Stefani Pappas
Spoilers for Yellowjackets below.
Before the third season of Yellowjackets hit our screens, the official trailer hinted at the fates of our beloved characters with the song “Bodies” by Drowning Pool. Featuring the lyrics “let the bodies hit the floor,” the soundtrack was a devastating clue about the bloodshed to come. Adult Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) are among the season’s victims, but the most devastating blow hit during the season’s penultimate episode, season 3 episode 9 “How the Story Ends,” when Adult Van (Lauren Ambrose) is stabbed to death by her former teammate Melissa (guest star Hilary Swank).
In the episode, Van, Taissa (Tawny Cypress), and Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), descend upon Melissa’s idyllic suburban life in North Carolina to confront her about the tape delivered to Shauna’s home in New Jersey, but things turn sour after Shauna bites off a piece of her ex-girlfriend’s arm (yes, really). Melissa retaliates by closing the chimney vent that allows oxygen into the house, causing Shauna and Taissa to pass out. Van, who is imbued with “inherent goodness” according to Ambrose, pulls her teammates out of harm’s way, but pauses, knife in hand, when it comes to saving the estranged Melissa.
In “How the Story Ends,” cancer-ridden Van’s battle between faith and science comes to a head. All season, she has played along with Tai’s belief that a human sacrifice will give “It” (a.k.a. the wilderness) the ammo it needs to keep Van alive, just like they believed when they were teenagers. But in Van’s final moments, it’s revealed she may not actually believe in that logic when she hesitates and puts the knife down. Melissa swiftly picks it up, asking “Isn’t this what ’It’ wants?” using the belief system of the wilderness against Van and pushing the blade into her. When Tai and Shauna find Van’s body, it’s swimming in a pool of her own blood.
Over a Zoom call, Ambrose broke down Van’s shocking death for ELLE.com, and discussed why Van flinched at killing Melissa, what it was like sharing the screen with her character’s younger self, and what she thinks lies ahead for Taissa.
Van’s death was emotional—even though it has been hinted at for a while, it didn’t go down as expected. How far in advance did you know she’d die this season and what was your reaction?
At the beginning of the season, [the writers] decided that it would end in Van’s demise. I remember they weren’t sure exactly how but they were saying, a lot of bodies are gonna drop. That was their push for the season and I became very protective over the idea of Van’s death. I’ve never died on screen. And I knew people were gonna be upset, so I knew we had to tell the story well.
Darko Sikman
What was it like working with Hilary Swank, whose character Melissa kills Van?
It was a super intense, weird day. It was this crazy, long scene, and it was one of those days as an actor where I was like, how am I going to do this? There were oxygen tanks and carbon monoxide poisoning, and people are getting tied up and dragged out and stabbed.
[Swank] is one of the all-time greats. Her work inspired me to be an actor, so I was very grateful to have been handed to this lovely actor to get through the bonkersness of the scene. It was important to me, as the authority on Van, to make it feel earned and as real as possible. On the day, I know in my heart that we got to something very cool and crackling and really weird. It’s a very intimate thing, I think, to kill a person. Being there for the final act of this person’s life is inherently pretty intense, and I think that came through in our work together.
The episode is bookended with Van’s visions of her younger self telling her to listen to Taissa and that surviving was never the reward. How did you interpret these layered messages and what was it like to have both versions of Van on set at the same time?
I suppose they’re saying that love is the reward. Saving your true love is the reward. These two women are connected through time and space, and were able to live their fullest expression of their sexuality as kids in the wilderness. But Van might also be hinting at Tai’s split personality since she was helping her reintegrate.
Liv [Hewson, who plays Teen Van] and I talked a lot about the character. I told them, I’m sad that we’re not working together. I hope we get to do some scenes together. Liv was driven enough to suggest that and it ended up happening—we got to actually work together as actors. It’s a pretty intimate and weird assignment to share a role with someone, so it was kind of amazing. I’m a very big fan of Liv’s and how they created this character from nothing. Van wasn’t necessarily supposed to survive [in the teen timeline], but because of their really beautiful, open, loving, living portrayal as a teenager and the story of this sort of ultimate survivor, I ended up with a cool job for a little while.
Van has been going along with Tai’s ideas about a sacrifice saving Van. But in the end, Van is not able to sacrifice Melissa for the cause. Why do you think that is?
One of the most important things about her is that Van has this inherent goodness. Part of what’s so challenging in the present day timeline is contending with some of the stuff that happened and how far they went as kids. How could they kill each other when they needed each other out there in the wilderness? I just believe in Van’s inherent goodness, and that’s what Liv radiates as the younger version of the character. But I don’t know why Melissa kills Van—that part didn’t make sense to me but maybe something happened out there in the woods that made Melissa kill her.
Jasmin Savoy Brown and Liv Hewson on ‘Yellowjackets’A lot of fans online thought Van had secrets and was up to something nefarious. Now that we know her fate, what do you want to say to them?
I didn’t think that. I believed what was written on the page, mostly because I feel like we get to spend so little time with each character that whatever is happening tends to be the truth.
It really was a woman dealing with cancer and dealing with the mystery of illness as it comes and goes, and wondering what she should believe in. Should she believe in this thing that may or may not have been real and saved her in the past? It was the story of a very human person dealing with a very human problem, who is done in by her inherent goodness.
Tawny Cypress told Deadline that “Van needs to run away” from Tai—do you think Tai can be blamed for Van’s fate?
Yeah. [Laughs.] I think Van probably should have stayed in her video store, with the cute little college girls that adored her in the college town where she ran her business, and gotten some cancer treatment. I think that probably would have been a healthier path.
Stefani Pappas
Where do you think Tai, who is already battling some inner demons, goes from here?
I don’t know. [The writers] abandoned Tai’s storyline about being an elected state senator and her wife and kid—that stuff had to go out the window for [the Van storyline]. It became about Tai and Van, so maybe they can get back to whatever they were up to originally with that character.
Do you think Tai’s “other self” is going to be more prominent now that Van isn’t there to balance her out?
Tawny calls her “Felicia.” Maybe she’ll go off the rails. Van did help balance her out, but I don’t know if she’ll be cured forever.
Tawny Cypress Weighs in on TaissaBefore we go, can you eulogize Van and this role?
I admire her lack of vanity. She didn’t care about covering up any of that scarring, she wore that with pride. And I admire her goodness. I was honored to get to inhabit that character for the time that I did, to try to create who she was as an adult with the stuff that she dealt with, and all of the things that she maybe didn’t want to look at anymore. She’s released into her goodness. It reminded me of when I played Juliet [in Romeo & Juliet]—Tai and Van are star-crossed, and can’t really be anywhere except in the wilderness. Van was living on borrowed time.
On TV, you don’t necessarily always get the luxury of knowing what ends up happening to your character, so I feel very grateful to know what happened to Van in her final act and her final moments. There’s a certain satisfaction in that. Closure.
What I take away from this show and this job are the moments of being on set with all of these women my own age where we’re not up for the same role—instead, we’re working together, collaborating as colleagues and as actors, and spending our time off of set sharing stories about life and work in show business and as working mothers. It was a very rich experience for me. That’s my treasure.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Simone Kessell Talks Lottie and ‘Yellowjackets’