Warning: SPOILERS for Yellowjackets season 3, episode 9, "How the Story Ends."

Yellowjackets' past timeline hit hard this season, leaving Van as one of the few characters in the series with a strong moral com and penchant for comion. It was precisely that attribute which led to her demise, as opting not to stab Melissa (Hilary Swank) meant she was the one to get stabbed instead.

Van was not the only Yellowjackets survivor we lost in season 3, as adult Lottie was also murdered in episode 4. "How the Story Ends," helmed by returning director Ben Semanoff, offers a tantalizing moment hinting at the identity of her killer. Misty is ensconced in the home of her sometimes boyfriend and fellow citizen detective, Walter, when she sees something revolutionary among the files he cloned from Lottie's phone. As we mourn the loss of one survivor, therefore, we are on the brink of getting justice for another.

ScreenRant interviewed Semanoff about his work on Yellowjackets season 3, episode 9 — especially when it comes to bringing Van's arc to its abrupt conclusion. The director also shared what was really on the phone Misty was looking at and, perhaps most maddeningly, what he thinks Shauna's deal is in both timelines.

What Photo Did Misty See On That Phone & How Does It Connect To Lottie' Killer?

Director Ben Semanoff Reveals Yellowjackets Script & Set Secrets

Many theories have arisen about Lottie’s killer throughout Yellowjackets season 3, with theories ranging from Shauna to Walter, but Misty seems to uncover an important piece of evidence when looking through the material cloned from Lottie’s phone. As a curiosity, I asked the director what actress Christina Ricci was actually looking at, and how she was directed to react. The answer, while not a spoiler, was particularly interesting.

Semanoff confessed that “in the script, it doesn't say” what she’s looking at. As a director, however, he was informed of what the reveal would be. “Although I'm pretty certain it isn’t answered in the script, I know what the answer to that mystery is.” But as important as that piece of information is to his role of eliciting a certain reaction from Misty, “what's more important is if what's on that screen needs to be teed up in other ways.”

"Personally, I don't particularly love turns that aren't substantiated by anything else that's happened,” the director explained. “Throughout the episode or throughout the season, we need to be laying clues that will then substantiate what Misty sees on that screen. That way, we don't feel, as the audience, that the carpet's been pulled out from under us.” While he acknowledged that his own episode did not drop many new hints as to the killer’s identity, “there are things throughout the season that certainly do” build to the reveal.

Previous episodes have proven that certain suspects were not responsible, with episode 9 offering an alibi for Shauna's whereabouts at the time of Lottie's demise. That information was a blow to Misty, who discovered her frienemy's DNA on Lottie thanks to Walter's sleuthing, making her the most likely murderer. But Yellowjackets is full of characters who cannot be trusted, so the answer to the mystery remains open-ended. Based on Semanoff's words, though, fans can rest assured that the crumbs have been there all along.

As for the actual picture on the phone? Semanoff himself is the guilty party. “The actual pictures on the phone are all pictures from my reel because we were having an incredibly difficult time finding the right tonal quality for the prop photos,” he revealed. “I just was like, ‘It should be pictures like this and like that.’ And then they were like, ‘Well, we'll just use those.’ So, that's what Christina is looking at when we don't show what she's seeing.”

Building Up To Van’s Death Throughout Yellowjackets Season 3, Episode 9

The Director Had The Tough Job Of Making The Moment Feel Earned

ScreenRant: This was a particularly painful episode for me because I wanted Van to have her happy ending after everything she's been through. But at the same time, her younger self saying, "We brought the real love of our life back" is such a well-earned beat. How did you build that important death up over the episode?

Ben Semanoff: This was a big talking point between writers and Lauren [Ambrose]. The idea is that we start the episode in a hospital, and then we're going to end the episode with her pulling two people out of a house and almost killing a third. We needed to track that throughout the episode; to find those moments of inspiration throughout the episode that would propel her forward, so that she would demonstrate a physical capacity as the episode progressed. She had to reach that moment; to earn not just the dramatic moment, but the physical ability to do those things.

I think, for me, the biggest thing was how the knife was used. In earlier episodes, like episode 3, there are a lot of knife gags. For example, Coach Ben comes in with a knife, and we wonder, "Is he going to kill Mari?" Even in my episode, Natalie has a knife and Hannah thinks, "She's going to kill me," and then she doesn't. Here, we have a character with a knife, and we want to be engaged as she's grappling with this decision. Melissa has her back to Van because I love what I call stolen moments for the audience. Basically, they're moments where the audience gets to see a character processing that no other character gets to see. And that's what that moment, really.

