Death runs rampant in Yellowjackets, but never so much as it did in Season 3. Four characters were killed off in the third season, two of which were a long time coming and two that came as a huge shock to longtime fans. Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose‘s Van Palmer, the adult version of whom was debuted in Season 2, has escaped death so many times that Van fancied herself to be “unkillable.” So says Hewson themselves in the video interview above breaking down Van’s arc in Yellowjackets Season 3. But the death knell rang for this pop culture-obsessed character, who met their tragic end at the hands of a surprise adult survivor from the wilderness, Melissa, played by Jenna Burgess in flashbacks and Hilary Swank in the present day.

Van was only meant to be a one-season character, but Hewson got bumped up to series regular when the Paramount+ With Showtime drama got renewed for Season 2 (Yellowjackets was renewed for Season 4 on May 20). Van survived the gruesome wolf attack that left her face permanently scarred in Season 1. Hewson tells TV Insider that they can’t say for sure that this was meant to be Van’s death in the original plan, but they think that might’ve been the case. Hewson was the only actor cast to play Van in the debut season, leaving the character’s fate post-rescue a mystery until Ambrose’s casting was revealed pre-Season 2. Van nearly died in the fire inside the plane post-crash, survived the wolf attack, and avoided any infection of her wounds, and, in Season 3, even saw her terminal cancer miraculously go into remission. Tai (Tawny Cypress), however, would have you believe it was because they made a human sacrifice to “It” and were rewarded (well, Other Tai thinks that, at least). But the unkillable Van was, in fact, killed in the penultimate episode of Season 3.

Her death had been foreshadowed all season through dream-like sequences that gave Hewson and Ambrose the chance to share scenes. You’re led to believe that these moments are the result of Van’s cancer killing her, but then her death becomes much more violent and unexpected. Hewson was there on set when adult Van’s demise was filmed. They received word from the showrunners that Van would be dying in Season 3 and then shared concerns about how Van would meet her end.

“Because of the meta decision to keep me on, [Van’s] relationship to death is unique,” Hewson explains. “She has this really loaded relationship to death as somebody who’s avoided it over and over. So if she’s going to die, her death has to be saying something specific.”

In their talks with the showrunners, Hewson said they expressed a desire for Van’s death “to be something that couldn’t have happened to anybody else,” saying, “I wanted it to be about her. I didn’t want it to be a rug-pull or an accident. I felt protective in a similar way to the way my character does in the scenes she has with herself, so that was quite beautiful.”

“Her relationship to death is significant, and it means something for that relationship to change,” Hewson adds. Saving her lover, Tai, as well as Misty (Christina Ricci) and Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), from a gas leak triggered by Melissa was a heroic last act for the character, but it was immediately underscored by the plot twist that was Melissa suddenly recommitting herself to their murderous rituals from their time in the woods.

Hewson says they felt a strong need to be on set when Ambrose and Swank filmed this scene in Melissa’s kitchen. Burgess joined as well. The younger actors were originally just in the video village (an area on set with monitors for people to watch what’s being filmed in real time) watching it all go down, and then Ambrose asked Hewson to join her.

“At one point, Lauren comes out and grabs me and says, ‘Come and be in here with me,’” Hewson reveals. “So while Hilary and Lauren are filming Melissa murdering Van, I’m actually off camera in the kitchen watching it happen, which again was this fascinating, meta layer to what was happening, because later on in the episode as young Van, I’m sat in the plane watching that happen. We’re watching it together. So it was eerie in this beautiful way.”

What happened next was less beautiful. Van’s body was rolled up in a rug and taken to a random location where Tai would bury her. Hewson was despondent when they first read the script for the Yellowjackets Season 3 finale. They couldn’t believe that Van’s body would be placed in an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere. But the nature of her death had to be kept secret. That secret might be hard to keep in Yellowjackets Season 4.

“It’s significant to me, plot-wise, that Van’s body is buried in the ground in a rug with her heart missing, and she’s a recognizable Yellowjacket who is a small business owner who would be missed,” Hewson points out. “I think that is a pretty crazy smoking gun. I’m not sure what the plan is in the present-day timeline, but I think that is an interesting opportunity to kick a few things off.”

Looking ahead to the fourth season, Hewson says the cast is eager to explore what happened to the teens after they were rescued. We already know that Van and Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown in the 1990s timeline) broke up at some point after they returned home to New Jersey and that all of the survivors ended up at Shauna (Sophie Nélisse and Melanie Lynskey) and Jeff’s (Warren Kole) wedding. But what Hewson is most intrigued to explore is how being “tabloid fodder” in the ’90s would impact each of the teens, especially someone like Van and Tai, whose lesbian relationship would be a point of scrutiny in this time period, and Van, whose scarred appearance would no doubt generate unsavory headlines about her in the salacious press.

In a last act of honoring the love of her life, and in tribute to their cannibalistic rituals in the wilderness that became a twisted form of religion for the survivors, Tai ate Van’s raw heart before burying her. Hewson explains the appeal of using cannibalism in love stories in the full video interview above, in addition to breaking down more key scenes from the end of Yellowjackets Season 3.

Yellowjackets, Seasons 1-3 Available Now, Paramount+ With Showtime