‘Yellowjackets’ Stars on Filming [SPOILER]’s ‘Heartbreaking’ Death in Episode 6 and Why It Needed to Happen That Way

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Yellowjackets” Season 3, Episode 6, titled “Thanksgiving (Canada),” streaming now on Paramount+ with Showtime.

Goodbye, Coach.

After narrowly avoiding death in last week’s episode of “Yellowjackets” because — as Akilah (Nia Sondaya) tells the group after snorting cave fumes and seeing a vision, “He’s our bridge home” — it turns out Coach Ben Scott (Steven Krueger) didn’t make it out of the wilderness after all.

In the sixth episode of Season 3, the 1990s timeline begins with a montage of Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) bringing meals to Coach Scott, who is imprisoned in the animal pen. During her visits, he pitches multiple ways for her to kill him, including bringing him a knife so her “hands can stay clean” or using the gun since it “would be quick, painless,” but she ignores his pleas — telling him to eat instead.

“There’s no way that I’m taking away their hope of going home, or your hope of going home,” Natalie says.

At one point, Ben confesses to Natalie that he did burn down the cabin (probably just to provoke her). “I took the matches, and I lit a couple of rags, and I shoved them into some cracks in the cabin walls. It was so fucking easy,” he claims. Natalie, however, doesn’t believe him.

As time passes, Ben’s physical condition rapidly deteriorates, and it’s eventually revealed that he’s been deliberately refusing to eat and discarding his food. Determined to keep him alive, the group — minus Natalie and Akilah — restrains him as they force-feed him through a tube connected to a funnel. “Why can you not just let me fucking die?” he angrily asks Natalie.

“The way that they’re treating him, that was all up to them — it wasn’t for survival,” Sophie Thatcher tells Variety. “You see a huge moral shift in the girls, and I think there’s something even more heartbreaking, even before the death, with how they treat him and how they force-feed him.”

In the dead of night, Natalie — with a knife in hand — quietly sneaks toward the animal pen, where Travis (Kevin Alves) is standing guard. Aware of her intentions, he at first blocks her path, but then relents, muttering that he’ll “keep an eye out.”

Ben is jolted awake by the sight of Natalie hovering over him inside his tent. When he sees the knife, he approaches her and murmurs, “Please.” Natalie holds the knife to his throat, tears streaking her face. She hesitates, but Ben grabs her wrist and pulls himself closer. He tells her, “Thank you,” as she raises the knife. Natalie then plunges it into Ben’s chest, and while she silently cries, he draws his final breath.

In separate interviews with Variety, Steven Krueger and Thatcher discussed filming Coach Scott’s death scene, why it was necessary for it to happen in that way, and who (or what!) they believe burned down the cabin.

When did you learn Coach Scott was going to die this season? How did you react?

Steven Krueger: Honestly, super early. It was kind of a rare experience. Oftentimes, when you know you have a character that is being killed off the show, you don’t really find out until right before, maybe like an episode or two before. That’s a long-standing protocol, I feel like, in the industry. This was a totally different experience. I’m really grateful to our showrunners for giving us a head’s up: I think they did this with everybody who was going to meet their demise this season. They called us months before we started filming and said, “Hey, just a head’s up — this is the storyline that we’re planning.”

It’s never fun to hear that your character is dying on a show. However, I will say I had kind of been prepared for this; I had talked to the showrunners very early on. I’ve worked with Ashley [Lyle] and Bart [Nickerson] for a long time, so I have a great, close relationship with them, and this was always the plan. Coach Ben was always going to meet his end at some point in Season 3 because, really, this sets off a chain reaction of everything that comes afterward — that eventually leads to all of the things that people are looking for answers to. And I’ll be honest, all I cared about was the storyline. I was like, “Is it a cool death? What are you guys thinking?” And as soon as I started talking about it, I was like, “This is great. This is awesome. This is exactly what the character deserves. I think this is going to be a really beautiful arc for this season.”

Sophie Thatcher: I’m the last person to know what’s going on, but I also don’t ask, because I like taking it as the episode comes. But yeah, there were rumors. I didn’t know if it was going to be Misty [Samantha Hanratty] or Natalie, but there’s something really heartbreaking about Natalie doing it, because they have that connection from Season 1. There’s innate trust, whereas I don’t think there’s trust within any of the other characters. It’s like Natalie and Ben are truly the outsiders.

