There’s no “I” in team, but there is in “survival.”
Spoilers for “Yellowjackets” Season 3, Episode 9 below!
“Yellowjackets” fans were stunned when sweet frog scientist Hanna made the impulsive decision to murder her fellow captive Kodiak (Kody) to save herself after they were caught by Shauna trying to escape.
Ashley Sutton, who plays Hanna, exclusively told The Post that while the brutal knife-in-the-eye scene was “crazy,” she had fun murdering Kody (Joel McHale). She also dished on why his character “had to go.”
“Oh my gosh, it was so much fun to film Joel’s demise,” she said, revealing it was the last scene McHale filmed in the show.
In Episode 9, Hanna flips on Kody by telling the Yellowjackets crew that he was the one who gave her the knife to cut their ropes and escape (but really, it was Natalie).
When Kody calls her a “c–t,” she turns around and jams the knife into his eyeball, which kills him immediately. In that moment, Hanna becomes one of the Yellowjackets and continues to prove she’ll do anything to stay alive.
“I totally went for it,” Sutton told The Post of filming Kody’s death scene, adding that a stunt coordinator helped ensure their safety while making the murder look real.
The actress also revealed the prop knife didn’t have a blade and was “magnetized,” which helped her hit the bullseye.
Sutton shared why she believes her character turned on Kody without a second thought.
“Hanna wants to survive. Look, she has walked into this environment that is absolutely insane. We can all agree that what is happening in the wilderness is crazy this season. And she really just wants to get through. She wants to make it to the very end. She wants to go back home,” she told The Post.
Sutton said it runs even deeper, pointing out that Hanna’s boyfriend, Edwin (Nelson Franklin), didn’t trust Kody either. Edwin was killed in the season’s Episode 7 in one of the most gruesome ways yet with an axe by young Lottie (Courtney Eaton).
“In the moment where she kind of turns on Kody, I don’t think it’s a thought-out decision. I think Edwin is playing in her head constantly. She’s dealing with the grief of losing him,” Sutton explained. “So, all of those times he was like, ‘I don’t know, we can’t trust Kody,’ you know, the backpack, all of these things are playing in her head over and over and again.”
The actress continued that Hanna was in “fight or flight,” dealing with the grief of losing Edwin and thinking about her daughter at home.
“I think at the end of the day, she really wants to trust Edwin in the relationship that they had and he really didn’t trust Kody for some reason. So, I think no matter what, that would have played in the back of her head constantly,” Sutton explained, adding Hanna’s mindset was: “I need to survive. I need to make it.”
While her character might not know if killing him was the right decision, Sutton told The Post, “Kody, I think he unfortunately did have to go.”
“Yellowjackets” included several new faces this season, including Emmy-winning actress Hilary Swank.
The show follows Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress, Lauren Ambrose and Melanie Lynskey, who all star as the grown-up versions of the teen survivors of a 1996 plane crash, which is loosely based on a real-life event.
The hit survival series made its debut in November 2021.
The “Yellowjackets” Season 3 finale will drop on Paramount+ with Showtime on Friday, April 11.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
