SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 2 of “Yellowjackets” streaming now on Paramount+.
After two seasons of watching from the sidelines, Melissa (Jenna Burgess) finally makes her move in the closing moments of the “Yellowjackets” two-episode season premiere.
With Mari (Alexa Barajas) missing and Coach Scott (Steven Krueger) public enemy No. 1, the fragile social ecosystem of the “Yellowjackets” hive is once again at risk. Having been crowned the reluctant antler queen, Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) struggles to keep the peace as an increasingly resentful Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) and an increasingly fanatical Van (Liv Hewson) continue to question her judgment.
But as the power struggle continues at the top of the food chain, one Yellowjacket seizes the opportunity to reposition herself in the hierarchy: Melissa. Colloquially known as “Yellowjacket No. 1” in Season 1 and given a proper name in Season 2, Melissa’s tenure on the series has mostly consisted of whispering in the background alongside fellow redshirt Gen (Vanessa Prasad) — until now.
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After observing Shauna around camp, and leaving flowers at her baby’s grave, Melissa gets caught watching Shauna from afar, and a heated confrontation ensues. Shauna shoves Melissa against a tree, puts a knife to her throat — and they kiss.
Having nabbed the role of Melissa in 2022, Burgess learned upon reading the first two scripts for Season 3 that Melissa would be a decidedly bigger part in the story this time around.
“We got the first one, and I read that first scene where I’m making berry wine — I was thinking, ‘Oh, I’m picking up vibes here, but that might just be me,’” Burgess said during a recent interview with Variety.
But it was after she received the second episode that she realized that Melissa would be — in one of the neat tricks “Yellowjackets” has available to it, with its large ensemble cast — receiving more attention this season. “I was just paging and paging like ‘I’ve been here. I’m in this group one, that’s OK,’” Burgess said, as she described reading the script. “I look to the third to last page, and it’s written ‘Melissa, Melissa, Melissa!’ bolded and underlined with a bunch of exclamation points and question marks. And I was like, ‘Oh my God!’”
As adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) investigates an abandoned phone with an eerie “Two of Hearts” ringtone in the present day, teenage Shauna sniffs out that someone is watching her, confronting Melissa with a knife and shoving her against a tree in the 1990s-era storyline.
“I read it,” Burgess continued, “And was like: ‘Kiss! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’”
Her castmates were happy for her as well, Burgess said. “I read it, closed it, got in my car, and then suddenly my phone started going off,” she recalls a flurry of emojis from Hewson and supportive messages from Samantha Hanratty, who plays young Misty. “I should not have gotten behind the wheel. I was shocked, I was frightened, I was excited. I didn’t know what to do.”
Below, Burgess breaks down Melissa’s feelings for Shauna, becoming a pivotal part of “Yellowjackets” in its third season and her take on the “theology of the wilderness.”
At the top of Episode 2, Melissa and Gen seem to agree with Shauna that Mari isn’t worth searching for. Does their shared disdain for Mari have anything to do with why Melissa approached Shauna?
There are a lot of views Shauna has that she makes very known to the group. She’s a very strong force in that dynamic, and a lot of the group can be very combative against that. I don’t think Melissa necessarily shares all those thoughts, but you can see her toying in this gray area of, “Oh, she kind of has a point.”
In Episodes 1 and 2, Mari and Shauna really go at it. I think there’s a brutal side to Shauna that Melissa is very attracted to, so it lights something up in her and gets her mind going.
Shauna first discovers Melissa leaving flowers at the baby’s grave. Was that a genuine show of compassion, or an angle to get into Shauna’s good graces?
Her intentions are initially very pure and empathetic. But there’s also this general notion of Melissa being an outsider and needing to perform for the group. In Season 2, she’s the last to join the prayer circle. It’s a form of belief she has because everyone else believes it.
Leaving the flowers comes from a place of empathy, but it’s also a bit of a power move for her. It’s kind of self-serving. The truly empathetic action would’ve been to leave the flowers and walk away, just to let Shauna know someone’s there. But we’re Yellowjackets in the wilderness — everyone’s a bit weird. She decides to stay and watch for a reaction, and that’s pretty audacious of her.
How much of Melissa kissing Shauna was her acting on a crush, and how much of it was self-preservation?
