If Yellowjackets season 1 gave us the slow-burn horror of “Pit Girl” and season 2 doubled down with cannibal dinners, cult rituals and Natalie’s gut-punch exit, then season 3 decides to rip the Band-aid all the way off. Yellowjackets Season 3 finale, titled “Full Circle”, doesn’t just answer one of the show’s longest running mysteries, it shoves the survivors into even darker territory.
Yellowjackets season 3 ending is part ritual bloodbath, part family implosion and part cliffhanger that leaves us crawling back to the woods with more questions than ever. By the time we reach the final frame, one thing is clear: rescue may finally be on the horizon, but the wilderness isn’t letting go that easily.
⚠️ Spoiler Alert: Everything beyond this point will ruin the ending of Yellowjackets Season 3 if you haven’t watched it already. Grab a snack and let’s just dive in!
1996: The Hunt, The Crown and The Cabin’s Last Secret
The Yellowjackets Season 3 finale goes straight for the jugular by solving the question that’s haunted us since the beginning: who was that Pit Girl?
The Riggered Draw: Van and Taissa try to fix the card game so that Hannah, who’s the newcomer, will be the one haunted. They see her as expendable. But Sahuna catches on to their trick and quietly shifts the order of the deck.
Pit Girl Revealed: Instead, Mari pulls the Queens of Hearts. Wearing Jackie’s heart necklace (yes,that explains the necklace mystery from Season 1), Mari runs for her life. The chase is frantic and very chaotic, nothing like the ritualized hunt we saw teased years ago. She eventually stumbles into a spike pit and dies instantly. The pit girl is Mari. Case closed.
The New Antler Queen: In the aftermath, Lottie proclaims Shauna as the new Antler Queen. The group, desperate and frenzied, devours Mari’s body in full ritual fashion. The wilderness isn’t just whispering anymore, it’s dictating dinner plans.
Coach Ben’s Fire 2.0: Still reeling from the cabin blaze that Ben started in Yellowjackets season 2, he watches the girls descend from the outside. The wilderness now owns them completely, and his role as “protector” is reduced to bitter witness.
The Wilderness: The Path to Rescue
Amid all the chaos, two game-changing developments suggest the end of their exile might finally be near.
Natalie’s Call for Help
While the others are distracted by Mari’s hunt, Natalie sneaks away with the satellite phone. She climbs a ridge, desperately trying to catch a signal. After agonizing static, a voice finally comes through “I can hear you.” Is this rescue? Or just another trick of the wilderness?
Akilah’s Confession
In a shocking reveal, Akilah admits she poisoned the camp’s animals to force the group into hunting. She confesses to Lottie that she no longer believed in the forest’s magic and wanted proof that the group could survive without it.
The teens may be on the edge of salvation, but the wilderness demands a toll and it’s already collecting.
Also, read Silo Ending Explained: VR Lies, Doomed Landscapes & That Mind-Blowing Reveal
2021: The Adults Finally Break
Meanwhile in the present, the Yellowjackets implode under the weight of secrets that have been festering since the cabin.
Who Killed Lottie?
Yellowjackets Season 3 ending reveals the truth that Callie, Shauna’s daughter, accidentally shoved Lottie down the stairs during a heated confrontation. Lottie had whispered that “the wilderness” lived in Callie now, and that Shauna envied her. Terrified, Callie snapped!
Shauna’s Isolation
When Callie confesses, Jeff makes a brutal call: they leave Shauna behind, realizing she’s the common thread putting their family in danger. Shauna, once the group’s reluctant heart, ends the season cut off and alone.
Mistry and Taissa’s Alliance
In a twist that no one saw coming, Misty and Taissa form an alliance. They see Shauna as toxic, blaming her for Van’s death and Natalie’s loss in season 2, and vow to cut her out. Misty may have always been the fixer, but now she’s steering the wheel.
Cliffhangers That Will Haunt Us
Like every Yellowjackets finale, season 3 brings more dread than closure:
- Who answered Natalie’s call on the satellite phone? Rescue might finally be close, or maybe another danger just heard them.
- Can the adults reconcile or is the sisterhood gone for good? Shauna is alone, Misty and Taissa are plotting and Jeff and Callie have walked away.
- Will the wilderness let them leave? Lottie’s eerie Season2 line, “It is pleased with us”, feels more relevant than ever. What if “it” isn’t done feeding?
The final shot leaves us with Shauna, sitting alone, remembering the raw power she felt as Antler Queen. She whispers what no one else will admit. That part of her never wanted to go back to normal life.
Why Yellowjackets Season 3 Ending Hits So Hard
The Yellowjackets Season 3 ending gives us so much and yet so little. Let’s talk about that.
Pit Girl Mystery Solved: From the very first scene of Season 1, fans have obsessed over the identity of Pit Girl. Closing that loop with Mari is satisfying, but the brutality of her death makes the payoff sting.
Power is Always a Curse: Shauna ascends as Antler Queen in the past, only to lose her family and her friends in the present. Season 2 killed Natalie and Season 3 destroyed Shauna’s ties, leadership in Yellowjackets always beads you dry!
Wilderness: Real or Madness? Akilah’s confession pushes toward rational explanations, while Natalie’s call for help still carries an aura of the mystical. Like Yellowjackets Season 2 ending’s ambiguity with Natalie’s “vision”, the series continues to straddle trauma and the supernatural.
No Adults Gets Out Clean: Callie kills Lottie by accident. Misty switches sides again. Taissa plays politics in the woods and in her marriage. Shauna loses everything. Just like the teens, the adults remain tethered to their ugliest survival instincts.
Also, read Silo Season 2 Ending Explained: Gas Leaks, Fire Doors & a Duck-Shaped PEZ
Wrapping Up
Yellowjackets season 3 ending delivers everything: the Pit Girl reveal, a gruesome coronation and a fractured present that leaves our survivors more isolated than ever. If Season 1 was about mystery and Season 2 about descent, Season 3 is about fallout, what happens when survival becomes the only religion left.
And just when rescue finally seems possible, the show reminds us that wilderness doesn’t let go, it lingers.
Season 4? It’s waiting in the trees, teeth bared. So keep your cards close, your firewood stacked and whatever you do, just don’t follow the sound of antlers in the dark.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Who was the Pit Girl in Yellowjackets?
The long-running mystery is finally solved: Pit Girl was Mari. In Yellowjackets season 3 finale, she draws the Queen of Hearts and becomes the hunted. Wearing Jackie’s necklace from Season 1, she falls into a spiked pit and dies instantly, cementing the pilot’s opening scene in brutal clarity.
2. Does Shauna become the Antler Queen?
Yes. After Mari’s death, Lottie crowns Shauna as the new Antler Queen. It’s a chilling full-circle moment, since Season 1 teased the Antler Queen’s shadow and Season 2 passed the role to Natalie. Shauna now wears the crown, but the cost is enormous.
3. Did the girls finally get rescued in Season 3?
Not yet. Natalie makes contact on the satellite phone and hears someone say, “I can hear you.” It’s the first real sign of rescue since the crash, but whether it’s salvation or another trap is left for Season 4.
4. Is the wilderness supernatural or just trauma?
The finale keeps it ambiguous. Akilah’s confession that she poisoned the camp’s animals points to psychological breakdowns, while Natalie’s vision of rescue—and Lottie’s cryptic line from Season 2 (“It is pleased with us”)—suggest something otherworldly still at work. The show refuses to give a single answer, keeping both theories alive.