SPOILERS: This post contains details about the Yellowjackets, Season 3 episode ‘How the Story Ends’

Another one bites the dust this weekend on Yellowjackets, and it’s a particularly devastating loss for longtime fans.

Ahead of the Season 3 penultimate episode ‘How the Story Ends’, Deadline caught up with Liv Hewson about bidding farewell to the adult version of their character Van and the “beautiful meta” moment they shared with counterpart Lauren Ambrose while filming the character’s death scene.

“Lauren actually brought me into the room, into the kitchen, while they were filming Melissa [played by Hilary Swank] killing Van,” recalled Hewson. “So, I’m physically off camera, behind the kitchen island, in the room with them. And that was a very profound experience, actually. It was very emotional. And episode nine was full of experiences like that, honestly. It was like layers upon layers of this sort of meta narrative experience as an actor and then as half of this character.”

In addition to being on set for the tragic scene, Hewson got to share the screen with Ambrose as the adult and teen versions of their character met in some foreboding dream sequences leading up to her death.

“I consider myself very lucky to have been able to have that experience, because Lauren’s such an amazing actor and this character is so special to me,” said Hewson. “It was significant to get to get to work with Lauren and to get to have a moment of this character sitting with herself in the final moments of her life.”

Meanwhile, Van’s death at the hands of Swank’s Melissa leaves an opportunity to explore the potentially tumultuous history between their characters with Hewson and Jenna Burgess.

Noting that they’ve already imagined the pair had “a sort of ‘baby masc’ sibling identification in the wilderness,” Hewson said, “I think there is a real opportunity for heartbreak there.”

“The jokey version of it is that it’s this horrible intracommunity infighting that ends in murder, right? Or there’s the version of it where these two probably have something specific and interesting going on,” they continued. “And then we know where it ends up, and it ends up in this really tragic space. So, I am certainly bearing that in mind as we go forward, and I think Jenna is as well.”

Read our interview with Yellowjackets‘ Liv Hewson about Van’s death, working with Lauren Ambrose and what lies ahead for their character.

DEADLINE: First of all, it’s a total bummer that Van dies. The scene where Adult Van is on the plane and she’s like, “I die?” I was basically thinking the same thing. 

LIV HEWSON: That scene’s quite meta, it’s really interesting. 

DEADLINE: There were some dream sequences with you leading up to the death that kind of hinted at it. Tell me a little bit about filming that.

HEWSON: Well, the sort of dream-esque scenes between the two of us came out of a desire that Lauren and I had to work together, before she left, in the time that we had left. It came out of a conversation the two of us had, it was her suggestion initially, actually, which was like, “Well, it’d be nice for us to work together before this happens.” And there’s already a beautiful precedent in this show, which was a real gift to us, of these counterparts of each of these characters being able to be with each other in a dream space or in a sort of liminal space. That sort of like magic realism-y framework did us a favor in that we were able to be like, “Hey, like could we maybe work together?” And then, the writers were really down to do that, which I was very grateful for, and I consider us very lucky. I consider myself very lucky to have been able to have that experience, because Lauren’s such an amazing actor and this character is so special to me. It was significant to get to get to work with Lauren and to get to have a moment of this character sitting with herself in the final moments of her life. And it was really sad, and it sort of reminded me that the show is really sad. It was so confronting initially, and then I was like, “Right, the show is sad. That’s right, I forgot. OK, yeah, makes sense.”

DEADLINE: How far ahead did you know that Van was going to die? 

HEWSON: I found out that Van would be dying towards the beginning of filming Season 3, and it was one of those things where I was very level-headed and professional, and then I sort of went home and had my little grieving moment with it to myself. And then I just really wanted to make sure that we executed that storyline to the fullest. That was the most important thing for me, and the showrunners were really generous with me in talking about what they were thinking and where they were planning on taking it. So, filming this season was very intense, and it was so significant to me that I knew that’s where we were headed, and I knew that was coming. So, I feel like I really went on a stages-of-grief journey with it as we were filming the season, and then by the time we got to filming episode nine, I was just so grateful to be able to share that with Lauren and to get to say goodbye to Van together. 