I knew it was going to be really heartbreaking, and I went in anxious and putting pressure on myself, because any time you have a moment on the show, you really want to milk it, because there’s so many characters that you want your moments to stand out without it being too much. It’s a hard balance. The first season, having all those one-on-one scenes, it just felt like a completely different show, because I was always with Travis. So it was also refreshing to have, finally, a one-on-one scene with Steven.

How did you two prepare for Coach Scott’s death scene, and how long did it take to film?

Krueger: I think a lot of that emotion was honestly real. Sophie Thatcher and I had grown very close, just as actors, from the very first time we had a scene together back in Season 1. We immediately connected over our love of the craft of acting, and I think we approach it in very much the same way. So we had a little bit of kismet. So it was, in my mind, the perfect way for Coach Ben to go out — that it was Natalie who ultimately drove the final blow.

If I remember correctly, that scene was pretty grueling to shoot. They did it from a lot of different angles because I think they weren’t ultimately sure exactly how they wanted it to play. It was obviously at night, so at the end of the day, everybody was exhausted. And I think sometimes those are the conditions where emotions just kind of tend to flow out. It’s usually when you’re actually, truly emotionally and physically beaten down, where it’s like, “I don’t have any more cover left in me.” We both felt that, and I thought it played really, really beautifully. We just kind of did it over and over again until they were satisfied and had enough to work with.

Thatcher: I find that my favorite moments on the show, there’s not a lot of dialogue. I went into it already really emotional, because I love Steven and we all adore him so much. He’s such an important part of the cast, that it felt surreal to an extent. It felt really easy to tap into anything emotional. And with Steven, he had lost weight, he had done all this prep, and just to see him in this state and to see his dedication was already so inspiring and brought me into it immediately.

Sophie, there are so many emotions across your face during that moment, especially in your eyes. As an actor, what was the most challenging part of that scene?

Thatcher: There are a lot of shifts in her during the scene, because you’re playing against a lot of emotions, and you can’t play into it too much. She’s playing against her fear and her own morality, and it’s incredibly confusing. She’s in such a confused headspace, and that’s always the hardest headspace to get into because there are so many conflicting emotions. But I think playing that shift, when she’s bringing up the knife, and you can suddenly see — because she backs away, and for a second, she’s not going to do it — but he brings her in, and playing that shift and earning it, where you realize, “Oh, she is going to do it,” was important. I think playing that in a naturalistic way was something I was very wary of, letting it still be a tender moment, almost beautiful too, where it’s not completely in darkness. It feels like a release. And having that, it was just very technical. It was a lot of moments to map out, and I was really happy with it. It was this very intimate space in the tent; the camera was right there. It felt like nobody else was there. And sometimes you’re very aware of all the crew and everything, but shooting it in the intimacy of the tent was really beautiful too.

What happened when the director yelled, “Cut!” after the final take of that scene?

Krueger: I’m pretty sure we both were sobbing at that point. Not just because, obviously, it was the end of a very long story arc, and we knew that this was ultimately the end of Coach Ben. We were also just both so spent from that entire episode, and this is getting into the portion of the season where things started to become a lot more grueling and a lot more intense. It was those dog days of summer up in Vancouver, and everybody was just wiped out. As soon as that day ended, emotions just flowed. Ironically enough, it wasn’t my last day on set. I ultimately had to come back and do a couple of different things that weren’t major scenes, but were little things here and there. I remember I had like three or four different official goodbyes on the show, where it was like, “Oh, OK, goodbye,” with speeches and all the things. And then, the next week, it was like, “Oh, you’re back. Well, OK, this is weird.” And then the week after that, it was like, “Yep, I’m back. I’ve got to do one more thing.” The multiple goodbyes — always fun.

Thatcher: I cried! It was a big moment for Steven. It was a lot. But I know that Steven is very close with the writers and that he would be back. Nobody actually really dies on the show. Yes, they do — but they always bring people back. I was reassured by thinking that, but it was surreal. And sometimes I find that when I have to let go and release on camera and go to a really vulnerable place, it can be very satisfying afterward, or you can leave feeling really empty. And I felt just a lot of confusion. I felt strangely in tune with Natalie for that scene.

In Episode 5, Coach Scott is saved at the last minute because Akilah says he’s the bridge to them getting home. And in this episode, even though it’s showing that, I believe, several days have passed, he‘s killed. How did you feel about that format for this storyline?

