Why is Simone Kessell leaving Yellowjackets, Lottie Matthews?

Why is Simone Kessell leaving Yellowjackets after this week’s season 3 episode 4? At this point, it is a fair question. It felt like in the present-day, there was so much more story to be told with Lottie Matthews; yet, it turned out to not be the case. Her body was found in the closing minutes of the episode, and Misty was informed from afar about what transpired — at least to a certain extent.

So are we looking at a situation here where Kessell wanted to leave the show, and the producers therefore wrote her out? Far from it. As a matter of fact, the actress has already expressed her sadness over saying goodbye.

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In an interview with Variety, Simone notes that she felt like her death was “premature,” as there was so much more that could have been told. She then tries to rationalize why the decision may have been made to kill her character off:

I was pretty brokenhearted, because it felt like it had come to an end just when I felt Lottie was coming into her own. I was excited that Season 3 would take her somewhere interesting, and unfortunately, they just decided that storyline was no longer. I guess Lottie’s death then serves as an investigation for Misty to be Citizen Detective, and discover how Lottie passes, what happened — and everyone’s a suspect.

While Kessell has already moved on to do other things (including an upcoming Apple TV+ series), we do understand why she would have wanted to be a part of this particular show longer. Yellowjackets is a rich canvas and while the show clearly wants to demonstrate how nobody is safe, did we have to lose her now? It felt like there was a chance she could die this season, but we never imagined that it would take place this early on. This felt more like a big-time finale event!

Related – Learn more about what else is coming on Yellowjackets

Are you as shocked as we are about Lottie’s death on Yellowjackets season 3 episode 4?

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This article was written by Jessica BunBun.