DEADLINE: Well, I loved those scenes that you did together. It was a nice treat to see you two in the same scene. I also feel like Van’s death was just super poignant because she was so intent on wanting to live while she was sick and then… Damn Melissa! 

HEWSON: I know! And on a really beautiful meta level, when Lauren and Hilary were shooting that, Jenna and I were there. We went to set that day. So, Jenna went to talk to Hilary about Melissa. and then I went because I wanted to be there, for and with Lauren, as this was happening. So, that was kind of crazy, actually, for the two of us to physically be there watching those two play out that scene, and then for myself, knowing later that a big part of the story is that I, as sort of dream universe young Van, I am watching in the plane, it was wild. And then, Lauren actually brought me into the room, into the kitchen, while they were filming Melissa killing Van, so I’m physically off camera, behind the kitchen island, in the room with them, and that was a very profound experience, actually. It was very emotional. And episode nine was full of experiences like that, honestly. It was like layers upon layers of this sort of meta narrative experience as an actor and then as half of this character. 

DEADLINE: And it was funny because I saw that behind-the-scenes video of all of you at Coach’s funeral, and Jasmin [Savoy Brown] pretty accurately said they’re like killing all the gays off this season.

HEWSON: Talking about gay people on the show, the dynamic between Van and Melissa, I think off the back of this is really fascinating. Because as an audience, we’ve just met Melissa in the present, and it’s super unclear what her relationship with these women now is, and I’m fascinated to sort of explore that. And then for Jenna and myself, we always sort of joked that Van and Melissa probably have a sort of “baby masc” sibling identification in the wilderness. And I don’t know if we’ll ever contextually get there, but it was really interesting for the two of us to speak about the difference between Van and Melissa in the wilderness, as it stands now, and then Van and Melissa as we know where it ends up. Because I think there is a real opportunity for heartbreak there, but also, the jokey version of it is that it’s this horrible intracommunity infighting that ends in murder, right? Or there’s the version of it where these two probably have something specific and interesting going on. And then we know where it ends up, and it ends up in this really tragic space. So, I am certainly bearing that in mind as we go forward, and I think Jenna is as well. 

DEADLINE: Yeah, I definitely think that’s an interesting dynamic to explore. Just because even being from a small town, and especially in the 90s, I feel like you have that unspoken bond with the only other gay kid in your school.

HEWSON: A hundred percent.

DEADLINE: So, when you also go through a plane crash and surviving the wilderness together, there’s probably even more of a bigger bond… I was gonna make a joke earlier about all the lesbian-on-lesbian crime this season.

HEWSON: Well… [LAUGHS]

DEADLINE: But it’s also funny when you think about it, that’s also, at her core, what Other Tai is.

HEWSON: Internalized lesbian-on-lesbian crime.

DEADLINE: Yeah! I’m also interested in what you think about Tai not wanting to leave the wilderness because of the homophobia of their time. 

HEWSON: Well, as myself, watching it as an audience member from an external point of view, I think it does make a lot of sense. There’s the fear of what going back will do to their relationship, which we know to be true later, we know that they did break up. And part of the difficulty of them coming back and being out was the fracture of that relationship. We haven’t gotten there yet, but we know it’s coming. And then also, Taissa faces a degree of respectability politics that Van doesn’t in the same way, as a young Black woman, and then she grows up to be somebody who’s public-facing in a way that the other Yellowjackets don’t choose to be. So, I think that is a really fascinating aspect of Taissa’s character, that she is so much more aware of the risk of public scrutiny than the others. What’s heartbreaking is that Van’s relationship to public scrutiny is not about her being out. Her fear of public scrutiny is like, what it would mean for people to discover that we killed and ate people out in the wilderness. But an aspect of Van’s character that I keep coming back to is that she is not a “big picture” person. She’s very much like, “What’s directly in front of me right now? Her trauma responses are incredibly reactive, like, “What do I need to tell myself in order to survive? What do I need to do in order to get past this week or this month or this traumatic experience?” And something that I’ve always been fascinated by in regards to Van and Taissa’s relationship is that they sort of constantly circle each other, but it’s so rare that they’re on the same page about any core way forward. And that’s sort of the beautiful heartbreak of drawing between point A and point B with Van and Taissa because we know where they end up, and we know that it’s very different from where we meet them. And I think this season, the work that Jasmin and I got to do, you’re starting to see where the cracks are appearing for the two of them, and then Lauren’s performance gives me such a clear roadmap of where this person ends up. It’s fascinating, I feel like I could draw diagrams. 

