jackie (Ella Purnell) freezes to death outside her teammates' cabin.How did Juliette Lewis leave Yellowjackets?
Juliette Lewis starred as Adult Natalie Scatorccio in Yellowjackets' first two seasons. Her character died in the Season 2 finale, having been accidentally injected with a lethal dose of phenobarbital.How does Javi survive the winter in Yellowjackets?
The story of Javi's survival through the winter occurs in Yellowjackets' wilderness timeline in Season 2. After several failed attempts to escape the woods, the teens throw themselves a “Doomcoming” party – a stand-in for the homecoming party they would be attending if they weren’t stuck in the middle of nowhere. As for the title of the event, well, they figure this might be their last occasion to celebrate before they freeze or starve to death. During the festivities, the Yellowjackets grow wild under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms, and a frightened Javi flees deep into the forest. When he doesn’t reemerge, the Yellowjackets assume that he’s dead. But he's not. He is found living in the mouth of a cave – under the care of some entity.How does Javi die in Yellowjackets?
Ah, one of the biggest heartbreakers of the entire show. Yup, after the wilderness seemingly keeps Javi alive for several months, the Yellowjackets – or the fates – kill him off later on in Season 2. With Lottie on the verge of death, the group decides they need to sacrifice one of their own in order to appease the wilderness and save their guru. They therefore draw cards to decide who gets hunted, and Natalie picks the dreaded Queen of Hearts.Javi attempts to lead Natalie to safety, but the two are intercepted and must pivot toward an icy lake. Javi falls through the ice, and though Natalie starts to rescue him, Misty stops her with a terrible truth: If Natalie saves Javi, Natalie will be killed. The wilderness just wants someone. So, Natalie and the rest of the Yellowjackets allow Javi to dip underneath the frozen water and perish. Yikes.
Who is the man with no eyes in Yellowjackets?
The man with no eyes first appears in a Season 1 flashback to Taissa’s childhood, during which she witnesses her dying grandmother crying out about the presence of an eyeless man. The man with no eyes has since appeared to Taissa several times, both during her sleepwalking stints in the wilderness timeline, and in brief glimpses within the present-day narrative.Though this figure is usually linked to Taissa, he has also been seen by Adult Van, who confirms to her lover that there is indeed an eyeless man in an old commercial for Ozzie's Homemade Ice Cream Parlor. In addition, the man with no eyes makes a cameo in a hallucination shared by the teen incarnations of Van, Shauna, and Akilah. As of publication, there has been no concrete explanation of what this character means, though he tends to appear in situations where death is imminent.