‘Yellowjackets’ Bosses Explain How ‘The Sopranos’ Inspired That Trippy Episode 3 Dream Sequence

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Yellowjackets” Season 3, Episode 3.

In this week’s episode of “Yellowjackets,” Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), Akilah (Nia Sondaya) and Van (Liv Hewson) are plunged into a surreal dreamworld when they enter the cave where Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) has been living, seemingly from a strange substance emanating from a specific section of the cave.

Shauna has visions of her son, Van ends up in a cabin in the woods and Akilah ends up talking to a llama. That’s right, a talking llama.

TheWrap spoke to series showrunners Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson and Jonathan Lisco about their inspiration for the trippy hallucinations: That dream sequence in “The Sopranos” where Big Pussy (Vincent Pastore) appears to Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) as a talking fish.

They also addressed the intriguing theory Mari (Alexas Barajas) told Ben while he held her captive in his cave.

TheWrap: Let’s talk about the crazy dream sequence. Was there a little David Lynch influence in there? 

Lisco: How could there not be? I don’t think we were explicitly thinking David Lynch, but David Lynch is such a seminal figure in directing and the stories are so embedded in our consciousness, collectively and individually.

We were playing with plasticity of subjective experience, and we wanted to take them on a hallucinatory dream ride, but it was also very specific to each of their characters. The idea of creating a weird sequence to us loses power unless it tethers to something psycho-emotional that’s going on in each of the characters. And we hope we achieved that.

Lyle: We’ve gone on the record as being enormous David Lynch fans. We’ve also gone on the record as being enormous “Sopranos” fans. When we scripted the llama sequence. We scripted it as á la, Big Pussy in “The Sopranos,” because we were very much coming back to the fish. And “Sopranos” is another show that used dream sequences beautifully. They were so surreal and so strange in the middle of what is otherwise a very grounded show. And then we found out that we could actually get Vincent Pastore to be the llama, which was just so much fun for us.

Nickerson: I feel specifically with the dream sequences, “The Sopranos” is always something we’re thinking about. David Chase talked about stealing the vibe of the dream sequences from Fellini’s “8 1/2” and I only saw those things because of “The Sopranos.”

There’s that scene where Coach says that none of this seems real. And, that’s what they’ve been saying this whole time, but it seems really true for this season.

JL:  Totally agree. That was a really lovely scene between coach and Alexa Barajas, who plays Mari, in the cave, when he loses it and hears those sounds outside the cave. It’s very evocative of certain thematic strands that are running through the entire thing. What is real and what is your subjective lived experience, the thing that is your life, or is objectively what’s happening in your life? We’re constantly playing with those two pistons. 

Mari’s theory about two sides to reality is surprisingly deep for that character. Where did that come from? 

JL: What intrigues me and also terrifies me about her saying there are two versions of reality, with one just lurking behind the other, is that most of us have optimism bias. Like when we doomscroll and we read about terrible things happening, be they plane crashes, floods, tragedies, random killings on the streets. We all have this self-preservational impulse that kicks in to say, “Well, that’s happening to someone else and probably won’t happen to us.” That’s what Mari is doing in that moment. To say there’s a very thin veil between how you pretend your life is OK and the fragility of actual existence.

AL: Part of the core premise of the show is that these are very normal girls from suburban New Jersey. For anyone who’s experienced a tragedy or a very unexpected, terrible turn of events, life is extremely normal until the moment that it’s not. And that is what is happening to our girls throughout this entire series.

“Yellowjackets” releases new episodes Fridays on Paramount+ with Showtime and Sundays on Showtime.

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