‘Yellowjackets’ Stars on Finally Escaping the Wilderness in Final Season: “Feels Like a Completely Different Show”

The final season of Yellowjackets is here — and the girls are finally leaving the woods.

The series — which tracks dual timelines of a soccer team fighting for survival after they crash-land in the wilderness, as well as their adult selves still dealing with the trauma years later — has arrived at the point where the teenagers are rescued and return back to their high school lives. This is a dramatic change in the teen storyline — which has seen murder, cannibalism and an Antler Queen arise during their time off the grid.

“It felt like a completely different show. Even just acting with other actors; having a mom, being clothed in normal teenager clothing,” Sophie Nélisse, who plays the teen version of Shauna, told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s L.A. premiere on Wednesday. “It was sad because that’s the whole core of our show, for us, was this group and as fun as it was to each have our own storylines and our own paths, there was something very weird about not sharing these scenes with all of them at the same time.”

Sophie Thatcher, who plays teen Natalie, joked, “I miss the woods. I’m like, God, school? Get me out of here! Shooting in a high school was horrible. Looking up at the ceiling and the terrible florescent lighting. I will take the wilderness any day. Cover me in dirt. Anything to not go back to high school.” And Jasmin Savoy Brown, teen Taissa, confirmed, “It was weird. Even just physically, we were used to being dirty and nasty and we’re suddenly clean and we were filming with other actors for the first time in seven years; we had only filmed with each other.”

Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci and Tawny Cypress continue to lead the adult storyline, with Lynskey saying when she first read what was in store for the last season, “I thought: Oh my God, what are we doing? I thought: This is amazing. I thought: I’m terrified. It was a real journey” but “I like where it ended up.”

As for the teen storyline, Nélisse said, “I think it ends so beautifully. At least on our side, it ends with a very romantic, hopeful ending, which is completely the contrary of the entirety of the show.”

“For us, filming that scene on the very last day was very emotional because it’s really the only time you get to see these girls having fun together,” she continued. “We were all kind of locking eyes and we weren’t really supposed to cry in the scene but we kind of were, because we knew that it was the end of an era.”

But it is still Yellowjackets, after all, so there is sure to be plenty of darkness along the way, as Brown teased, “the conflict comes to a head this season and who will be final girl? Will there be final girl? I don’t know, you’ve got to watch!”