We see Van grappling completely with the decision, standing over a completely helpless body. It would've been so easy just to plunge that knife in and leave her. I think the way it was written was that in that beat, when she first grabs the knife, she unties her. But I thought, "No, that's the moment. We don't want an answer. We don't want to button that scene knowing that she's going to untie Melissa." I think it's about all these little decisions throughout the episode, scene by scene, where we encourage the audience to Van on this mission, so that when she gets there, it feels like she's about to be victorious. Obviously, the question is, "Did she fail or was she victorious?" And she was victorious, right? She said the real Taissa. She was a hero, no doubt. In The Goonies' definition, she was a hero. She just didn't survive.

ScreenRant: Why did Melissa stab Van, who is by all s the nicest Yellowjacket around, instead of letting her go or running away first?

Ben Semanoff: That was a tricky scene, and what I wanted was for you to feel like she was comforting Van when she sat up. So, that moment where she grabs the knife doesn't feel too set up because it's a lot of work for her to get in a position where she's going to grab the wrist and turn the knife and all that stuff. I really wanted it to feel like they were comforting each other first.

Why does she stab her? We're so close to the end of the season, and so some of those answers are going to get answered in a subsequent season. It's a little hard to parse because it's a five-season arc. And is everything spelled out at once in television? No. The reason is because there are so many moving parts, and you might not have an actor that can come back, or people respond to certain performers, certain storylines, and you go, oh, I want to lean into that instead of this.

I don't know what's going to happen with Melissa, and I think the next season might answer a bunch of these questions, but I think ultimately, the most important thing was that she didn't need to be discovered. She was living a completely secretive life. My answer is that she was sick of it. I think a lot of what's going on with the YJs is that they are nostalgic for a period of time in their lives that was wild and crazy and intense and exciting, and you never knew if death was around the corner. You could pull the wrong card and be chased by a gang of teenage girls through the woods to your death. It was a pretty exciting time, and now they've all sort of gone on their way.

Shauna is completely miserable in her life, and I think Melissa feels similarly. I think one of the things I wanted to do was really parallel Shauna and Melissa. It wasn't necessarily there a hundred percent in the writing, but I made some choices, like the minivan that Melissa has. I really wanted the two women to be living similar lives and be similarly sick of it. Melissa had gotten away with faking her death and flying under the radar, and I think she was just like, "How am I going to regain that excitement? I'm going to let the YJs know I'm alive. They're going to come after me, and then all hell's going to break loose." I think this is what she wanted.

I think she wanted to be back in the game, and now she's essentially being chased through the woods again, had she pulled the card. That's the reason for me. I love how that all happened, and that's why I think she stabs her at the end. This is the game. This is what you do.

How The Fight In Melissa’s Home Came Together

“Things Required Nuanced Adjustments In The Writing And Performance”

ScreenRant: Episode 9 has a lot of twists and emotional stakes. We have the drawn-out and explosive confrontation between Shauna and Melissa. At the moment, the audience doesn't know Melissa and probably doesn't trust Shauna to tell the truth. How do you maintain the investment from an emotional perspective? They each go from seeming deranged to reasonable and vice versa, but you have to help make it cohesive.

Ben Semanoff: That's a good question. How do you maintain an air of mystery? A lot of it's in the writing, and of course, thanks to the showrunners and creators who supervise that process and tee up a scenario where there are questions. We've spent the season wondering who Shauna thought was following her, and we've started to get answers. The mystery then becomes whether her paranoia was justified.

And I think what this episode does is start to punch holes in that a little bit. We find out there's this character, Melissa, who the YJ thought was dead, and Misty starts to give us some clues that there isn't s mysterious person that's following Shauna. We start to undermine things in an interesting way that doesn't completely provide the answers that the audience wants, but it makes them sit forward.

As a director, what I love most about Yellowjackets' writing and what I direct towards is that we just don't tell people things. We ask the performers not to work too hard because we don't work really hard when we're interacting with each other. Most of it's internal. The cast is able to walk that line of uncertainty really well, not sharing too much, but constantly keeping the audience on their toes about what's really going on in their minds.

ScreenRant: From a physical perspective, what are the most important beats for you to hit throughout the fight? Especially because you're starting in the middle of a fight from the previous episode and building from there.

