“That’s a really lovely connection.”
In Yellowjackets, we still don’t know a lot about what happened to the girls from the soccer team once they survived a plane crash and had to fend for themselves in the wilderness. We do know, however, how those events transformed them into adult women with severe trust issues – to say the least. In an interview to Collider, Simone Kessell talked about how not all is lost in the present-day timeline.
In the present-day segment of the series, the surviving women can hardly trust each other to band together and do something about their past, which came back to haunt them. However, Kessell told our own Peri Nemiroff that there’s someone that present-day Lottie can trust, and explained why this person is “without a doubt” Van (Lauren Ambrose):
“I think that connection with Van, because when she’s in the Sharing Shack at the end of [Episode] 8 and she’s just like, ‘All of you have done horrendous things. You’ve had a lover and you almost killed your wife,’ to Taissa and, ‘Misty, you did actually kill somebody, and Natalie, you tried to kill yourself,’ and Van, the only thing with Van is she says ‘this light has gone off in you,’ and she knows something’s wrong and she can sense that and see that, and Van’s sort of put on the spot. But that’s a connection, you know? I mean, if you were with a friend and they’re like, ‘What’s up? Something’s up. What’s going on?’”
Adult Van Vibes in the Same Frequency as Lottie
Kessell also acknowledged that Van is the only one that was able to call out the atrocities that the adult women were capable of committing to themselves and others, and Lottie sees value in that. She calls the Van-Lottie relationship “a lovely connection,” especially when we still don’t know most of what happened to them in the wilderness. After those events, it seems that Van “is the only one who’s really got her back and is really supporting Lottie and can see her mental health.”
Last but not least, Kessell pointed out that adult Van’s behavior certainly says a lot about the type of woman she’s become:
“Van’s been in a video shop for the past 20 years and living her world in very, very private, and so I think there’s something to be said about that as well.”
There’s still a lot for us to find out about Yellowjackets when Season 3 comes around. But before that happens, a bonus episode announced by series creator Ashley Lyle is set to debut soon. The fact that it bridges Seasons 2 and 3 might suggest that the mythology of the series will be explored in a standalone story.
