‘Yellowjackets’: Tawny Cypress & Lauren Ambrose Talk Tai & Van’s “Cosmic” But “Terrible Relationship”: “Van Needs To Run Away”

SPOILERS: This post contains details about the Yellowjackets, Season 3 episode ’12 Angry Girls and 1 Drunk Travis’

Although Tai and Van are forever trauma-bonded on Yellowjackets, some relationships are too toxic to survive.

Ahead of this week’s episode of the Showtime series, Tawny Cypress and Lauren Ambrose caught up with Deadline about their characters’ “cosmically connected” relationship in Season 3 and why “Van needs to run away.”

“I think that they feed off of each other, the energy. If one is maybe not feeling it, the other one is, and it it makes the other one feel it too. So, it’s actually a terrible relationship,” said Cypress. “Yes, it is, literally, oh my god. Van needs to run away.”

Years after surviving the wilderness as teens (played by Jasmin Savoy Brown and Liv Hewson) in the ’90s, Tai (Cypress) and Van (Ambrose) reunited in Season 2, during which it was revealed the latter has terminal cancer with months to live.

After a game of dine-and-dash led to their waiter’s fatal heart attack this season, Van finds out her cancer is in remission. Convinced that her lover’s health was a gift for their sacrifice, Tai regresses to their wilderness cult ways, taking Van along for the ride despite her hesitance.

Ambrose added, “These two women are like cosmically connected through the ages, through time, through trauma, and they need each other. And they need each other to feel alive, I guess.”

Meanwhile, their teenage counterparts mirror the dynamic, but it’s Van who surrenders to the wilderness and Tai that’s along for the ride.

“I think that Tai is and will always be charmed by Van, and can be so serious and be so focused, definitely in the wilderness, that the lightness that Van brings and the kind of zoom-out-zoom-in quality that Van has is really nice for Tai,” explained Brown. “It allows her moments to chuckle, moments to be charmed, moments to just be a teenager in love. And I don’t think anyone could elicit those reactions out of Tai except for Van.”

Brown also teased the return of Other Tai, her character’s dark alternate personality. “It is Yellowjackets, so you’re gonna see a lot of feral, and a lot of alter egos. It is fun, it’s like a release. It’s a bit cathartic, because I think we all have that in us,” she said.

This week’s episode of Yellowjackets is now available to stream on Paramount+ with Showtime, before airing Sunday at 8pm ET on Showtime.