DEADLINE: And can you tell me about where I guess Van falls in the divide between the girls in these past few episodes?

HEWSON: Well, our experience of Van as an audience is that she’s been all-in on the ideology of the wilderness and completely head-down involved in it. And then, when we meet Lauren’s Van, she wants nothing to do with it, has gone off on her own, wishes to be completely separate from that experience. And so I always knew that at some point, there would be an ideological switch for Van. I wasn’t sure exactly when, and it was sort of a fun surprise to find it happening this early because I think that everything turns on its head completely for Van with the arrival of the frog scientists. It’s sort of like when like an adult knocks on the door at a sleepover and you’re gossiping in a way that you shouldn’t be, and it’s like, “Oh shit, wait! We’re doing something wrong!” The possibility of going home hadn’t entered Van’s mind before the arrival of those people, I think, and the arrival of those people shocks her back into reality in so many ways. Because she suddenly realizes like where they are, what they’ve been doing and how young they are, and the fact that they are gonna go home and grow up, and getting out of here is possible. So she has this realization that she’s been telling herself the wrong story about their time in the wilderness and about what she has to do to survive. And that changes everything. So, that change really does start to sow the seeds of where she ends up in adulthood, the potential breakdown of her and Taissa’s relationship, her sense of shame and responsibility. Those things started to come into play at the back end of Season 3, sooner than I was expecting, but it was cool to get to do. 

DEADLINE: Is there anything you can tell me about what you’re looking forward to after they inevitably get rescued?

HEWSON: Well, one thing that I think about all the time — that I’ve always thought about because I think like the first mention of it is in the pilot — there has always been a strong insinuation that when the Yellowjackets made it back to society, they became tabloid fodder. And I think that’s fascinating, particularly in terms of Van or what that would mean for myself as an actor. I think about that a lot, and when Lauren joined the show, her and I talked about that a lot. I remember thinking about it almost like when the kids get back from Narnia, and they have to like be children again, and the sort of like dissonance of that, the separation of the experience that they had. And for Van and Taissa, they’ve been able to be out in the wilderness, and coming back invites to scrutiny on their relationship that they don’t handle in the same way. And for Van, she gets to go home, but her home life isn’t good. Everybody gets to go home, everybody gets to come back to where they’re from, but they come back and it’s the late ’90s in New Jersey, and they’re young women who’ve been through something horrible. And then they become part of a media circus, potentially. And somebody like Van, who’s a young butch lesbian with visible scars on her face.,I don’t imagine that’s a media landscape that would have been very kind to her, of kind to any of them. So, I think about that a lot, and if I had one wish as an actor, I hope we get to sketch some of that out a little. I think that would be really exciting. 

DEADLINE: I always see in the theme song reel, the home video footage of y’all drinking in a parking lot and throwing up. Is that supposed to be from when you get back? I’m imagining it’s like they’ve gone through all this trauma, and now they’re just trying to make sense of it in their hometown and they’re just getting drunk together because they’re the only ones who know what they’ve been through. 

HEWSON: Oh, I had never thought about it like that. I like that. I like that possibility. Those images in the opening sequence, I always took as thematically threading the horror and trauma of being stranded in the wilderness with the horror and trauma of being an adolescent, period. But I think either is really possible. I mean, when they get back, I don’t know if they’d all be partying together. But then again, who else are they gonna do it with? Nobody else knows what they’ve been through.

DEADLINE: At least until they go off to college, right?

HEWSON: Exactly. God, can you imagine having to go off to university? No thank you.