Yellowjackets Season 3 Episode 6 Review: Coach Scott’s fate is revealed
March 14, 2025It’s hard to believe we are over halfway through the season already. Coach Scott’s impending death has been a back-and-forth battle. Will they or won’t they? This week his fate finally comes to fruition in episode 6 of Yellowjackets. How many do we say goodbye to this week? Find out next in our review. SPOILERS BELOW.
What becomes of Coach Ben Scott?
Thanks to the dream Akilah had in the caves with Travis and Lottie, Ben’s life was temporarily spared because they believed he would be the bridge to home. Are these visions she’s having even real or are more of their minds playing tricks on them? After so long in the wilderness their mental capacity can’t be too high. Even Travis is questioning the validity of Akilah’s story.
L-R: Sophie Thatcher as Teen Natalie and Steven Krueger as Ben Scott in Yellowjackets, episode 6, season 3, streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, 2025. Photo Credit: Colin Bentley/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Coach is at the point of no return. This was no way for anyone to live and he begs Natalie to finish him off. But there’s no way she’s taking away their hope of the dream of going home. And she won’t take away Ben’s hope of going home. His desperation for death gets deeper every time Natalie tries to feed him. Begging for a gun, a knife, a trip down to the stream to slip and drown. Sure she could make it look like an accident if she had in her.
But in the end, Natalie’s heart is too big and she does the humane thing. Though she knew all hell would break loose she plunges a knife into Ben’s heart to release him from the hell he’s living in. You could visibly see the peace coming over his body. The acting between Sophie Thatcher and Steven Krueger was magical and painfully heartbreaking.
L-R: Steven Krueger as Ben Scott and Samantha Hanratty as Teen Misty in Yellowjackets, episode 5, season 3, streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, 2025. Photo Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Misty’s incomprehensible dream came true with a kiss goodbye to Ben, after he took his last breath. It was beyond cringe, but when it comes to Misty, it could always be worse.
Back in the present time
Things are pretty slow in the present timeline. Shauna returns with the news that Lottie has met her untimely death. She doesn’t think it’s an accident at all. Though there’s not enough proof to debunk that yet. Misty is on a lone case to figure out the truth. A disgraced cult leader doesn’t just have an accident like that. It’s too clean. But Misty should really keep her day job. Detective work is not her forte.
Callie shows her mother a tape that somebody had dropped off. Shauna has to enlist the help of Van and Tai because they need a DAT player to listen to it. Van is a little stunned by her impatience about it, and even more stunned that Taissa is ordering fancy entrees after massages without a care in the world. For her, it’s been curse after curse, losing her family, and the love of her life battling cancer. I guess self-care is the one thing she can control right now. But Van has no time for those luxuries when an ominous feeling about this tape washes over her.
Things grow increasingly strange when Van gets a mysterious phone call from Tai’s voice asking for help. It felt like another dimension because Taissa walked into the room mere seconds after.
L-R: Lauren Ambrose as Van, Melanie Lynskey as Shauna and Tawny Cypress as Taissa in Yellowjackets, episode 6, season 3, streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, 2025. Photo Credit: Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
When Tai, Van, and Shauna are in the car together and listen to the tape, all you can hear is singing and dancing which sounds more like screaming and chanting and somebody pleading no as what sounds like a blunt force object hitting them. The only people who would know what happened out there in the woods are them. Anyone else who could tell the story is dead.
Misty follows all the evidence she’s accumulated which led her to Lisa at Bamboo Cafe. She accuses Lisa of being the one who murdered Lottie, but Lisa doesn’t think she was murdered at all. The case seems pretty cut and dry. But she advised Misty to take a look at Tai if that’s the route she wants to go.
We already know that Taissa had it implanted in her mind she needs to kill/feed the wilderness to cure Van of her cancer. The events surrounding Lottie’s death could go so many ways. Tai may have pushed her. It’s possible it was an accident, or even more likely she inflicted it on herself. It wouldn’t be the first time she was suicidal.
Back in the land of the crazy
After the death of their coach, Nat gets demoted as leader and Shauna rises to power. For Natalie’s punishment, she had to prepare the feast, meaning she had to cut up Ben’s body to eat. At first, it was calm, they sat around the fire talking until Lottie told them to sing. That’s when all hell breaks loose. The dancing and singing come to a standstill when what looks like a researcher comes upon them. Pleasantries were attempted until he saw Ben Scott’s head and jumped in fear and disgust. What’s your next move girls?
My key thought:
I thought the season started slow, but it’s finally picking up. However, there are some major flaws in the writing between Taissa and Van. I don’t like the way Tai never fought for her family or at least fought to have a relationship with her son. In her mind, she may see it as protecting her child, but it comes across as abandonment.
I do love the relationship between Tai and Van but a more developed love story could have been written. To me, it felt like one part of Tai’s life came to an end so she went to Van because it’s familiar. I do think their souls are connected but I also wonder how Tai would react without the cancer storyline. I think they could have dove into Tai’s multiple personality disorder to make a much more compelling story.
We see Tai following Van the whole season, doing whatever it takes to heal her cancer, which is great but what does she want in the long run? Van changes her as a person for the better in a lot of ways. But if this is the love story of the show, let’s make it a real one.
Yellowjackets returns next Friday on Paramount Plus at 3 AM ET/12 AM PT and on Sunday’s at 8 PM ET on Showtime.
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About the author: Shay has been writing as a journalist professionally for years. Her most common topics to cover are drama and horror but she looks forward to getting her feet wet with new and exciting genres and projects. @ShaySleighs
