‘Yellowjacket’ Writers Reveal They Were “Writing Toward” Natalie’s Death From the Pilot
As fans start getting ready for Season 3 of Yellowjackets, they still have to cope with the fact that the fan-favorite character and adult version of Natalie (Juliette Lewis) will no longer be a part of the show. Now that we all know where her life ends, series writers Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle and Ameni Rozsa could finally open up about some early hints they gave in the series that are only now paying off.
During an interview with Vulture, Lyle revealed that the writing team knew very early the direction that they wanted to send Natalie in, and decided to hint at that in the very first episode of the series. The writers also weighed in on the state of Natalie’s life at the time of her death and why it was the perfect moment to send her off:
“We knew we were writing toward it. When we were shooting the pilot, when Natalie has the vision of Misty at the keg party, at the time we had to talk through it with director Karyn Kusama because she was like, ‘I don’t understand, is Misty there? Is she party-crashing because she wasn’t invited?’ We were like, ‘No, no, she’s not there.’ She was like, ‘Then why is Natalie seeing her?’ and we were like, ‘Well … at some point this will have pretty great significance.’ We had intended that as a prophetic moment for Natalie, that this girl who she wasn’t really friends with and didn’t have a deep relationship with would become really important to her. In our minds this was her sort of seeing the mechanism of her own death.”
Natalie’s Death Was Just a Matter Of “When”
At the same time, Lyle noted that, when Yellowjackets began, they didn’t really know when Natalie was going to be written off. What made them ultimately decide that the Season 2 finale was the perfect point was the fact that Juliette Lewis is not a fan of staying too long attached to a TV series and that the character was at a point in which viewers would see her death as truly tragic. “Cutting her journey short felt right to us because she was on a good path, and it felt as though she was genuinely trying to get better. From a storytelling point of view, what better time to stop that than in its tracks? It’s very tragic.”
We’re yet to know the full repercussions of Natalie’s death, especially through the eyes of Misty (Christina Ricci). When the series returns on February 14, 2025, we’ll still have younger Natalie’s steps to follow, and the series will reveal to us what other events happened in the woods that influenced her path. For now, however, we can only speculate.