Krueger: To be totally transparent, I haven’t watched. I like to watch the episodes as they come out, so I never screen them ahead of time. But I believe it’s actually over the course of several weeks, if not months, that we do that time jump in Episode 6, and I’m excited to see how they did it and how they kind of cut that together. But the idea is that the foliage on the trees is starting to turn a little bit. They’re building up a little bit more of a shelter, so it’s kind of this evolution of time. I thought it was a really interesting way to do that, because you also have to propel this season forward into those last months of when the survivors are ultimately rescued. And I was always a little bit worried about how long they were going to drag out this wilderness storyline, and how much story there was to be told before they actually get back.

As far as the set design went, and as far as my costume and wardrobe went, it was increasingly deteriorating and increasingly dirty. The makeup they were adding to my face made me look even more gaunt, more tired, and more beat up. Granted, I haven’t seen it yet, but when we shot it, I felt like it played really well, and I thought that was a really clever way of kind of progressing the time to get to that point where it’s like: “I’ve been beaten down enough. I might have had hope for a hot second, but no. All these months later, it’s over.”

Thatcher: I think, pacing-wise, it’s good when the show jumps around. I think it’s really devastating. It’s such a stark contrast that it really hits in a guttural way because you’re really with him on this journey. As you see him, you’re like, “Oh, he’s gonna survive.” And then you realize he’s not going to, clearly. It’s just really tragic in a way because you see him in a place where he’s — it’s horrible to say — but better off dead. And there’s something sad too, because you see in the past seasons, present-day Natalie [Juliette Lewis] is the same way. I think they’re comparable in ways. That moment for Natalie is the death of innocence, and she loses part of herself. Of course, with Javi in the past season, that was also a loss of herself. But I think this is a huge turning point for Natalie, having to do that. I think there wasn’t really any other option. She sees him suffering, and I think she sees it as giving him peace and setting him free.

Steven, from a technical standpoint, what was it like going through all those different transitions of dying? I’m guessing your severed head was a prop, and not just you underneath the table with your head popping out.

Krueger: It was. It was an incredibly well-done makeup effects prop that was a whole story in and of itself. I had to go in and get that whole thing done with the head scan. It was not very pleasant. And then, I’ll be honest, they were like, “Oh, your head is here. It’s done. Do you want to see it?” And I was like, “Yes,” out of curiosity, of course. And then it was like, “Oh, hold it and take a picture of it.” And I remember looking at it and being like, “OK, this is a kind of metaphysical, very weird thing that I’m looking at right now.” It creeped me out. I immediately had to put it down and be like, “I don’t particularly like looking at this,” because it looked so real. I have pictures on my phone that I still sometimes look at, and I’m like, “That’s incredible — what they are able to do.”

When I’m lying on the table and they are getting ready to carve me up — every time I read the script, I assumed that was just gonna be something that they made, like, Coach Ben’s body, right? And then I got the call sheet, and they were like, “Oh, no, you’re gonna lie on the table naked.” I’m like, “OK, well, that’s one way to do it, for sure.” But any day that I got to spend on set, even after those big scenes, was just a delight because I love these people so much.

Do you believe Coach Scott truly had to die in order for those people to appear at the end? He was so close!

Krueger: I don’t think a lot of stuff ends up happening if he’s still alive. I mean, truthfully, his death is kind of what brought those people this direction. And I don’t think that the girls would have reacted the same way if I was just sitting there alive. They had a very visceral, violent reaction immediately, right as those people descended on their camp and discovered them. And I think that was all because they felt like, in that moment, they were caught, and something bad had happened and this could look really bad. If I’m still alive, even if I’m in a really bad condition, I don’t think any of that goes down. So yeah, I really do see this as a very important inflection point in the overall series arc.

Thatcher: Yeah. I think it’s great, because you’re so in their worlds that you forget there’s an outside world. And I think it’s just as much of a shock to the audience, but I think with the timing of the episode, you’re so drawn into their experience that you forget there’s an outside world, and that’s exactly where they’re at. So I think there’s an amazing tonal shift, and I love that it’s played up in a dark, comedic, absurdist way. But I loved it. I loved the way that was pulled off, because it is a serious moment, but it’s just surreal. A very good delivery of, “What the fuck?!” It’s just one line, but it’s amazing.

A lot of your co-stars have said in the past that the cast throws death parties. Steven, did you get a death party, and what did you guys do?

