Yellowjackets’ season two finale aired last Friday. The series, which follows a soccer team that is stranded in the wilderness following a plane crash, ramped things up in its season finale, with the character Javi Martinez drowning in an easily preventable accident. The group of survivors could have saved him but chose not to because they decided to use him as a cannibalistic sacrifice. Those that witnessed the drowning chose not to tell his brother Travis that they could have saved him, and as such, Travis participated in the cannibalism. Travis’ actor, Kevin Alves (Shadowhunters, Lock and Key) sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the ending and his role in it.
Alves discusses how he thinks fans will react to the ending. “… I think the finale is the biggest moment that fans have to start searching within themselves to say, ‘What am I okay with? What can I justify for these people to do? Am I justifying this behavior now?’” he said. “… We’re talking about a situation where — and Travis doesn’t know this — there was a possibility of saving this kid, and they let him die. I think now as a viewer, you have to decide whether this feels justified or not. And I think that’s going to make things really tough for people to watch their favorite characters now make absolutely terrible decisions, which is kind of funny for me because it’s how a lot of people felt about Travis from the beginning of the show.”
Alves says that he believes that Travis would have reacted a lot differently if he knew the truth. “If someone came to him and said: ‘We killed him. We let him die. We watched him die,’ I think he’d say, ‘This is not how this is supposed to go. We don’t get to change our minds and choose. You’re all going to a place that isn’t OK,’” he said. “It would be different if it was any other character; I think he could maybe find ways to keep believing. But because of Javi, his brother, that would snap him out of it. But in this case, because he feels like it was this accident and there’s nothing anybody could have done, it definitely keeps him in this state of not being sure what he can and cannot believe in.”
Another topic Alves discusses is how, as an actor, he had to mentally ready himself for the scene in the show in which he had to eat Javi’s heart. “When I read it, I had to stop,” he said. “I had to take a break from the minute I read it. I’ve been talking about this all season in different interviews, that there was a period of time I was reading something and I had to just stop. And it was the moment that I had to take a bite out of Javi. And the reason is, I was angry. As a viewer. As for myself, I was frustrated as someone who has a sister. I was so angry. Why do I have to be the one to do this? But, you know this is exactly where the story needs to go. I remember just having to surrender myself to understanding that this is his journey, and this is a really dark and terrible journey that he’s on.”
Yellowjackets was renewed for a third season in December of 2022.