Ben Semanoff: Those kinds of things in episodic television can be pretty challenging because the prior director doesn't necessarily know what is going to happen in the next script. They're choosing a location based upon whatever is attractive to them story-wise, and then suddenly you're inheriting this location and hoping that it fits the scripted blocking. That's always the biggest challenge.

There was a lot of conversation between directors Jennifer Morrison, Anya Adams, and I because Shauna shows up at the house in episode 7, she's in the house throughout episode 8, and the fight continues there in episode 9. The three of us were in constant conversation about, "Well, this works for me." "That doesn't work for me." "Can we change this? Because I'm going to have a problem with this." There were even times that they had dressed the living room in a certain way, which was going to prevent me from doing the things I wanted to do with the blocking.

A perfect example is when Tai is ed out on the ground and Van runs over to try to wake her up, and she's not going to wake up. But then Melissa, who's crawling out of the house, tells Van she shut the chimney flue, and Van runs over to open it. You need to have all these eye lines available, but the previous directors had dressed the living room in such a way that she wouldn't have been able to see anybody else, and she wouldn't have been able to see the fire. This person, who just came out of the hospital on oxygen, would've had to leap over a couch to get to the fireplace.

There are these conversations after the fact where you go, "Well, what did you shoot? Oh, did you see that couch? Can we change the couch? Will anybody notice?" The biggest challenge for me walking into that episode was asking, "How do I inherit this and make the blocking and story beats work?" The writers might bend a little bit too. Shauna is in the midst of an argument with Taissa, Melissa, and Van in the living room by the fireplace, and there's an open floor plan. Somehow, we have to justify that they've left the room and turned their backs enough for Melissa to shimmy herself over and pull the flue. These things required nuanced adjustments in the writing and performance.

Can Shauna’s Actions In Yellowjackets Season 3 Be Understood?

"Shauna Is Operating, In Both Timelines, On This Primal Instinct"

ScreenRant: In both timelines, Shauna seems to put herself in direct opposition to voices of reason, and you have the job of making her understood by the audience. How do you position her and work with the actors to clarify her perspective?

Ben Semanoff: That's a good point. I think it's inherent in her character, and maybe it's a little bit of a psychosis. She sees the world much differently than everybody else, and I'm not even sure there's a really clear-cut reason to explain why she wants to stay in the wilderness. For Taissa in the teen timeline, it's almost a nod to her future legal background. "We've got a lot of loose ends we've got to clean up here before we go back." But I think Shauna is just operating, in both timelines, on this primal instinct. That's the only way I can define it.

I think Shauna kind of hates the world. A perfect example is when she's sitting with the Joels, just sickened by the whole shtick. She just hates the world. I guess that works for me in the past because when you're like, "Why doesn't she want to go back?" The answer is she hates the world, and we see that she hates everything in the future. I think she's just running on that basic instinct of survival because somebody's after her, so there's not really a lot of logic.

Watching the two of them, there's a maturity to the adult Shauna that's really interesting. She's just purely nasty in the past; just purely feral. But it feels a little bit more sophisticated in the present; there's an adultness to her insanity. It's been 20-some years. She's had a marriage and another kid, and she's a homemaker, and so I think she's tried to assimilate from that earlier Shauna into a person that is part of the world. But she still hates that world.

ScreenRant: You've worked with Melanie Lynskey before on Candy. Have you developed a shorthand with her now for this project?

Ben Semanoff: I think, without a doubt, the biggest challenge in guest directing is coming into an environment and trying to quickly decode how everybody works. With performers, it's, "How do I communicate with this person? What communication do they respond to, and what do they not respond to?" That can sometimes take up a lot of time. There have been shows where I'm just getting four weeks of directing, and the light bulb goes off at the end. "Oh, my God. I finally know what makes this person tick. Now give me four more weeks, so I can really do my thing."

I think the four different episodes I've gotten to do with Melanie have really helped us develop a mutual respect, which is lovely to have. Similarly, you can go in as a guest director, and they're just testing you. "Does this person bring anything to the table?" Then, when you finally that test, it's all of a sudden this really beautiful collaborative experience. But we are past all that. Melly and I get along terrifically. I know what things I can ask of her that will make sense, and I know other things that won't make sense if I even attempt to ask them. I think that's been a really lovely benefit of working on the show.

Check out our other Yellowjackets season 3 interviews here:

• Sophie Nélisse
• Sarah Desjardins & Warren Kole
• Courtney Eaton & Kevin Alves

New episodes of Yellowjackets drop Fridays on Paramount+ before airing Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on Showtime.