How Yellowjackets Season 3’s Antler Queen Reveal Impacts Season 4 Addressed By Showrunners

This article contains spoilers for the Yellowjackets season 3 finale, “Full Circle.”Yellowjackets showrunners Ashley Lyle and Jonathan Lisco break down the true identity of the Antler Queen. The Showtime and Paramount+ mystery series follows a high school soccer team who were left stranded in the wilderness, depicting both their ordeal and how their actions will impact the present timeline. First teased in the pilot episode, the Antler Queen is the leader of the survivors after they have given in to their worst sides. The season 3 finale revealed that young Shauna Shipman (Sophie Nelisse) would be crowned as the Antler Queen.

Recently, Lyle and Lisco opened up about how the truth unfolded to Variety. While Lyle celebrated the performances of Nelisse and Melanie Lynskey as the past and present Shauna, Lyle stated that the truth had been hinted at through several of Shauna’s more troubling actions to date. Check out the showrunner’s response below:

Lyle: I think that it’s been really interesting for us as these last few episodes have dropped, because we’re getting a lot of questions about Shauna as a villain, and how shocking it is — particularly with Melanie Lynskey being adult Shauna and the inherent niceness that Melanie is so good at portraying. We like to think that, if you look back over the first three seasons, there are a lot of clues dropped that Shauna is maybe not as nice and kind and benevolent as maybe you would at first think. So, to our minds, this has been a very long, slow build towards Shauna as everything the Antler Queen represents, which is the most feral, the most animalistic, the most excited by that power that comes with being the leader and being out in the wilderness.

Later, Lisco hinted that Shauna accepting this part of herself could have major ramifications in a potential season 4, especially if it means exploring her dark side. Read the full response below:

Lisco: That’s exactly what’s great about a Season 4, actually, and we would love to explore that. It’s interesting, to me at least, that some of the audience is saying, “Wow, Shauna has gone so dark.” And, as Ashley said, the seeds were definitely sowed when she was doing all sorts of things, like killing a rabbit with a shovel — et cetera, et cetera — in the early stages. I feel like the word we used for it the other day was self-imprisonment. She was imprisoning herself in this domestic situation, and she was trying to quash all these impulses for many years, and now they have been unleashed.

But not only unleashed — she now has a self-perception that has changed, and she’s able to embrace some of these as an intrinsic part of her character in a way that was not able to do before. So, to answer your question — super exciting, I think, is the answer.

How Yellowjackets Built Up To Season 3’s Antler Queen Reveal

Shauna Quickly Embraced The Darker Potential Of Their Situation

The Yellowjackets season 3 finale became one of the most pivotal chapters thus far. Not only did it catch up to the pilot’s glimpse into the future while ushering in the final act of the Wilderness storyline, but it also could be a point of no return for Shauna’s character. Despite losing friends and spilling blood to keep their past hidden, season 2 wrapped up the blackmailing mystery and offered those who survived a chance to move on, as Melissa (Hilary Swank) exemplified. However, something had pulled Shauna back into her darker side.

Shauna may not have been the instigator of many unfortunate deeds that pushed the present storyline forward, but she has undoubtedly reveled in it after falling into a monotonous lifetime. As the series progressed, she responded more enthusiastically to the growing chaos, justifying her actions as a defense of her loved ones. However, with Shauna’s family having gone into hiding and her friends distancing from her, nothing can hold the Antler Queen back from bringing a new reign of terror.

Our Thoughts On Yellowjackets’ Antler Queen Reveal

Nothing May Be Left To Hold Back Shauna’s Darker Tendencies

As one of the first characters audiences were introduced to, many Yellowjackets viewers immediately grew attached to Shauna in both the past and present storylines. Given everything she had gone through, her abrasiveness was understandable and sympathetic. However, as her time in the Wilderness was further explored, Shauna was shown to have a much more manipulative and abusive side, even though she framed herself as the pragmatic survivor in her writing despite her on-screen deeds. However, with present-day Shauna accepting her darker side and Lyle and Lisco teasing a villainous turn, the worst may be yet to come.

Source: Variety

Yellowjackets

7/10

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