[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2]

Summary

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits down with Yellowjackets co-stars Courtney Eaton and Kevin Alves, who play Lottie and Travis in the series.

The two discuss where their characters are mentally after that devastating Season 2 finale.

They also tease hidden details in the Season 3 set, who Lottie and Travis fear most, and highlight their co-stars’ stellar performances.

It’s time to return to the wilderness. Yellowjackets Season 3 is back, and so are the mysterious circumstances of our favorite doomed soccer team. In Season 2, we left off with a smoking cabin, the death of Javi (Luciano Leroux), and Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) being crowned Antler Queen in the past and dying in the present (Juliette Lewis). With the premiere and Episode 2 hitting Paramount+ and Showtime, Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sat down with Courtney Eaton, who plays young Lottie, and Kevin Alves, who plays Travis, to try to understand their characters’ headspaces.
When Season 3 picks up, it’s spring in the wilderness. The snow has melted, and Coach Ben (Steven Krueger), the number one suspect for the cabin fire, is nowhere to be found. Resilient as ever, the girls (and poor Travis) have created a thriving community, but the wilderness seems to be calling, and that call is growing stronger and more violent by the day.
During their interview, Eaton and Alves share their thoughts on where Lottie and Travis’ minds are since Javi’s death and the passing of power between queens. Eaton discusses Lottie’s relationship with the wilderness, her more subdued presence in Episodes 1 and 2, and highlights yet another powerful performance from co-star Sophie Nélisse. Alves also talks about what Travis wants most now and who he’s most fearful of. Check out the full conversation in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.
‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 Is Starting Off Really Heavy

Both Lottie and Travis are struggling to manage their guilt.

PERRI NEMIROFF: When Season 3 kicks off, some time has passed, and I was wondering if you had any big burning questions for the showrunners to fill in that gap for yourself, so you knew where they needed to be when Episode 1 of Season 3 started?
COURTNEY EATON: It’s interesting. I feel like we went into Season 3 and I just felt settled already. I just knew that I was going to be a bit of a wallflower and that I was just going to be an observer. I don’t know why I knew that—maybe just the Lottie intuition—but I didn’t really have many questions going in. I knew where she left Season 2 and the guilt she was feeling in palming off the responsibility of leadership. She’s trying to rein it in.
KEVIN ALVES: For me, I didn’t have questions either because I think, first of all, in that first episode, they give us a really good understanding of what’s happened in between, but also, Travis is feeling grief. What’s new? [Laughs] He’s a tough guy. And you know that it’s piling and piling and piling on him. So I knew after Season 2 that it was going to be heavy, and it just was.
Keep an Eye Out for These Key Set Details in Season 3

Might need to do a re-watch …

Image via Paramount+

Before I start to dig into all those layers, I am really curious to hear about the production design because seeing a new set was really something special, and I tend to get really obsessed with tiny details. Are there any small details in that production design that perhaps people might miss the first time around, but they meant something to you or contribute to filling out their world?
EATON: I personally loved my hut. I love that it’s in the middle.
Which one is your hut?
EATON: Mine’s the one with almost the eye. I always looked at it as, like, the third eye. I don’t know. It was just like the perfect witch tent.
ALVES: At one point in the season, seeing you sit in it was so cool.
EATON: Yeah, I sit in it like the moon, kind of. It just feels right. I saw it, and I was like, “That’s mine, isn’t it?” And they were like, “Yes, we’ve had so much fun making it.”

1:24

Related

“She’s Kind of Unstoppable”: Sophie Nélisse Teases Shauna’s Arc in ‘Yellowjackets’ Season 3 [Exclusive]

“She’s got nothing else to lose.”

I like it even more now that you called it a witch tent.
ALVES: For me, there is an insert of it during that whole opening sequence at one point, there’s this really cool, like, ancient architecture book that you see. It’s either Bart [Nickerson] or Jonathan [Lisco] who brought it up, being like, “We’re keeping this right here so that people understand that you guys figured out how to do this with something. You had some guidance.”
EATON: Pretty impressive.
ALVES: It’s cool what we built, but they have that one shot of that architecture book just to help us along the way. The ancient architecture book. It’s there.
Lottie Is Going To Answer a Very Important Question This Season

Both characters are trying to cope with the repercussions of last season.

