‘Yellowjackets’ star on that surprise kiss

Warning: This article contains spoilers from the first two episodes of Yellowjackets season 3, “It Girl” and “Dislocation.”

One thing is obvious on Yellowjackets: Teen Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is pissed.

While grappling with the grief of losing her baby, she’s found herself growing more and more tired of the people around her. She hates how Van (Liv Hewson) paints a pretty picture of what their lives have been since the winter. She hates that she feels like she’s suffered the most of anyone. She hates that they chose Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) as their leader over her. And she just generally hates Mari (Alexa Barajas).

“She’s had her fair share of crying, now she’s just angry at the world for taking so much from her,” Nélisse tells Entertainment Weekly. “She can’t forgive herself so she’d rather isolate herself and put up that fence instead of having to actually open up to anyone. It’s just so unfair what she’s had to undergo that I don’t think she is capable of feeling sadness at this point. I think she’s on autopilot and just wants to be angry.”

But in the final moments of season 3, episode 2, something unexpected happened: She made a new connection when she kissed Melissa (Jenna Burgess).

“I was surprised by that moment just because Shauna is so not in that head space, I feel like. And because she has that attitude of, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, leave me alone,’” Nélisse says. “I’m shocked but also not that much because there have been hints of Shauna’s sexuality.”

Melanie Lynskey, who plays Adult Shauna, shares a similar sentiment, saying, “Sophie and I were both like, ‘She’s a big gay.’ We were like, ‘Who do you think she hooked up with in the wilderness?’ And we thought Taissa [Jasmin Savoy Brown] but Taissa seems pretty committed. So we were just trying to figure it out. We always had a feeling and I don’t know if subconsciously we gave that to the writers or if they had told us something at some point that made us feel that. So neither of us were really that surprised.”

But for Nélisse, the moment is less about Shauna’s sexuality and more about what she needs in the wilderness at this time. “It’s not even about her coming out as gay or bisexual or whatever. That’s not the point of the storyline,” Nélisse says. “It’s what she needs deep down inside of her core. She needs to be loved for who she is and to be held and to be told that it’s okay and it’s not her fault and to have someone relieve her of all of her guilt. But I think because she has so much guilt, she’s not able to love herself, therefore, she can’t really love anyone else. And so in that moment she’s conflicted, and I think it’ll kind of become a weird power dynamic where she’ll kind of use her to make herself feel better and also use her to her advantage to get what she wants out the group. She’s just very twisted and this will just complicate her even more.”