Ashley Sutton didn’t know her ‘Yellowjackets’ role would upend the show

This story contains spoilers for “Yellowjackets,” especially Friday’s Season 3 finale.

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Hannah Finch, a new character on the third season of “Yellowjackets,” traveled to the depths of the Canadian wilderness as a scientist with a bright future. She and her boyfriend, fellow scientist Edwin, hired a guide to help them navigate the rocky and isolated terrain so they could locate a species of frog that shrieked during a “mating event,” a sound that had never been recorded before. While Hannah captured the audio, she was so moved that she cried.

Then she came face to face with a bunch of teenage cannibals.

Anyone who has watched “Yellowjackets,” airing on Paramount+ With Showtime, knows it’s a little more nuanced than that – the Yellowjackets are a high school girls soccer team from New Jersey whose plane crashed on the way to a tournament. By the time Hannah, Edwin and the guide stumbled upon the team in the middle of this season, the stranded teens had been clinging to survival for more than a year, sometimes forced to eat each other to a) avoid starvation, and b) perform a ritual sacrifice for “the wilderness,” which some started to believe had supernatural powers. The Yellowjackets had not seen another human since before the crash. And the scientists had certainly never seen a bunch of teenagers screaming and dancing around a bonfire with the head of their soccer coach – whom they just consumed – on a platform next to them.

The “Yellowjackets” universe is vast and complex, so Ashley Sutton, the actress who plays Hannah, had a tall order when she arrived on set in Vancouver, joining a tight-knit cast on a series with tons of lore and very loyal viewers. Plus, Sutton was shocked to learn that not only would her character have a critical role in the Season 3 finale, which started streaming Friday, but that Hannah’s actions had implications that would rattle the entire foundation of the show.

“I didn’t know necessarily what Hannah’s story was going to fully be. When I booked [the role], I kind of thought she was going be Pit Girl,” Sutton said in an interview, referring to the pilot, in which a dark-haired girl is seen running and falling into a spiked pit in the wilderness … and is eventually eaten. The identity of “Pit Girl” has been endlessly debated online among the “Yellowjackets” fan base. Sutton has watched the show since the first season, not long after she auditioned for a part that was cut from the story. Eventually, co-creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson wanted her to return and read for the part of Hannah.

“I was so anxious because I wanted this role so bad. I just connected with Hannah on such a deep heart level. She was so naive and delicate and sees the world just, I don’t know, through this lens that’s so beautiful,” Sutton said.

Hannah’s official “Yellowjackets” debut in Season 3, Episode 7, was a lovely, bright visual break from the darkness of the show, which jumps timelines between the wilderness and the surviving teammates as dysfunctional adults 25 years after their rescue. Hannah beamed as she and Edwin (Nelson Franklin) and their guide, Kodi (Joel McHale), found the frogs and joked around in a tent during a rainstorm. They accidentally broke the satellite phone they brought in case of emergency but figured it was no big deal. Then they made the mistake of investigating the screams they heard nearby. As the teens and scientists gawked at one another, Lottie (Courtney Eaton), the teammate who believes in the magic of the woods more than anyone, killed Edwin with an ax because she felt the wilderness didn’t want intruders.

This led to chaos as the teens tied up Hannah and Kodi and tried to figure out what to do with the intruders who just witnessed a murder and their cannibalism. Most of team wanted Kodi to guide them home, but the leading faction got cold feet and insisted they stay in the woods. In the penultimate episode, former team leader Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) covertly gave Hannah a knife so the pair could try to escape, but current leader Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) caught Hannah and Kodi in the act. To save herself, Hannah blamed Kodi for stealing the knife, and turned around and stabbed him in the eye.

Fast-forward to Friday’s finale, and Hannah had successfully convinced Shauna that she wanted to be a part of the group. When the team decided to have another “hunt” to appease the wilderness – where the person who draws the unlucky queen of hearts card is hunted and then, well, eaten – Hannah appeared to join in without hesitation. But the hunt was a ruse so Natalie could sneak away and take the scientists’ satellite phone, which a few girls were trying to repair, up to a mountain to try to call for rescue. Hannah caught Natalie with the phone and desperately tried to convince her that she wanted to help with the plan.

“I came out there to study frogs. Instead, my boyfriend got ax-murdered, I stabbed our guide in the brain, I’ve eaten human flesh. I am just trying to survive, the same as you,” Hannah hissed as she and Natalie stared intensely at each other. “All I want is to get out of here. You have to believe me.”

Sutton said that when the last take of that scene ended, she and Thatcher started sobbing and hugged each other. “We both realized how much both of these characters really want to fight for everybody else,” she said, adding that it was hard not to think about how much the Yellowjackets had been through in nearly three seasons of television, and how quickly Hannah had to adapt. “She truly is feeling the weight of everything that’s happening, and she can finally say it out loud to a person.”

Going in, Sutton knew she needed to play the role in a way that captured the horror she was feeling and make it realistic that warring, traumatized teenage girls would grow to trust her. So she embraced the persona of a scientist, as Hannah collected data, analyzed group dynamics and observed everyone’s micromovements. She strategically made personal disclosures, such as telling teen Melissa (Jenna Burgess) that she had a 10-year-old daughter back home. “She’s kind of fascinated, terrified at the same time … but if anyone is going to be able to survive this, it’s going to be someone who studies survival,” Sutton said.

This scientific thinking also helped set up the Season 3 finale’s twist, when Hannah had to take on a horrifying task. As they prepare for the ritual, “Pit Girl” is revealed to have been the snarky Mari (Alexa Barajas), finally connecting the thread from the pilot. Everyone dressed up in their winter garb and wore masks, and Shauna demanded that Natalie prepare the feast … but she didn’t know that Hannah and Natalie had switched clothes after their confrontation in the woods. While Hannah-disguised-as-Natalie dismembered the body, Natalie went to use the satellite phone. As she screamed for help into the crackling static, a calm voice on the other end responded that they could hear her.

In the internal backstory that Sutton created for herself, she decided that Hannah had worked with cadavers in class before, so at least she had a framework – she went further and thought that class was where Hannah met her boyfriend, the unfortunately axed Edwin, so his spirit was with her. Sutton was thrilled that her character was a crucial part of Natalie becoming the (apparent) tipping point for the team’s eventual rescue, and said the phone call was a “beautiful” moment.

Unfortunately, as viewers know, Hannah did not make it out of the wilderness. The flash-forward timeline featured a photo of Hannah’s obituary, and in a bonkers earlier reveal, fans learned that grown-up Melissa (Hilary Swank) wound up marrying Hannah’s daughter. In bad news for the rest of the adult Yellowjackets (Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, etc.), Hannah was a diligent researcher who used her audio equipment to covertly record the violence of the wilderness, and the tape made its way back to civilization and is wreaking untold amounts of havoc.

“It is wild to see the impact Hannah’s still having on them 25 years later,” Sutton said. She’s awaiting news about the show’s next moves (a fourth season seems inevitable, though there’s been no official renewal announcement), but it’s likely that Hannah’s influence will continue. Several years in, the show continues to hook viewers. Sutton thinks the series will always strike a nerve because of the morally gray areas that cause people to think about their own lives and what they would do in a survival situation.

“It explores female rage in such a different way. It’s not beautiful female rage, it’s not perfect in any way,” Sutton said. “It is just, like, true emotion and feeling, and I think it’s really cool to see characters like that.”