Exclusive: ‘Yellowjackets’ Is Ready to Answer Those Huge Questions Now

You’ve been open about what it felt like to take in feedback on season one, after it really broke out, before starting on season two. How did you absorb the reaction to season two before starting work on this third season?

Audience feedback is very overwhelming on any front. Whether it is the extremity with which some fans have connected with the show—there are costumes, there are tattoos, there are people who have watched over and over again—or on the other side, of course, there are criticisms, there are expectations, there are people who had an idea of where they wanted things to go and it maybe didn’t go in that direction. That’s natural, and that’s to be expected as well.

Season one was a vacuum. Nobody knows what it is. There are no expectations. Season two was quite overwhelming going into it, knowing now that there were people who had hopes and dreams and expectations for the show. Some people loved it and some people did not like it as much as season one. You really can’t functionally and practically do much of anything with that, because you have to make the show for yourself—for everybody involved—for the actors, for everybody who is pouring their hearts and souls into it.

In a way, season three allowed us to just come back to that a little bit. Even talking to some of the actors at dinner last week, they were saying that they felt really great about this season. In season two, all of a sudden they got up in their heads with the Emmy nominations and what could be. They felt like this season, they were making it for themselves again. That’s how we felt as well. Of course, you hope that people love it, but if you’re trying to make something based on feedback, you’re going to go a little insane, because the feedback is so wildly varied. We just tried to make a show that we loved, and that we felt proud of and that we felt good about.

What can you say about where we find the rest of our leads this season—Shauna, Taissa, Misty, and Van?

We are going to learn more about what happened in the wilderness that they are so afraid of coming out. We hope it will be both satisfying and at times unexpected. And I think that we have found ourselves—let me think of how to say this. [Pause] The stakes are pretty high in the present-day storyline, perhaps in a way that they did not feel in season two, and that was really thrilling for us to delve into.

Are there any substantial, overarching questions that viewers have had over these two seasons, that you feel comes to a clear answer this season?

There are at least two very substantial questions with very clear answers.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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