Yellowjackets' Sophie Nélisse Breaks Down the Disturbing Ending of Season 2 Premiere

[Warning: The following contains spoilers from Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 1. Read at your own risk!] 

Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) is not OK. To be fair, none of the girls that have been stranded in the wilderness for months after their soccer team suffered a plane crash are okay either. But Shauna has reason to be faring a little more poorly than most: Her BFF Jackie (Ella Purnell) froze to death after the two of them had an explosive argument roughly two months ago. And not only has Shauna not gotten rid of Jackie's body, she's been talking to it. In the premiere of Showtime's YellowjacketsSeason 2, Shauna spends a little too much time in the shed chatting with a living version of Jackie. Only Jackie is not actually alive, and Shauna has been conversing with a corpse.

Just when you think things can't get worse, it does (this will be a trend in this season of Yellowjackets — as if we expected anything less). Shauna has also secretly kept a part of Jackie — her ear — in her pocket. And at the end of Season 2 Episode 1, the moment of cannibalism that many fans have been waiting for has come. Shauna takes out Jackie's ear and, after staring at it intently for a few seconds, pops the ear into her mouth. 

"I think she just put it in her pocket without even thinking," Nélisse told TV Guide. "She's hiding the secret that she's trying to keep [Jackie] alive, and she didn't want any evidence of it." The actor said that it's when Shauna had a moment to herself that she thought more about what was in her pocket. "This idea sparked of, oh, I've got this ear and it's protein and I'm hungry," Nélisse said. "It's kind of like an itch that you will feel like scratching until you actually scratch." She added that once the idea has entered Shauna's mind, it's hard to let go. "I think that's just how society is," Nélisse continued. "We're so fascinated by what is perceived as wrong and what we're not allowed to do." For Shauna, she eventually commits to the idea and eats the ear. 

Showrunner Ashley Lyle discussed why Jackie's ear was the first body part to be eaten. "We just thought it was perversely funny," Lyle said. "It's such a strange appendage to begin with." She explained that the writers were also looking for something that could break off from the body in a believable way. "But it's also, there's a delicacy to it," Lyle said. "People do eat ears. People eat ears on other animals." To the writers, the ear felt more interesting than other body parts like the finger. "There was something even more intimate, and that's what appealed to us about it," she shared.

The scene also reveals why Season 2's premiere is named "Friends, Romans, Countrymen." In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Mark Antony gives a speech containing the line "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." "That's why that's called that," Lyle said. "I feel like the fans are trained to interpret [episode titles] and figure out what they mean."

And what happened to the ear from the set?

"I still have it, by the way, it's in my room," Nélisse shared.

Yellowjackets Season 2 is available to stream.