Yellowjackets foreshadowed major Season 2 death in its pilot

There were a ton of mind-blowing moments in Yellowjackets Season 2, but one of most shocking deaths was actually foreshadowed in the show’s pilot episode.

Yellowjackets Season 2 unfortunately came to a close last Friday in an incredibly explosive finale, which you can read an explanation of everything that went down here.

Between the fires, hunts, and reunions, one of the most shocking moments was the death of the core Yellowjacket adults. A lot of fans didn’t understand how the death happened as it seemingly came out of nowhere.

However, as fans look back at the last two seasons, it seems like the biggest death in the show so far was predicted all the way in the first episode of the show. Spoilers for the Yellowjackets Season 2 finale to follow.

The biggest death of Season 2 was foreshadowed since the beginning

In the finale titled “Storytelling,” the remaining group of Yellowjackets (that we know of) are at Lottie’s cultish compound and in the midst of hunting Shauna, who drew the dreaded Queen playing card that the group used to select their victims to cannibalize.

While the hunt was a ruse at first to call mental health services for Lottie, it quickly awoken something in all of then women as they were transported back to their teenage selves where they had to hunt to stay alive.

However, the hunt was quickly stopped when Callie, Shauna’s daughter, shot Lottie in the arm to save her mother and then Lisa, one of Lottie’s followers, showed up with a shotgun because she thought the group was trying to kill Lottie.

Then, all hell breaks loose when Misty, armed with a syringe filled with phenobarbital, goes to stab Lisa to kill her, but Nat steps in the way and takes it for her, which kills her.

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It was an incredibly shocking death as Nat was part of the Yellowjacket core four (Shauna, Taissa, Nat, and Misty). And, after the revelation that Nat was actually crowded the new Antler Queen in the same episode, Adult Nat’s death hit even harder. However, while her death may have seemed out of the ordinary, Nat’s fate was actually hinted at in the series’ plot episode.

When speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Yellowjackets director and EP Karyn Kusama explained that the show’s creators, Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, always had an idea of where Nat’s (Juilette Lewis) was going stating, “Something I know the showrunners had always thought about, and that Ashley and Bart had always thought about from the pilot, was that mysterious moment when Natalie hallucinates Misty at the kegger in the woods. That was always this time-defying flash-forward to the notion that Misty was always going to be kind of an angel of death for Natalie.”

Christina Ricci, who plays Adult Misty, echoed the sentiments in the same interview saying, “Misty’s obsessed with Natalie. It’s the closest she’s come to having a friend, she’s not about to let that go — even if she ends up holding her so tight she crushes her.”

Showtime

It’s so sad to see such a pivotal member of the Yellowjackets cast exit and it seemed like no one, even Lewis’ castmates, knew she was going to exit the show. In the same interview, Kusama explained that, while Lewis was in the loop about her fate for “quite a while,” the cast only found out shortly before filming the episode.

Sophie Thatcher, who plays young Nat in the ’90 timeline, also spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about Lewis’ exit, explaining that she found out during a joint interview she did with Lewis for The New York Times. Thatcher said she was “excited” for Lewis to move onto different projects because Natalie is a “really hard role, emotionally, to take on, and [she] can’t imagine doing that for another three seasons or whatever,” but she thought the fate was “tragic for [their] character.”

Thatcher went on to say that she would miss having Lewis as an acting partner most of all stating, “Not having that mentorship…I know she’ll always be a contact, but not having that immediate [mentor], everyone else has that and now I’m removed of that. She’s given me so much confidence as a performer and an artist, and I’ll take that with me my entire life.”

While the current writer’s strike has halted production on Yellowjackets Season 3, there’s no doubt that fans will miss the sassy yet tragic Natalie Scatorccio.

Check out our Yellowjackets coverage, including our reviews, here.

Yellowjackets Seasons 1 & 2 are currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, which you can sign up for here.

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