All of the above. It’s this mix of everything. Something that’s exciting about Melissa is that those motivations can fluctuate at any given time. What’s really cool about the end of Episode 2 is that each of those things [self-preservation and acting on a crush] are at their fullest.
Can you talk about working with Sophie Nélisse and how you two approached that scene?
We didn’t really talk about it that much, because we filmed it really quick getting back to Season 3. We shared a general intrigue and surprise, but I don’t think those scenes would have done the character dynamic any favors had we gotten our pencils out and started talking about how we felt about each other. I think we needed the characters to discover that, and I think we work really well in that regard.
Sophie’s a very well-oiled machine, both as Shauna and as an actor — she’s great to work with. I was really trying to feel Melissa out, just having more dialogue to work with. I didn’t fight the novelty or awkwardness of it, because I think that’s exactly where Melissa is at the beginning of the season.
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Melissa tells Shauna she’s not afraid of her. Is that true?
Yes and no. If we’re talking about that moment right before the kiss, it’s self-preservation. She has this crush, it’s very apparent. It’s probably been there for a while, but it’s been ignited towards the end of Season 2 as you see this new Shauna emerge.
Melissa has a knife to her throat, and she’s closer to Shauna than she’s ever been. There’s this flurry of heightened emotions. I don’t think Melissa has anything left to lose. At this point she’s scared, but also very intrigued. The stakes are so high.
How much insight do you think Melissa had into the nature of the relationship between Shauna and Jackie (Ella Purnell), Shauna’s best friend who froze to death after they fought at the end of Season 1?
A lot. Even in Season 2, I always thought she was very observant. There wasn’t really much for me to pull from text-wise, other than the fact that the first time you meet her, she’s curious about the other group of Yellowjackets. I always wanted her to have this watchful eye on the group.
She’s definitely aware of Shauna’s journey through the wilderness, and a lot of that early on involves Jackie and a lack of Melissa, because there was really just a background actor with dirty blonde hair filling in for that. It’s the first time she’s acting on those observational instincts.
You mentioned that Melissa kissing Shauna is intercut with present-day Shauna finding that mysterious phone in the bathroom. Could the owner of the phone be older Melissa?
Maybe. It’s kind of hard, the way they structure these scripts, it’s always a psychological thriller or a mystery. They put out all these threads to leave the audience drawn in. It’s a really good thought, we’ll have to wait and see.
Have you thought about who might play the present-day version of Melissa?
Not particularly. I really tried to hone in on what I’m doing no matter what her fate is and how long her life is. My job is teen Melissa; it’s always going to be teen Melissa. The idea of getting ahead of yourself, of what might happen, doesn’t really serve the character, because none of those girls are thinking about what they’re going to be doing in 25 years.
A lot of us in the 90’s timeline really tried to focus in on what we’re doing at any given time. Even with someone like Melissa, who you don’t really know much about, coming out and taking this bold swing toward Shauna, it’s kind of an in-the-moment thing. I really do just try to stay in the moment.
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“Yellowjackets” fans heavily debate whether or not there’s something supernatural going on in the wilderness — something that might have followed them into adulthood. Thinking back about the ideas you had for Melissa as a smaller character during Season 2, did you imagine she was a true believer in the mysticism of the wilderness?
Being a very peripheral character in Season 2, I really did try to use whatever I could get from the text about Melissa to support what I was doing. It was very minimal, so I did have to make choices for myself, albeit keeping it quite low-stakes so I could still be malleable to the plot so should anything like this arise, it would be an easy shift.
But I did end up asking about this at the beginning of the season, and I think the wilderness is something that all the girls and Travis believe in. For Melissa, someone who’s observant and has a lot of time to think to herself, it’s a comfort. It’s a bit of doing it because everyone else is doing it. I like to lean on this idea of her being this outsider, because she has this lack of relationship with the core group of characters on-screen, but also with the audience.
I never want to devalue that, because that’s really ingrained into her story this season. When it comes to this theology of the wilderness, it’s critical to survival to do what the group is doing. Those doubts in your head can exist, but she was there on the ice when Javi drowned and she saw how the wilderness decided to choose someone else.
We don’t know if the wilderness is real or not — that’s the shtick of the show, but it was still a shift to someone who might have been more expendable, and Melissa is very aware of that. She knows where she stands in this social environment. She’s a very smart person.
This interview has been edited and condensed.