There Was So Much Death On Yellowjackets This Season, But There’s One In Particular I’ll Never Get Over

SPOILERS are ahead for the Yellowjackets Season 3 finale, which dropped on the 2025 TV schedule this past Friday!

Well… another season of Yellowjackets is over, and I’m starting to feel as traumatized as the high school soccer team-turned-cannibals, given recent events. The final episode of Season 3 offered up answers to a lot of the biggest questions we’ve had about Yellowjackets, like the identity of pit girl and the (real) antler queen. However, I just can’t move past one death (of many this season) that just doesn’t sit right with me.

Lauren Ambrose as Van and Hilary Swank as Melissa looking at each other in Yellowjackets, episode 9, season 3 — (Image credit: Showtime)

Why The Heck Did Yellowjackets Kill Off Sweet Van?

As if it wasn’t enough to leave us hanging with Van’s cancer diagnosis all season long, during the ninth episode, I was absolutely gutted when the series cut the character’s life short by having Hilary Swank’s Melissa kill her. I don’t know. The whole thing just felt unnecessary to me, even if it will keep the gears turning in terms of Taissa’s dark side really coming out more often.

Lauren Ambrose’s final moments as Van while sitting in the show’s eternal plane reflected my feelings about the whole thing. Why did she have to die so soon?

My thing is there are so many brutal elements Yellowjackets is juggling, like, you know, literal cannibalism? So, we need some good to keep moving forward, and Van provided that in a lot of ways.

One thing that kept me going this season was seeing Tai and Van rekindle their romance in the present day. Now I totally understand what Tawny Cypress meant when she told me during the Los Angeles press day that she and Ambrose “really relished” in telling the story, because, as it turns out, it was meant to be short-lived.

Alexa Barajas as Teen Mari in Yellowjackets, episode 10, season 3

(Image credit: Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME)

I’m Running Out Of Characters To Root For On Yellowjackets

Also, I need to remind you that Van’s death was on top of perhaps a record number of deaths this season.

After the Season 2 finale had us saying goodbye to Juliette Lewis’s Natalie, we’ve since lost adult Lottie in the present day and Coach Ben and Mari (aka pit girl) in the wilderness in the last season. Who do I have left to latch on to anymore? My list of comfort characters to help me get through this twisted series is honestly getting too small now that Van is out of the picture (in the present day, anyway).

At this point, it’s basically me wanting to see how Sophie Thatcher’s Natalie finds help and manages to get out (and convince her culty teammates to leave with her) and for Christina Ricci’s adult Misty and Elijah Wood’s Walter to solve more Yellowjackets mysteries again. Oh, and if Shauna’s husband Jeff dies next, I’m straight up rioting in the streets.

I know what I signed up for. Yellowjackets has been a pretty f-ed up series since the start, but Melissa killing Van just didn’t move the needle enough for me to find the heartbreak justified. It felt like more of a box to tick in order to put more chaos in motion between Tai, Shauna and Melissa.

However, I still want to know how the story goes on from here, so you know I’ll be tuning in for more if Season 4 happens.

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