Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of Yellowjackets.
Ever since the very first episode of Yellowjackets aired back in November 2021, fans have been both eagerly anticipating and dreading finding out who the Antler Queen and her masked followers were hunting down and eating in the opening scene of the pilot.
Now, over three years later, the Season 3 finale has finally revealed the identity of the so-called "pit girl." It's been a long journey to get to this point for the teen girls stuck in the wilderness, who have thus far avoided making a meal out of any teammate who wasn't already dead (R.I.P. Jackie) by dining on their male companions, a.k.a. Javi and Coach Ben, instead. Only Travis has been spared (and we already know he makes it back home).
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But, over the course of the past few episodes, a number of the Yellowjackets seem to have descended even deeper into a volatile mental state fueled by what is either collective psychosis or supernatural forces. In Episode 8, despite being offered a shot at being led to safety by wilderness guide Kodiak (Joel McHale), who stumbled upon the team while guiding a pair of hikers who were researching frogs, Lottie (Courtney Eaton), Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) united together to force the entire team to remain at camp. Then, when a contingent led by Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) tried to rebel in Episode 9, it resulted in hiker Hannah (Ashley Sutton) stabbing Kodi through the eye to save herself from Shauna's wrath.
In the finale, this all culminates in Shauna, the team's newly-crowned leader, pressuring the girls to agree to another hunt in which their prey will be decided by a random card draw.
Who is pit girl?
Earlier in the season, Akilah (Nia Sondaya) had a vision of finding all of their livestock dead. In the finale, the vision appears to come true when Akilah finds the bodies of all the animals she's lovingly raised. (However, a later conversation between Akilah and Lottie reveals Akilah herself killed the animals in order to convince the rest of the girls that they needed to hunt to appease the wilderness.)
After being swayed by Lottie and Shauna, the Yellowjackets do in fact decide they should sacrifice one of their own in order to get back in the wilderness' good graces and, per what's become a dark tradition, they will use a deck of cards to decide who their prey will be. Tai and Van (Liv Hewson) try to rig the card pull so that newcomer Hannah will end up with the deadly queen of hearts, but Shauna catches on to their ploy and messes with the order of the circle. This results in Mari (Alexa Barajas) ultimately puling the fatal draw. Shauna then places Jackie's heart necklace around Mari's neck and begins counting down.
The rest of the girls don their furs and makeshift masks and begin the hunt. Once she's gained some distance, Mari attempts to avoid being spotted by stripping off her bright colored jacket and pants (a decision that also costs her her shoes), leaving her only in a nightgown that feels very familiar—it's what the pit girl was wearing in the pilot when she died.
Not everyone wants Mari to be caught. Gen (Vanessa Prasad) tries to draw Taissa away from the pursuit in order to give her friend a better shot at survival. But in the end, it doesn't matter, as Mari once again tumbles into the same pit she fell into earlier in the season when she dislocated her knee. Except, this time, the bottom of the pit has been lined with sharpened stakes (by Travis, in the previous episode, in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Lottie). Mari is impaled and dies.
The feast scene we originally caught a glimpse of in the pilot then plays out, with Shauna presiding over the ceremony in her Antler Queen costume—which we now know she creepily insisted be decorated with locks of Mari's hair.
What this means for Yellowjackets
We now know who the pit girl is, but the finale's ending reveals there is more to the story. Fortunately for the girls who still want to go home, the hikers who came upon the Yellowjackets had a broken satellite phone with them that Misty (Samantha Hanratty), Natalie, and Van have repaired using a connecting piece from their crashed plane's transponder (which Misty purposefully destroyed in Season 1).
During the hunt, Natalie ends up colluding with Hannah, Misty, and Van to get away from an increasingly paranoid Shauna and attempt to make contact with someone who can help them. While the girls go after Mari, Natalie slips away from camp with the repaired phone.
After the feast, Shauna notices something is up when Natalie is strangely quiet. She tears off Natalie's mask to find that it's not Natalie at all, but Hannah. Natalie successfully got away and has hiked up a snowy mountain, trying desperately to get a phone signal. The closing scene of the finale shows her making contact with a mysterious voice on the radio that says, "Yes, I can hear you."
They will go home—but given Shauna's rage over being tricked, it certainly doesn't seem like the journey back will be an easy one.