Simone Kessell as Lottie, Sarah Desjardins as Callie Sadecki and Melanie Lynskey as Shauna in Yellowjackets, episode 3, season 3, streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, 2025

Photo: Kailey Schwerman | Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

This article contains spoilers through Yellowjackets season 3 episode 4.

Yellowjackets’ most recent death has surprised fans and the cast alike. Season 3 episode 4 “12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis” ended with the reveal that adult Lottie (Simone Kessell) had been found dead in the present at the foot of some creepy looking stairs. We don’t yet know how she died, whether it was death by suicide or someone pushed her down the stairs, but if you left the episode feeling like this scene was oddly familiar, you aren’t the only one.

Fans have noticed that the stairs we see Lottie’s body near at the end of this episode bear a shocking resemblance to the stairs that teen Lottie (Courtney Eaton) sees herself on during her baptism by Laura Lee (Jane Widdop) in season 1. In the episode “Saints,” Lottie agrees to let Laura Lee baptize her after she starts having visions, hoping for some sort of outside force to help guide what she’s seeing. While she’s under the water, she finds herself in some sort of industrial looking hallway, seemingly underground. Eventually she approaches a set of stairs lined and illuminated with candles.

As she comes back to consciousness, she sees Laura Lee’s face surrounded by light and an explosion in the sky behind her. We already know that this foreshadowed Laura Lee’s death in the airplane later that season, but now it seems as though this moment also foreshadowed Lottie’s eventual death.

For a while it seemed like this was just another one of Lottie’s visions. However, now it seems like too much of a coincidence to ignore.

In the vision, teen Lottie is wearing a white nightgown. Adult Lottie was also wearing a white nightgown when she died. Teen Lottie is on a staircase lined with candles, a makeshift altar. Adult Lottie is lying at the foot of a similar altar, all of the candles lining the stairs melted and blown out.

As quick as fans were to notice and appreciate this attention to detail and callback to season 1, many were also upset by Lottie’s sudden death. Simone Kessell even felt as though her death was “premature,” hoping to have the opportunity to explore more of adult Lottie’s psyche this season after her introduction last season. “To have that just cut off didn’t feel good,” Kessell tells Variety.

“I was pretty brokenhearted, because it felt like it had come to an end just when I felt Lottie was coming into her own. I was excited that season 3 would take her somewhere interesting, and unfortunately, they just decided that storyline was no longer,” Kessell says. “I guess Lottie’s death then serves as an investigation for Misty to be Citizen Detective, and discover how Lottie passes, what happened — and everyone’s a suspect.”

But even though fans and actors alike may be disappointed by adult Lottie’s abrupt end, Kessell is correct about it adding to the mystery this season. Now the survivors may have to band together to find out how Lottie’s death came to pass, and if one of them might be next.

We will have to wait until episode 10 to find out for sure what really happened to Lottie, according to Kessell, but hopefully it will be worth the wait.

Having one of teen Lottie’s visions come to pass seasons later is a bold move, and we can’t wait to see how many more might come true over the course of the series. It’s unfortunate that Simone Kessell’s time on the show has pretty much come to an end, aside from her season finale appearance, but her time as adult Lottie has only added more intriguing layers to the character that we will hopefully get to see unpacked as her death is investigated.