‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Ending, Explained: Who Really Killed Lottie?

Questions have been posed since the pilot episode of Yellowjackets, and they are finally answered in the season three ending. Who is Antler Queen? Who is Pit Girl? Who killed Lottie (Simone Kessell)? And what does Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) do next? The ending is climactic and includes a teaser for what will surely be a fourth, and likely final, season (though this hasn’t yet been confirmed.)

The season picks up in the present day as the ladies deal with the aftermath of Van’s (Lauren Ambrose) death. Back in the wilderness flashbacks, the ladies are preparing for another hunt. Every moment is shocking but brings much-needed closure to overarching storylines.

Yellowjackets

Release Date

November 14, 2021

Network

Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime

Showrunner

Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Jonathan Lisco

Directors

Benjamin Semanoff, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Deepa Mehta, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Liz Garbus, Scott Winant, Eva Sørhaug, Jamie Travis

The Queen of Hearts Game To Remember

In the wilderness, Akilah (Nia Sondaya) is gutted when she awakens to find all the animals dead, the exact scene she had a vision of not long before. The ladies believe it’s a sign. The wilderness wants a sacrifice, but it needs to be something, or rather someone, they cherish. It’s time to play the game again.

Tai convinces Van to rig the ordering of the cards so that Hannah (Ashley Sutton) pulls the Queen of Hearts. Apparently, Van has done this before, but for simpler tasks, like poop bucket duty. She reluctantly does, but Shauna (Sophie Nelissa) is on to them. She walks over between two girls to pull a second card after having already had her turn. This shift results and Mari (Alexa Barajas) pulls the fateful card instead of the intended target.

Mari frantically runs through the forest, shedding her colorful clothing so she’s more difficult to follow. It’s evident from this moment that, despite all signs having pointed to Hannah being Pit Girl, Mari is indeed the mysterious Pit Girl seen in the pilot episode. As the scene originally showed, she eventually falls into the pit and becomes the latest sacrifice.

As the ladies grieve her death, Shauna matter-of-factly asks what the hold-up is because they have a “feast to prepare.” The ladies are seen cooking and serving up Mari’s body while horns and a veil are placed over Shauna’s head. It’s revealed in this moment that Shauna is the Antler Queen.

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The Walls Are Closing in on Shauna

In the present day, Shauna takes Tai (Tawny Cypress) to bury Van’s body. Before Tai says goodbye, however, she viciously rips Van’s heart out and eats it. It’s a jarring scene that sets the tone for the rest of the episode and reveals just how disturbed these women are. If we thought Shauna biting off a piece of Melissa’s (Hilary Swank) arm and trying to force-feed it to her was bad, this is next level.

Misty (Christina Ricci), meanwhile, confronts Callie (Sarah Desjardins) because she has solved the case and figured out that Callie is the one who killed Lottie. Callie realized Lottie took the tape that Melissa sent (and that Callie hid from her mother), and she went to get it back. The discussion got heated, Lottie experiencing one of her episodes at the time. An angry Callie pushed her down the stairs in a moment of rage, causing her death.

While Misty says she won’t turn Callie in, she does suggest she tell Jeff (Warren Kole). Callie confesses, and her father is supportive, but also realizes that Shauna has created such a darkness over them. They gather their things from the house and leave. When Shauna returns, she’s heartbroken. She asks Misty what she has done, and Misty tells her the truth. Jeff later replies to Shauna’s frantic texts, saying they are safe but need some time.

The Adult Timeline Ending

The stories in the past and present converge at the end. As young Shauna is being crowned Antler Queen, adult Shauna is alone in her house, gutted over what is happening to her family. While in the kitchen, she notices a piece of paper sticking out from under the fridge. She grabs it. It turns out to be the note Melissa swore she included with the tape. She wasn’t lying. When Jeff startled Callie while she was opening it, the note fell out and slid underneath, where it has presumably been hiding ever since.

Shauna reads it, and a few specific words strike her: Melissa asks Shauna to forgive herself. For what? Shauna angrily rips up the note and tosses it into the garbage disposal while she breaks down in tears. But she quickly composes herself, grabs her journal, and starts writing.

She is not only finally starting to remember a lot of the things she forgot happened in the wilderness, but she is also coming to a realization of why she might have repressed those memories in the first place. And it’s not because they’re traumatic. She thinks they all can’t remember what happened, at least certain details, because they were having so much fun and don’t want to admit that to themselves. That’s the truth they left back there.

More importantly, Shauna starts to remember how much power she had back then, and how she yearns to have it again. She wasn’t a wife, nor a mother out there. “I was a warrior,” she pens. “I was a f***ing queen.” Shauna let that slip away, and now it’s time to take the power back.

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A Way Out of the Wilderness

Showtime

Meanwhile, back in the wilderness, Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) has escaped without detection. Now that she knows where the satellite phone is hiding, she grabs it along with the transponder she learned Misty (Samantha Hanratty) had all along. She trudges up to the top of a mountain, connects to the radio, then waits and hopes for a reply, desperately calling out asking if anyone can hear her. Getting increasingly panicked and frustrated, Natalie is about to give up when she finally hears static and a voice on the other end that says, “I can hear you.”

Given the nature of Yellowjackets, it would be devastating if fans don’t get closure. Based on the timelines, it would make sense for one final season to wrap things up. The ladies were in the wilderness for 19 months, which would suggest they’re only a few months away from rescue. But there are also many people still alive who are not in the present day. So, there’s a story left to tell.

Meanwhile, in the present day, what will happen to Shauna? Will she set out to kill all the remaining surviving ladies so she’s the only one left in order to protect the secrets of what really happened out there? Will they retaliate against Melissa for Van’s death? Or will the ladies simply turn against one another in one last epic hunt to the death?

One thing that fans now realize is that Shauna is more dangerous than ever imagined. And what’s more frightening about the past is not so much the details of what happened in the wilderness, but how the ladies truly feel about having done the things they did in the first place.

Stream Yellowjackets on Paramount+ with Showtime.

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