‘Yellowjackets’ Creators Confirm Melissa and Shauna’s Relationship is a “Profound Catalyst for Shauna’s Arc” in Season 3

“A Normal, Boring Life,” indeed. In Yellowjackets Season 3, Episode 8, this may be the best these girls could have hoped for after leaving the wilderness, but is that what they want?

We’ve known Academy Award-winning powerhouse Hilary Swank was joining the show since before Season 3 premiered, but in Episode 8, it’s finally revealed that she’s none other than present-day Hat Girl—sorry, Melissa (played by Jenna Burgess). It seems she didn’t anticipate her previous teammate would hunt her down if an incriminating tape resurfaced after decades. Now, Adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is taking a bite out of her ex, Van’s (Lauren Ambrose) health has taken a turn for the worse, we’ve got bizarre dreams (re: the death-head hawkmoths Shauna sees), and Lottie (Courtney Eaton) has put an end to Kodi (Joel McHale) and Hannah’s (Ashley Sutton) rescue plan.

We’ve got questions, and you’ve got theories. To dig into these developments, Collider’s Perri Nemiroff caught up with the series’ creators, Ashley Lyle and Bert Nickerson, co-writer, director, and executive producer Jonathan Lisco, and executive producer Drew Comins while at SXSW 2025. Check out the full conversation below to find out how they got Swank to join the cast, what’s going on with the Teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) and Melissa dynamic, and whether the Yellowjackets would have stayed in the wilderness without Lottie’s intervention.

Hilary Swank’s ‘Yellowjackets’ Role Will Require “Sharp Teeth”

“It required someone who came to play and had that incredible talent and wasn’t going to get eaten alive.”

PERRI NEMIROFF: The first thing I want to know about is how exactly someone goes about casting Hilary Swank in their show. Is it a situation where you need to cast Adult Melissa and go to her, or does she express interest, and then you craft a role for her?

JONATHAN LISCO: We went to her. I’ve never really talked to Hilary, actually, about whether or not she was a huge Yellowjackets fan prior to us approaching her, so we’re not really sure.

DREW COMINS: We felt we needed an actress of gravity. Coming into a show in Season 3 is a really hard thing to do, especially given the tour de force of the talents of Melanie [Lynskey], Christina [Ricci], Tawny [Cypress], and Lauren [Ambrose]. Obviously, the legacy from Juliette [Lewis], right? It required someone who came to play and had that incredible talent and wasn’t going to get eaten alive, pun intended, by the other women. This was someone who, quite obviously, stands her ground and can come into the character with a predisposition to make that character a fearsome competitor and a fearsome rival to the others. So I think ultimately, looking around at the landscape, there weren’t that many people who could really fill those shoes, and she felt like someone who could bring a lot of depth. We hadn’t really seen her, without spoiling too much, do a role that had the level of sharp teeth that this character requires.

Did she have any particular burning questions for all of you in terms of being able to wrap her head around her character and also where you’re at in the narrative, just to have a little bit of a foundation before jumping in?

ASHLEY LYLE: Yeah. We talked with her when she first came on board. And again, the casting process is so strange because essentially, you look at the character, and you go, “Let’s take the biggest swing we can.” In this particular case, it worked. That’s very rare. Then, after she signed on, we had a really great Zoom session, and we talked her through what we were thinking, and we talked her through the first few episodes. But Hilary has a very naturalistic approach to things. She’s not somebody who has 10,000 questions. She was just like, “Okay. Okay. Alright,” and then she just showed up and fucking nailed it.

COMINS: What I thought was interesting was she really wanted to understand the arc of the younger version of her character, and not just from a standpoint of what was on the surface, but what was motivating the character in the minds of the writers and the storyteller. Obviously, given that there’s this wild time jump that separates those two storylines, I just thought it was an interesting approach to understand specifically as it relates to the relationship with Shauna, kind of what was motivating their dynamic in the past so that she can find ways to bring it into their dynamic in the present.

Is ShaunaHat Really True Love?

“The teen relationship between Melissa and Shauna is a profound catalyst for Shauna’s arc in this season.”

I have questions about that relationship, but first, what was Jenna [Burgess]’ reaction when you first told her that she was playing a young Hilary Swank?

LYLE: [Laughs] I don’t think she thought it was real at first. I think you could have knocked her over with a feather.

LISCO: Well, that’s the kind of news we like delivering on the show. Jenna went from, like, “Hat Girl,” who’s making one comment in a prior season, to suddenly being a prominent part of this season. That is a call where we’re like, “Let’s make that one. We’re really in need of something that we need to do and feel good about!”

I have to ask. What is the deal with the hat? Is that something that you all specifically wrote into early scripts, or was it an idea that the costume team came up with, and then you heavily embraced it?

LYLE: It was the costume team. There’s a non-zero chance that it was Jenna, honestly.

NICKERSON: Do you think it’s her hat?

LISCO: It might be now!

LYLE: She has embraced it now, which I think is delightful. But oh my god, the fact that the ship name is ShaunaHat is the fucking funniest thing to me. I love it so much.

