Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the “Yellowjackets” season three finale.
Shauna went off the rails in a major way in “Yellowjackets” season three, but at least one person is still rooting for her: Sophie Nélisse, who plays teen Shauna.
The third outing of the Showtime hit survival thriller, which aired its finale Friday, follows a high school girls’ soccer team that gets stranded in the wilderness after the plane crash. The show simultaneously tracks the survivors’ adult selves 25 years later as their traumatic experiences come back to haunt them.
While each of the survivors has plenty of trauma (because, well, the cannibalism), none have been through the wringer quite as much as Shauna, who was responsible for her best friend Jackie’s death in season one and then lost her baby in a stillbirth in the wilderness. These events have led to Shauna going down a dark, violent path in season three.
The episode, fittingly called “Full Circle,” takes us back to where it all began: the scene from the pilot where the girls, in makeshift masks, hunt down one of their own, who falls into a pit. Fans have been wondering for three seasons who “Pit Girl” and the group’s leader, the “Antler Queen,” might be. “Full Circle” gives viewers those two big reveals, establishing that Mari was the girl who was chased and fell into a pit, and Shauna was the Antler Queen pursuing her.
While the “Yellowjackets” cast was heartbroken to lose Mari (Alexa Barajas), they were also excited to finally get answers. The Antler Queen twist wasn’t exactly shocking to Nélisse, who said she saw the writing on the wall a few episodes back as young Shauna started wresting leadership away from Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), but she was still happy to finally see it play out.
She also wondered if Shauna’s new leadership role will quell the fury and grief she’s been driven by all season long. “Is that enough to soothe her need for vengeance and power?” Nélisse told BI.
Given that the others were actively plotting against Shauna after she forbade them all from leaving the wilderness when a pair of scientists and a guide stumbled upon their bloody bacchanal, keeping the group from mutiny will also be a challenge.
“I’m curious to see how long she can hold that power,” Nélisse added.
Nélisse thinks Shauna is bisexual, but she’s not sure Shauna and Jackie were more than friends
One of the subtler apparent revelations in the finale happens when a drunken Travis confronts Shauna before the girls leave to hunt down Mari. He tells her that “none of this is even real.” He suggests that he’s experiencing the thoughts of those who have died there, including his younger brother Javi and Shauna’s dead best friend Jackie.
Travis tells Shauna that Jackie’s thoughts are his favorite: “The slumber party makeouts? The jealousy? The betrayal?”
Whether that was a drug-induced hallucination or not, it certainly seems to suggest that something sexual went down between Shauna and Jackie, further complicating a relationship that was already complicated by Shauna’s affair with Jackie’s boyfriend Jeff, who ultimately married Shauna and has a daughter, Callie, with her. That, paired with the season three storyline that sees Shauna embark on a toxic relationship with fellow survivor Melissa, is pretty strong evidence that Shauna and Jackie probably hooked up at one point before the crash.
When I brought it up to Nélisse, she seemed surprised by that reading of the moment. She said she didn’t take it that way but loved the theory. Though she tries to avoid looking at TikToks of the show, she’s well aware that many viewers think there was something more than friendship between Shauna and Jackie, at least on Shauna’s side.
“There’s not an answer, actually, for that one. A lot of people have been hinting that there was sexuality between Jackie and Shauna,” Nélisse said. “But the creators seemed, from our discussion, to say that there wasn’t, but that there is just this really complex relationship. It’s such a fine line to walk on.”
“I think it’s up to people’s interpretation,” she added.
Nélisse has no idea what will happen to Shauna in ‘Yellowjackets’ season 4, but she has some hopes
According to Nélisse, the cast only gets the scripts for an episode about a week before filming. That means they’re not privy to the long game the show is playing in advance of individual revelations, and they don’t have the answers to ongoing mysteries like what’s going on with Taissa and whether there is actually something supernatural in the wilderness.
“Every season has felt almost like a complete different character to me,” Nélisse said of playing Shauna. “I think what’s fun is that I get to play somewhat of the villain [in season three], but at the same time, with all of her background and all of her trauma and all of her luggage that she’s been carrying.”
Nélisse says Shauna’s baggage helped her contextualize some of her character’s less popular decisions.
“Although everything that she does is maybe not excusable, you understand the why behind it. So I have a lot of empathy for her,” she added. “It’s been just really fun to be able to tap into something a lot darker. But at the same time, still caring for her and rooting for her, in a way.”
So can Shauna go any darker in a not-yet-confirmed season four? Nélisse isn’t sure, but she kind of hopes so.
“Part of me wants her to go even crazier, but I’m like, she needs to calm down.”
The “Yellowjackets” season three finale is now streaming on Paramount+.
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