Krueger: I did, yeah. It’s quite the tradition. Everybody dresses up in black. It’s like a little potluck — everybody makes something and brings it to the party to eat. And then, Courtney Eaton and Sophie Nélisse were so sweet; they hosted at their place, and they actually had little funeral cards made up, like you would get at somebody’s funeral, that talks about their life and has a little picture on the front. I, of course, took a couple of them home as mementos. But it’s very fun. It’s a nice celebration of not just the work that’s been done, but also the personal relationships that we’ve all kind of fomented over the past several years. We’ve all grown quite close as a cast — we’re different ages, we’re from different places, and yet somehow, this show has kind of brought this group of people together, and we’ve all bonded so tightly that it’s nice to just get together and celebrate that, in addition to the character. I’m pretty sure it ended up going quite late into the night, as those things often do.

Thatcher: I wasn’t there! I felt so fucking bad. I truly was not anywhere this season because I was flying back every week into L.A., because my cat is here and my boyfriend. I felt really fucking awful about that, because that was a huge part of the first season — having the death party. We would all get very drunk. 

Speaking of mementos, were you able to take anything that belonged to Coach Scott, like his crutches? 

Krueger: I was not allowed to take the crutches. I was like, “These will be mailed to me at some point.” When I finish a show, I always look for something that I can grab. I did not want the head. Somebody had mentioned that. They were like, “Do you want to take the head home?” And I was like, “I don’t think so.” Also, I was told that the head cost, like, $25,000, so I don’t think they were gonna let me have it. But I will be getting the crutches for sure. That is the thing that I want. Either that or the blue sock that I had to wear for the entire season, so that they could take my leg out. That’s also fun.

The viewers are still left with the question of whether or not Coach Scott did burn down the cabin. Do you know who, or what, burned down the cabin?

Krueger: I’m not entirely sure whether we are going to find out who burned down the cabin, or if anybody burned down the cabin. I have two different takes on it. One is my take as an actor and what I was working with internally throughout the season. I can tell you that, personally, I think Ben did burn down the cabin. That was his entire plan. The distinction is that he wasn’t actually trying to kill them. he kind of saw them descending into madness and infighting and saw that this was maybe going in a really bad direction. This was his way of waking them up and getting them to come together and reunite as a team. Obviously, a very dangerous game, but that was what I was working with internally because I just thought that was a little bit more interesting than, like, “Did I or didn’t I?” if I were an audience member just watching this objectively.

We want somebody to have burned down the cabin because it feels satisfying. But also, it’s a decades-old wooden cabin that is very dry, and we just have open flames everywhere. Logically, I think that probably everybody was sleeping, and a spark flew somewhere. But of course, that speaks to the state of mind of the characters, right? That they were immediately like, “Somebody did this to us,” instead of just thinking, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t have fallen asleep with, like, 50 candles burning in a wooden cabin.”

Thatcher: I think Natalie, strangely, is still the most level-headed and grounded. Truly, when Natalie is talking about it in the trial, that’s exactly how I feel: I think it could have truly been anything. We had a lot of conversations, and I don’t think the writers even really — I don’t think people knew. And I kind of like not knowing, because it could have just been a freak accident. And that’s more compelling to me, because then it just really forces everyone against each other.

There’s a fan theory going around that “Other” Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) is the one who burned down the cabin, and that’s why Van (Liv Hewson) has that vision of herself in the burning cabin — because she’s keeping this secret about Tai, and it’s haunting her. What do you think of that theory?

Krueger: I think that’s a pretty good theory, honestly. I don’t know exactly if the writers will reveal or not reveal what happens, but that’s a pretty deep-cut theory. The audience members and the fans of this show are amazing. The fact that they are able to come up with stuff like that — I’m just like, “That’s cool. I love it.”

Thatcher: I think that’s great. I couldn’t really think of anything else, and that is perhaps more interesting than it just being a freak accident. Our fans are very clever.

Steven, what’s next for you?

Krueger: I haven’t even had that much time to think about it. I’m in the final stages of post-production for a short film [“Leaving the Light”] that I directed for the first time, and executive produced. I just wanted to jump on the other side of the camera for the first time and have that experience. I absolutely loved it. So I’m trying to let my brain fully focus on that until I’m done with it in these next few weeks, and then I can be like, “OK, great. Let’s start going after some new acting stuff.” As soon as I get done with that, then it’ll be open season for the next job.

These interviews have been edited and condensed.