Yellowjackets Season 2 Cast: Who Will Play the Adult Version of Each Character?

Here’s who will be joining the hive in season 2…

Simone Kessell as Adult Lottie

The Antler Queen cometh. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Simone Kessell will be playing the adult version of Lottie Matthews, Yellowjackets most mysterious character. Part visionary mystic, part cult leader, and part lost girl off her meds, the Lottie of 1996 experienced a serious amount of emotional trauma that her older self doubtless still carries. (I mean…she stabbed a bear! And definitely ate at least one of her supposed friends!) What does surviving all that do to a person? It seems we’re going to find out in season 2.

The first season finale revealed that adult Lottie was responsible for emptying Travis’s bank account after his death, just as a group of strangers wearing medallions marked with the strange crest from the girls’ camp showed up to kidnap Natalie. Now…we don’t know for sure that Lottie’s behind Natalie’s kidnapping, but who else do we know on this show who likes to use symbolic objects to establish cult-like devotion in others? 

Lauren Ambrose as Adult Van

Former Six Feet Under star Lauren Ambrose has been tapped to play the adult version of Vanessa Palmer, known to her teammates simply as Van. This is notable not just because Ambrose (who can also be seen on Apple TV+’s Servant) is a fantastic performer who looks eerily like Liv Hewson, the actress who plays the younger version of her character, but because the casting announcement is the first official confirmation viewers have been given that Van lived through the group’s ordeal in the woods. Given how grievously she was injured at one point during season 1 that survival was not at all guaranteed, though many viewers suspected that Lottie’s survival indicated Van probably did as well.

Ambrose will certainly have plenty of story to dive into during the show’s second season, since her teenage self was not only secretly involved in a romantic relationship with Taissa but also developed an almost cult-like devotion to Lottie in the wake of the events of Doomcoming. Could adult Van be involved in Natalie’s kidnapping? It certainly doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.

Elijah Wood as Walter

Yes, you read that right—Elijah Wood, star of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has joined the cast of Yellowjackets season 2. He’ll be playing a new character called Walter, who surprisingly, seems to have no overt connections to the 1996 plane crash or any of the strange events it spawned.