Image via Paramount+

To dig into their headspaces now, Courtney, you described her as a wallflower before. Can you dig a little deeper in terms of her place in the hierarchy? I do see the wallflower part, but it’s almost like she seems to have lost some confidence, but people are still listening to her and seem to respect her for the most part.
EATON: Talking with Bart and Ashley [Lyle] this season, they kind of described Lottie as like the Pope and then Natalie as like the State. I think she’s trying to blend in and take that pressure off, but she’s just someone who people naturally gravitate towards. And I think she comes into the season with a lot of guilt about what happened to Javi and how her words were misconstrued by Misty, and the pressure that she put on Shauna, and just that she doesn’t know who she is. Granted, what 16 or 17-year-old girl does? But I think that’s her main question of the season: is she a better version in the wilderness, or if she were to go home? And I think she answers that for herself this year.
Before I go for my other question, I’m actually going to throw that to you now, Kevin. This is the shortest question I wrote down in my mileong list of notes; what does Travis want this season?
ALVES: He really wants to go home. Like, you just know he does. He’s …
EATON: Resigned.
ALVES: Yeah. He’s so pulled back now. There’s a part of him that doesn’t feel connected to almost anyone anymore, and that’s really scary to be in that place. I do believe that almost every decision we see him make this year is in a hopeful, [last]-ditch effort that life’s not over yet for him. I always say this, but I believe that his will to live is so commendable with everything he’s gone through.
EATON: He’s lost half of his family.
ALVES: Everyone. So, that really sits with him all season, and it never goes away.

Image via Paramount+

I do want to follow up on that, as well, because this seems to be an evergreen Yellowjackets question that I hear new answers to each time we come back for another season; for Travis and for Lottie, who in Season 3 do they trust the most, and who do they fear the most?
ALVES: It’s so scary for Travis because I believe the person he trusts the most is also the one he comes to be fearful of the most, which is right here—Lottie. I do believe that at the opening of the season, that’s how he feels. I think he does trust her because he is trying to understand his feelings.
EATON: And you see them open up and be raw.
ALVES: They’re like kids for a whole second, and then it’s just not there anymore. His fear comes in really quick. And I do believe that, overall, he’s fearful of the unit more than one person. The unit of everyone, he cannot compete. There is no competition there. He is on his own.
EATON: I think the “person” that she trusts and distrusts the most this year is the wilderness. I think that is just her biggest enemy this year—until it’s not. Until it’s not. [Laughs]
I was wondering because there’s that early scene with the two of you where Travis says, “Don’t you hear it?” And she says, “It’s not real,” and of all people, I wouldn’t think Lottie would ever say, “No, that’s not real.”
EATON: She’s really struggling at the beginning of the season, I think, with where she stands with the wilderness.
A “Real Power Comes Through” Sophie Nélisse in Season 3

As if Season 2 wasn’t enough trauma …

Image via Paramount+

Now I want to tease what’s to come, and I’m going to get at it this way; you’ve been on this show for three seasons now. You know how talented all of your costars are, but I want to know, is there anything someone did in Season 3 that you would tell viewers, “Look out for that because you thought they were good, but you will not believe what they do in that episode?”
EATON: Oh my god, this season is so juicy, and there are so many moments that are, like, delicate to talk about. I think there’s a real power that comes through Sophie Nélisse this year. Also, she’s my best friend, so I’m just going to say it and plug her. [Laughs] But I think she just holds her own, and just brings this fear that is unexpected. You’re like, “Oh, you’re scary on another level.” There’s Lottie, and then there’s Shauna.
She’s scary! I saw her for a comedy at Sundance and it just made me feel good for her.
EATON: [Laughs] “You get some happiness!”
ALVES: For me, it’s Mari, Alexa [Barajas], and to see what’s to come with Mari. Because we’ve slowly gotten to know her over two seasons, and then to see her just come in with …

Image via Paramount+

EATON: So much heart.
ALVES: Yeah, there’s just so much in that character that we haven’t seen before coming, which I’m really excited for everyone to see.
The first two episodes of Yellowjackets Season 3 are available to stream on Paramount+ and Showtime. Subsequent episodes will be released on Sundays.

Yellowjackets

Release Date

November 14, 2021

Network

Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime

Showrunner

Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, Jonathan Lisco

Directors

Benjamin Semanoff, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Deepa Mehta, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Liz Garbus, Scott Winant, Eva Sørhaug, Jamie Travis

Writers

Liz Phang, Sarah L. Thompson, Ameni Rozsa