Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Yellowjackets’ penultimate Season 3 episode streaming with a Paramount+ with Showtime subscription, so be warned!
The Wilderness definitely wasn’t Yellowjackets’ deadliest force throughout Season 3’s penultimate episode, “How the Story Ends,” with humans proving themselves to be quite lethal even without quasi-supernatural guidance. Hilary Swank’s Melissa pulled off the heinous move of surprise-killing Van in the present, while the past timeline’s new recruit Hannah slammed a knife into Joel McHale’s, er, into Kodiak’s face. And viewers also witnessed the formation of The Pit, hinting at answers to come for the Pit Girl mystery.
Yellowjackets director Ben Semanoff, who’d previously helmed Season 2’s standout installments “Edible Complex” and “Two Truths and a Lie,” talked to CinemaBlend about filming all of the biggest moments in the ep. Considering the Pit initially appeared in the very first episode’s cold open, before we knew who any characters were, I had to start things off by excitedly asking what conversations and planning went into finally giving fans the deadly trap. And it was more than I expected.
Yellowjackets Director Lays Out How Complicated It Was To Introduce The Pit As A Physical Location
When I gleefully brought the Pit up, Ben Semanoff was curious to know if I'd foreseen the eventuality of the spikes ending up in the same dug-out spot where Coach found the trunk of supplies, and where Mari broke her leg, and was happy to hear that was indeed my assumption early on. And he then amusingly addressed how such a relatively quick and seemingly simple reveal required an abundance of preparation.
You know, there's always these few set-piece moments, or shots, or story points that you really sort of spend an inordinate amount of time discussing in 85 different meetings. Then you go back and forth about how you're going to accomplish it, and that was one of them.
Understandably for such an iconic piece of locational lore for the Showtime series, a lot of creatives behind the scenes had thoughts about the best way to handle each step of the process, of which there were many. Semanoff continued, saying:
In particular, because it's not easy to get a camera eight feet down in the ground and make it move. So it was, 'What, are people going to crawl down there with a camera? Are we going to put a dolly down there?' It's just one thing after another, and like I said, several meetings. You get to the point where you go, 'You know what? Forget it just, it doesn't matter.' [Laughs.] But it paid off. It was good.
I can only imagine the amount of fan confusion and rage that would rise up if we learned that a major moment in the show was completely cut out because no one could agree on the best way to film it. Less meticulous heads prevailed, thankfully, and Ben Semanoff was very excited to be the one to send chills up viewers' spines with that perfecto spike-filled reveal.
It's a heroic shot on Travis, I think. I guess I've been lucky to pay off some of these cool moments, right? Like in Season 2, the feast and the Yellowjackets eating for the first time. And here, in this moment where you're like, 'What's coming? What's coming?!? The pit! When does it happen?' And then, of course, the snow starts. So you must think that, 'Well, it's gonna snow, there's a pit, there's spikes in it. Somebody's going to die.'
It was indeed a rush to see the shot of Travis from that angle, and when I expressed how happy I was to see the Pit was created as a practical space, the director said that was one of the big-picture decisions that required a slew of smaller questions and conversations. As he put it:
100% practical. There were conversations about building it above-ground to be able to put cameras under it, all different things. And then, of course, it's a tricky thing when you get into these things and you have a limited time on a TV schedule. 'Alright, so what's the order in which we're going to have him cover the pit, and how does it break? And how quick is it to reset that? And is it just like, somebody pulls a string all of a sudden and everything comes back up? Or is it an hour?' Logistics start to overtake story a little bit, so you sort of have to keep going, 'No, no, but what's important? What do we have to tell them?'
With only one episode left to go in Season 3, I'm not entirely convinced that we'll get concrete answers about who the original Pit Girl was ahead of Season 4. After all, we don't really know if she was the first to die by those means, so we could easily see Hannah, for instance, being chased into the pit without it actually clarifying anything about the show's very first scene. Just don't expect to see Lottie falling into it, especially after that bonkers scene with Travis.
Did Lottie Miraculously Walk On Top Of The Pit? Yellowjackets' Director Shares His Thoughts On That Scene
"How the Story Ends" amusingly turned Travis into a Wile E. Coyote protégé of sorts. Not only in regards to how used loose branches to set the Pit up as a trap, and the manner in which he tested it, but also in how it didn't actually work when he wanted it to. (If Lottie had stuck her tongue out before running away, that's how I would have known I was just dreaming.)
After re-covering the Pit, Travis brought Lottie out to that spot seemingly with the full intention of having her take a fatal tumble. He expressed his disbelief in everything she'd been talking to him and Anikah about, and basically admitted all of his efforts were total bullshit. But when she actually stepped onto the layer of branches hiding the Pit's sharpened spokes, Lottie did not fall through.
When I asked Ben Semanoff about this WTF turn of events, he alluded to a deleted scene that may have shined some light on that sequence, saying:
It's funny. Obviously, we end up cutting things when we get into the edit room. There was a scene that got cut, and there were even scenes that I had talked about with the writers. Because that's an interesting thing. So he's standing there. She walks on the pit. It doesn't break. She walks away. Okay. Wouldn't you test it out? Like, the first thing I would do is go, 'Let me go get that log again and see if it breaks.' Because then all of a sudden, then you start to question faith. Like, what is faith?
After Lottie's walk across the branches, which seemed to leave Travis just as confused as he's ever been post-crash, we don't get to see what his follow-up actions were. And it sounds like the director had talks about possibly shining a light on how the character would have reacted after Lottie walked away.
But maybe it's best that we didn't get to see it, and that we were left with the impression that Travis watched Lottie more or less walk on water, and that he was swayed into becoming more of a believer because of it. Semanoff continued:
That's what Lottie, really is, right? She's a mystic, and there's this religion of the woods that we're meant to start to believe in, that she's sort of is puppeting Travis and Akilah in ways to try to connect with. So if they truly believe in this religion of the woods, and they have faith, then you don't test it. You just go, '[Gasp] She's a deity.' But I would test it. [Laughs.]
I'm fully on board with the notion that testing the branches immediately afterward would be the best way to gague how realistically eerie it was that Lottie didn't fall down to her death. But I can also understand how Travis, in his frantic, hallucinogen-addled mindstate, could potentially find more solace than expected in witnessing Lottie's pseudo-miracle.
Both Lottie and Travis are dead in the present timeline, and we knew she wasn't ever going to be the subject of the Pit Girl reveal. But that scene definitely feels like it had a significant impact on both of their lives, especially since Lottie appeared to know she was stepping onto a trap, and did so anyway.
How many answers will we get when the Season 3 finale, titled "Full Circle," arrives? Will we learn how No-Face Man's ice cream shop is connected to Taissa's dirt-eating childhood now that her and Van's romantic relationship has come to a sudden and deadly halt? Will Shauna & Co. track down Melissa and gain revenge over Van's death? Will Walter ever find someone who appreciates him for him?
Join me in finding out how this season's tumultuous events will come to a head when the finale, titled "Full Circle," hits Paramount+ on Friday, April 11, and Showtime on Sunday, April 13.
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