YellowjacketsCast Breaks Down That Intense Trial in Season 3 and Why This Is a 'Turning Point' for the Show (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

From Left: Steven Krueger and Samantha Hanratty on ‘Yellowjackets’.Photo:Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

Warning: This story contains spoilers fromYellowjacketsseason 3, episode 4.

Ever since thetwo-part premiere for season 3, there’s been a divide growing among the teenage survivors onYellowjackets.

More specifically, Sophie (Sophie Nélisse) has been pulling away from the others, including the newly appointed leader Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Van (Liv Hewson), while Lottie (Courtney Eaton) has focused her time on helping Travis (Kevin Alves) connect to the wilderness.

Episode 4 finally saw the tensions among the group explode after they were all forced to come together as Coach Ben (Steven Krueger), who was found after kidnapping and then releasing Mari (Alexa Barajas), is put on trial for burning the cabin in season 2.

Unfolding over nearly the entire past timeline of episode 4, the trial sees Misty defending Ben against Taissa while Natalie serves as the judge and the rest of the group as witnesses and voting members of the jury.

While Ben is adamant he did not burn down the cabin — explaining that he was afraid of what the group had become — he wasn’t able to disprove that he didn’t. Eventually a split vote among the jury is recounted until the majority sides with Sophie, and the power shifts back in her favor.

While speaking with PEOPLE, the young stars open up about what this moment in the series — which arrives at the halfway point for season 3 — means for the past timeline and what it was like to film such a large group scene.

The cast of ‘Yellowjackets’ in season 3, episode 4.Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

Hewson, 29, says the moment is “a big old episode,” and notes, “I think that episode is a good reminder of how young these characters are. They’re babies.”

Hanratty, 29, believes Misty “takes it very seriously and wants to win, wants to win for herself, wants to win for Ben, who she loves very deeply, wants to win for Natalie, who she’s seeing this blossoming friendship with and she sees that Natalie cares for Ben as well.”

“So, she’s wanting the outcome to be him to survive,” Hanratty adds.

Krueger, 35, thinks “the guilty verdict was maybe to be expected,” and admits, “I’m not sure that he held out much hope for anything else.”

Meanwhile, Brown, 30, is certain that the trial itself is “definitely a shift.”

“I think it’s a scary moment,” Brown says. “I think at first, Tai feels vindicated because she won. And then, it’s perhaps a bit scary because, it’s like, ‘Wait, what did I win? And do I really believe everything I am fighting for and against? Or did I just wanna win? Is it a little bit of both?’ "

She adds, “It brings up a lot of questions.”

For Alves, 33, the moment was “a turning point for the show.” He adds, “The entire group felt like one unit and the trial ended that unit for good. There will always be two sides to this story no matter what now — and that’s a really interesting dynamic to have between the group for the rest of the season.”

“In a very subliminal way, I think Shauna keeps planting these like little seeds that she has control over the group more than Natalie does. The power dynamic will slowly start to shift her way,” Nélisse, 24, says.

Thatcher, 24, echoes Nélisse’s sentiment, saying, “You see a shift in the power dynamics too. You see that Shauna really does have that power through manipulation rather than reasoning or fairness or any sense of believing in human good. You just see that manipulation can get you so far when you really are susceptible and everyone’s really vulnerable right now.”

Hanratty chimes in, noting that “it’s interesting because it’s always been the wilderness that has chosen things, at least for the most part. When they’ve done really bad things, they’ve kind of always given it to the wilderness and this is the first time that it’s them. Whether or not you believed in the wilderness, they are having to make a decision at the end of the day.”

“It’s also interesting that with the decision to put him on trial and the verdict being guilty, we have to decide what to do with him afterwards,” Hewson says of what comes next. “Like, it’s a big responsibility that the group assumes and that is scary.”

“I think it’s a very interesting emotional point in Shauna’s life as well, because I think it’s probably, when you think about it, she sentences what may be an innocent man to his death,” Nélisse offers. “And I think it’s a line that she’s crossed that I don’t think she’ll ever be able to forgive herself for. And so I think that might be one of the moments that will haunt her the most for the rest of her life.”

Adding to that, Eaton, 29, says, “I think as an actor it was a challenge because I knew what the outcome was going to be and I, it’s not that I didn’t agree with it, but I just had to come to a realization of why she flips. I think it’s that she sees as she’s on this journey to find who she is in the wilderness, she sees something reflected in Shauna that sways her more, and she’s willing to sacrifice Ben to find out what that is and who she is, which is a big moment. And she knows the power that she also holds when she sways.”

“I remember reading the script for the trial episode and thinking, ‘Ooh, this is challenging because the episode could be incredibly boring,’ " Krueger admits. “It’s just a lot of talking, you know? It’s just like 30 pages worth of talking throughout the entire episode. And that can be a little bit dicey, I think.”

Brown says, “It was fun and scary because we wanna do a good job.”

“We shot the whole thing in sequence over the course of that week. It’s a big week. So, it was very theatrical ‘cause we were moving through it in real time,” Hewson says.

“It was like theater for all of us: totally big monologues and getting to watch and interact with characters that maybe I wouldn’t normally,” she continues, pointing to Tai and Mari sharing a scene together.

“Thank God we had Jennifer Morrison,” Krueger says of the director. “It was the first time she directed our show and I think everybody unanimously agreed that she has been one of the best directors we’ve had. She figured out so many amazing ways to keep things kind of dynamic and flowing and interesting just with the way that she shot it. There are so many subliminal things that I think the audience will pick up on that they don’t even realize that that kind of shifts their mood and their perspective throughout the whole thing.”

“The trial episode really is so layered and incredible, and Jennifer Morrison did such an incredible job of finding each separate character’s layers and where they stood throughout the trial,” Eaton adds.

Continuing his praise for the actress-turned-director, Krueger says, “It just kept it flowing. It kept it interesting. So thank God we just happened to get her for that episode.”

Before Hanratty concludes, she did reveal one major tease to come: an unseen moment from the trial. “It was, unfortunately, I will say I’m so bummed ‘cause my favorite monologue was cut from the episode. It was the closing statements,” she says. “I was just bummed ‘cause I was really looking forward to everybody hearing what Misty and Tai had to say at the end.”

Hanratty adds, “But I think there’s a good reason for it, and I’m curious about what is gonna happen.”

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

New episodes ofYellowjacketsseason 3 debut Fridays on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME before airing on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

source: people.com