Yellowjackets Season 3 theories: Who will be the next survivor?

Yellowjackets is a show of mystery, so naturally many theories have begun popping up. Here are the most popular ideas for Season 3 onwards.

Yellowjackets Season 2 finally finished this week, and boy did it end in a blaze of glory – literally. We loved this new season, and you can read our coverage of it here.

As we can quote from our Episode 8 review, the show likes to leave its audience with a lot of questions: “How will Travis react to his brother’s death? Will Natalie still be on the menu? Where is Crystal’s body? What’s Walter planning? What’s going on with the cave that Ben’s found himself in? And will the adult Yellowjackets listen to Lottie’s suicidal demands?”

Many of these questions were answered in the finale, but there’s still plenty of the supernatural and mysterious to figure out. Because of this, fans have been concocting theories about what’s going to happen from Season 3 onwards. While none of these theories may come to pass, here’s the most popular so far.

Coach Ben is alive in modern day

It may seem like we’ve met all the survivors — , after all, their current numbers matches the number of figures we saw walking to the plane at the beginning of Season 2. However, the show may be tricking us. Remember when we thought Van hadn’t survived? Now, Season 3 will likely draw another survivor out, and many are guessing that it’ll be Coach Ben, who left the group at the end of Season 2.

@elle_josephine Replying to @Schizophrenic.NYC #yellowjackets#yellowjacketsshowtime#yellowjacketstheories#yellowjacketsben#yellowjacketsnatalie♬ original sound – Elle Josephine 📚📝⚖️

One fan in particular explains in a Tik Tok how Coach may not only have survived, but actually went into hiding, faking his own death so that the girls wouldn’t hunt him down and kill him, either for food or for revenge after supposedly burning down the cabin. Speaking of which…

Coach Ben and the fire

Paramount+

Season 2 ended with the cabin the group was staying in suddenly catching fire, but the source of said fire remains unconfirmed.

Many believe that Coach Ben is the one to do it. Mainly because he is last seen grabbing a box of matches outside the cabin, and looking at the girls in horror as they all appoint Natalie as their leader. It’s likely that he believed that the Yellowjackets were too far gone, or even worse, that they would try to kill him, and thus he took drastic action.

However, sporadic fires are not uncommon in this show. Remember Laura Lee and her teddy bear? The Wilderness has a way of using fire to prevent people from leaving its grasp. Perhaps it wants the Yellowjackets to retreat even further into savagery, and thus destroyed their home, and the last remnants of their civilization. We can only fear what this will bring out in the girls next season.

Van still believes in the Darkness, just like Lottie

Paramount+

Van became somewhat of a worrying character this season. It’s clear that she fully believes what Lottie says in the ’90s timeline and shows very little remorse about the deaths of others if it means her own survival. When we first meet her in adulthood, Van seems to have mellowed out and doesn’t buy into Lottie’s frame of thinking anymore. However, maybe she still does.

For starters, she won’t let the others leave Lottie’s compound before they explain everything to her. Secondly, once the Yellowjackets have prepared a fake hunt to placate Lottie while they call mental health services, Van convinces Tai to call the services off, saying only they can help Lottie.

This seems illogical, unless you consider the fact that Van could still very much be in the grip of the Darkness. It would explain her expressions when she sees Lottie for the first and last time, and considering how deep she got into it back in her teenage years, perhaps she’s just better at hiding her beliefs, rather than having gotten rid of them all together.

Van’s cancer will kill her because all best friends are doomed to die

Continuing on with Van, we discover this season that she only has a few months to live due to terminal cancer. Whether or not this is just her health failing or anything supernatural is one question, but fans are theorizing if she’ll miraculously survive or not.

Most assume that she won’t as she has already survived many instances where one logically couldn’t and, going into Season 3, perhaps her luck has run out.

See, it seems like the person everyone is closest to is destined to die. Shauna revered Jackie and she died. Natalie revered Travis and he died. Misty revered Crystal, then Natalie, and both died this season. Now, while Van and Taissa are obviously more than best friends, it’s clear that Taissa reveres Van. And thus, Van is seemingly doomed. If there’s one thing that this show likes to portray, it’s dangerous female relationships, and there’s arguably nothing more dangerous than cancer.

There are other survivors

Paramount+

Considering that the Yellowjackets are seemingly destined to split into clans, there would need to be a lot of humans to hunt. Not only that, but many assume that the hair attached to the Antler Queen’s cloak is that of the group’s victims. But, both of these factors create a logistical problem, as there doesn’t seem enough survivors to quantify. Therefore, some fans have theorized that there are more survivors out there, and they’re potentially the ones who carved the symbols.

There could even be extra survivors from the initial plane crash; when we look at how many people are in the above picture, we could guess that a group stayed near the plane, instead of going to the cabin with the other Yellowjackets, as that group seems much smaller.

On top of that, some have even theorized that there is a community or a town not too far away from where the girls are. Why else would there be a used cabin in the middle of the woods? True, it’s likely they would have been found by now if civilization wasn’t far away, but then again, they have to get rescued somehow and this could be a plausible way that they do.

There is no supernatural Darkness — Just trauma

The official plot of the show states: “Wildly talented high school girls’ soccer players descend into savage clans after their plane crashes in the remote northern wilderness. Twenty-five years later, they discover that what began in the wild is far from over. They brought the darkness back with them.”

From the moment we saw Lottie save her parents with a premonition and be labelled a schizophrenic, a concept has always been discussed: Is any of this real? We see cryptic symbols, birds fall from the sky, and teddy bears magically catch on fire, things which are hard to explain, and are ultimately chalked up to the supernatural concept of the Darkness.

However, while the girls believe that the Darkness of the wilderness latched onto them, perhaps it was always inside them. The girl’s backstories show how trauma and conflict was already a huge part of their lives. Perhaps it was hunger, PTSD, or just the sheer toxicity of being stuck with your frenemies for over a year – perhaps everything supernatural we’ve seen has been all in the girls’ heads. The Darkness has just been them, all along.

Natalie is the Antler Queen…but she won’t be the only one

Showtime

We discussed the Antler Queen and how it seems like Natalie has been chosen for the role in our Season 2 ending explained article, stating, “Some have theorized that the Queen isn’t a fixed person, and could either be the person the group plans to sacrifice or some kind of Dark entity. But obviously this lineage had to start somewhere – the Queen card could equal Antler Queen – and the position could easily change.”

It’s still a mystery who is under the cloak in the scenes we get in the show’s very first episode. Judging by height, it could be Coach Ben or Travis. Some have guessed that it’s Lottie, but right now we have no sure fire way of knowing. However, fans seem pretty unanimous on one thing…

Mari is (still) the Pit Girl

Paramount+

This theory has been the most popular amongst fans, and has been (somewhat) taken as gospel since the opening episode of Yellowjackets. See, in the very first scene, we watch as a girl with tan skin and long dark hair, dressed in a nightgown and Jackie’s iconic heart necklace, falls into a pit and becomes the next meal for the Yellowjackets.

Now, we do know that Jackie’s necklace has become something of a kill omen after we watched Shauna put it around Natalie before attempting to slit her throat. So, regardless of who the pit girl is, one thing is clear: You wear the heart, you get your heart eaten by the rest of the Yellowjackets.

There’s been so many theories at this point, and of course Reddit is swarming with them. Some seem more plausible than others, and the stars of Yellowjackets have even reacted to some absurd theories in an interview with Elle Magazine:

As for us, we’re mainly excited to see what’s going on with Tai and her other self, which will reportedly be a much bigger storyline in Season 3. Ultimately, there’s so many questions left after Season 2, and we can’t wait to find out the answers.

Yellowjackets Seasons 1 & 2 are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, which you can sign up for here.

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