Related

Shauna Just Took Her Darkest Turn Yet on ‘Yellowjackets,’ So Now What?

I stand with my cancelled wife.

There’s one point in that episode when Melissa says to Shauna that she never really loved her, and then later on in the episode, there’s that scene when she gets really upset that Shauna didn’t check on her. Do you think she’s lying in the present day when she says that? That she really did have feelings for her back then?

LYLE: I think as an adult, when you look back at young, formative relationships, it’s hard to categorize in that way. I think that Melissa is absolutely infatuated with Shauna. I think that there was a connection, and she deeply wanted Shauna’s attention and approval, but I think as an adult, to look back and say, “Oh, I was in love with you,” is maybe oversimplifying things.

LISCO: Don’t forget, she hadn’t had the relationship with her wife yet as a standard by which to judge her former self, either.

COMINS: I mean, this is just my interpretation of it: I think the teen relationship between Melissa and Shauna is a profound catalyst for Shauna’s arc in this season, because if Shauna had really been out on an island by herself in the past storyline, I don’t know that Shauna would have had as much self-assuredness to go as far in some of the directions that she ultimately goes to. Because she had lost Jackie, she had lost the baby, she had alienated herself from a lot of the rest of the group, and here comes someone who’s just so hopelessly obsessed with her that I think, not in a necessarily manipulative way, but in a way that kind of restored a level of self-confidence that might have been a bit muted by other events.

LYLE: We also love when characters don’t learn lessons, and I feel like Shauna did not really internalize much of a lesson with her relationship with Jackie, and the underestimation of the sidekick is something that we thought would be fun to explore moving forward.

LISCO: I love that idea because there is a dearth of wisdom, I think, in humanity sometimes. We all like to think that we grow, but do we? Because I do have some relationships where I just feel like we’re hitting the reset button every single time I talk to someone …

NICKERSON: I’m standing right here.

LISCO: [Laughs] Even if we’ve been through something really intense…

COMINS: “We can reset again tonight.”

LISCO: Yeah, “We’ll reset again tonight.” But I mean, I do think putting into a story a relationship like that is also very valuable, not just the ones where someone grows and arcs and learns, which can feel a little bit trite at times.

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I’m Worried About What This ‘Yellowjackets’ Relationship Is Doing To Shauna

Shauna is being manipulated in the wilderness.

It’s more believable when people make the same mistakes and have to learn from it over and over in order to change.

LYLE: I mean, who among us does not have the friend who has made the same absolute mistake in the relationship over and over and over again?

I can think of many I have in my life, but also, I can think of many times when I’ve done that myself.

LYLE: Exactly!

‘Yellowjackets’ Is Finally Exploring That Third Timeline

“How did these relationships evolve in the time between their rescue and where we pick up with them in the present day?”

At one point, present-day Melissa says, “After we made it back, I was no longer one of you.” Are you able to tease what she means by that, because even in the way it’s phrased, I’m not entirely sure if that’s something that happened in the wilderness, or after they were rescued?

LYLE: I think that’s the past.

COMINS: Listen, without revealing anything, I’m going to say that I think that the show has, up until now, existed in primarily two timelines, right? The timeline of the wilderness and the timeline of the present. What has always excited us, and I certainly think it comes out of Ashley, Bart, and Jonathan’s minds, is there’s also a third timeline, which is the in-between. There’s something very exciting about seeing, like, how did these relationships evolve in the time between their rescue and where we pick up with them in the present day? How does one really readjust to polite society when you’ve gone to, as Bart once said, the factory default settings of what human beings are capable of?

LYLE: I just almost said something that I definitely can’t say.

The time will come, I promise you that!

Who’s Really in Control in the Wilderness?

“Lottie is the catalyst, but I don’t know that she’s the game-changer.”

To touch on the ‘90s briefly before I have to wrap with you, we get a big scene towards the end of the episode where Shauna essentially stops everybody from leaving. One thing about that I was curious about, though, is that Lottie is the first one to say, “No, I’m staying.” If Lottie hadn’t gotten the ball rolling in that respect, do you think Shauna and Tai would have left?

LISCO: That’s a great question.

COMINS: That is a really good question. I don’t know. Great answer, too. [Laughs]

LYLE: What’s interesting is that to my mind, all three of them have very different motivations for staying, and I think each one is valid for that character. Lottie is the catalyst, but I don’t know that she’s the game-changer in that respect.

LISCO: Here’s my answer, which differs just a tiny bit in terms of nuance. I think Shauna might have had that impulse, but once Lottie started the ball rolling, she said, “Oh, now I can actually deploy my impulse and make it work because I’ve got the credibility of, like, our shaman character undergirding the movement to stay.”

LYLE: Also, we see multiple times this season that Shauna is very savvy in how she relates to and uses Lottie’s beliefs and Lottie’s influence. She understands the power of it without necessarily adhering to it, but absolutely knows how to twist it to her own devices.

New Yellowjackets Season 3 episodes premiere every Friday on Paramount+ and Sundays on Showtime.

Yellowjackets

Release Date

November 14, 2021

Network

Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime

Showrunner

Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Jonathan Lisco