[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through Yellowjackets, Season 2, Episode 7, “Burial.”]Van’s (Liv Hewson) had an especially rough run on Yellowjackets, but she’s held strong. Not only was she left for dead after the plane crash, but then she was mauled by wolves, declared dead by her friends, and placed on a pyre to burn, only to come to at the last possible second. Yes, those experiences left a number of emotional and physical scars, but throughout it all, Van’s held tight to her hope and good spirits. Until now. After the death of Shauna’s (Sophie Nélisse) baby in Episode 6, “Qui,” Van appears to be on a downward spiral.

Early in Episode 7, “Burial,” Van has a heart-to-heart with Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown). It’s the type of conversation during which one would expect Van to continue to serve as Tai’s rock and console her while she struggles to process the death of the baby. However, Van’s assessment of the situation turns out to be quite bleak. Van tells Tai, “Even if the baby made it, for a while, it wouldn’t change the fact that his mother is starving. We all are.” As if that isn’t dismal enough, Van then tops it off with a statement that reflects her current frame of mind more broadly; she says, “I just think it’s time we woke up.”
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It’s a seismic shift in a character who’s been a consistent source of light through all the darkness the 1996 Yellowjackets have powered through. I got the chance to dig into that change with Hewson on the very first edition of Collider Forces, a brand new interview series launching this weekend designed to highlight the forces in film and television that are changing the industry for the better. Forces like Hewson.

During the interview, Hewson took a moment to address this particular scene in Episode 7 and the “gear shift” that conversation represents. Here’s how they put it:

“That scene is about a real gear shift that’s happened because the baby died. Up until then, particularly with the ritual stuff that Lottie has had the team doing that Van has really been clinging to, it’s this thing of like, ‘Well, but it works because I did survive the wolf attack, and you were wearing my deer bone necklace in the tree and you were totally fine and I had my face ripped open. She’s right because you were sleepwalking and now you’re not anymore.’ It’s this real clinging that Van’s been doing to the idea that hope is possible out here and if we can’t escape, if help isn’t coming, then we can survive if we just lean into this thing even if we don’t understand it. And then the baby dies, and it’s like, ‘What am I fucking doing? Winter’s going on still, we don’t have anything more to eat, and the baby died. And it was horrible. Shauna’s still here, but by what margin and for how long? I do think it’s time we all woke up.’ It’s a real — it’s not like a giving up necessarily, but it’s a shift in the things that she believes and how much hope she’s got.”

Is this yet another form of darkness Van will be able to bounce back from, or is the character doomed to lose even more of who she once was? We’ll find out when Season 2, Episode 8, “It Chooses,” becomes available to stream on Friday, May 19th. Soon after that episode arrives, be sure to check back on Collider for Hewson’s full 50-minute Collider Forces interview, which includes even more on what Van experiences in Episodes 7 and 8.

While you wait, be sure to catch Jasmin Savoy Brown’s recent episode of Collider Ladies Night below: