If only food was the sole concern of an abandoned football team. Now, in the middle of the season, we’re watching the girls struggle to make sense of the strange environment they’re stuck in – the icy isolation of a forest winter that strains friendships and encourages strange beliefs. Shauna also goes through the misfortune of being pregnant in the desert with her dead best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s child, which Neliss was particularly excited to explore in the new season.

“The stakes are much higher,” she says. “I was very happy that we would tap into more desperate, more animalistic behavior. Part of her has grown to love this baby and she wants it, but at the same time it’s a constant reminder of all the things she’s done that she regrets. : Slept with Jeff, which also led to Jackie’s death. At the end of the second episode, by eating Jackie, she ended the story. But pregnancy is a constant reminder. It’s a reason to try and survive and try to survive. get out of the wilderness, because she has not only her[self] to think about. It brings out this very selfless side in her, but she fears for her life because she is likely to die.”

In the fifth episode, “Two Truths and a Lie”, Shauna feels trapped not only by her physical condition, but by the growing number of those who are starting to look like a cult – with a resisting (and possibly clairvoyant) Lottie Matthews at the helm. . She is utterly terrified of their little meditation sessions in the woods and cannot shake their constant interest in her unborn child. “She understands where they come from, as you need to hold on to something to survive,” Neliss explains. “Her hope is only this child, and she does not want anything to be associated with him. The journey Lottie is taking scares her because she sees them losing touch with reality. I don’t think she wants to take the risk.” it by believing it.”

“She’s already so mad at herself for everything she’s done that I don’t even think she can be held accountable anymore,” Neliss continues. “She definitely projects a lot of her anger and takes it out on other people because it’s too hard for her. As the season progresses, she feels very alienated because she is so angry with herself. group because they didn’t believe in the cause.”

Fighting off a witch cult alone is a dangerous business, but fortunately we know that Shauna is one of the survivors, and Melanie Lynskey plays her adult counterpart in the present. Neliss explains that both actors tried not to copy each other’s performances too much, and also created a logical path through a period of her life that we don’t see, from one Shauna to the next. While other characters have matured or evolved into new, different versions of themselves as adults, Shauna has taken the opposite path.

“She is back to being the Shauna she was. before wilderness,” Neliss says. “In my storyline, we see Shauna grow into who she is, find her inner strength without all these social norms and hierarchies. Without Jackie, she is finally, in some strange, confusing way, truly free within herself. But because she has done such terrible things, she is afraid of this man. She turned back into the Showna she used to be, turning into the person that other people want her to be. She reconnected with Jeff and settled into a family she didn’t really want. Ironically, Shauna years later is a more dormant, locked-in version of herself. We see her act because she wants to find the voice she found in the desert.”