From the beginning, it was important to Eaton that Lottie, who could have a mental illness, wasn’t portrayed as a villain. “I think there’s a lot of that in our industry today,” she says. As Eaton describes, Lottie is a character who walks a fine line. From one scene to the next, her actions beg certain questions: Did this trauma exist before the crash? Is it the crash trauma itself? Does she have a gift, or is she struggling with mental health? “It can be challenging some days to not lean too much one way, and our writers and directors on set are really great at giving me little hints here and there—like, ‘Yes, you are in the right direction,’ or ‘Maybe less this way.’” she says. Not knowing which way she’s going to go is a fun challenge for Eaton. And even though she’s very protective of the character, she’s happy to go blindly into the darkness of the show and where they take her.
With season two, we finally get to see what has come of Lottie 25 years after being found. Played by Simone Kessell, older Lottie is the founder and leader of a cult-like group, or “intentional community,” called Camp Green Pine. Though the teen and current-day versions of each Yellowjackets character never share scenes, there seems to be a special bond between the actors, which was the case for Eaton and Kessell too. “I love Simone with all my heart,” Eaton gushes. From the moment they met over dinner, Eaton trusted Kessell with Lottie wholeheartedly. “We are almost the same person. We’re flopsy and probably a bit annoying, but we always talk about it as Simone being the light in Lottie and my version being the darkness, and she’s on her journey there.”
That darkness is what excites Eaton the most as she thinks about what’s next for teen Lottie. With a third season confirmed by Showtime, she’s convinced it’s going to be a rough road ahead for not just Lottie but also the whole group. “I don’t know what kind of journey that will be, but it will probably be pretty dark,” she alludes.
