How the 'Yellow Vests' Created the Lottie Cult's 'Animal Farm' Vibes

The unknown location Natalie (Juliette Lewis) was taken to in the Season 1 finale of “Yellowjackets” becomes more concerning as Season 2 progresses. In the season 2 premiere — written by showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer — Natalie finds herself tied to a bed at a wellness retreat run by Lottie (Simone Kessell), who also stays magnetic for fans today that she was in the desert as a teenager (Courtney Eaton).

Read more: Winter is here in Season 2 of 'Yellow Vests' and BC ran out of fake snow to make it happen

There's more than a touch of wilderness at Lottie's upscale wellness resort: a procession of devotees dressed in white and wearing animal masks burying a naked man is not the usual accompaniment to tasteful neutrals and suburban mom wall art. But production designer Margot Ready and her props team relished the opportunity to create animal masks just spooky enough to tip the current Lottie community firmly into cult territory. "It's kind of like Orwell's 'animal farm,'" Ready told IndieWire. "She's in this seemingly non-hierarchical cult - but she's still the leader."

The inspiration for the masks was a mix of weirdly simplistic animal imagery and the showrunners' love of organic materials. "Our prop team was playing with natural materials in the prop office," Ready said, "and our prop master, David Goodman, put some bark on his face with the eyes cut out and it had the looks really cool in a weird, druid-like way. So we leaned into that pagan, spooky, anthropomorphic, DIY feel."

Lottie's "Yellowjackets" Followers Masks

Screenshot from YouTube

Ready and his team chose simple animal shapes and used natural materials and papier-mâché to create the masks, which had to look like they were handcrafted by the cult members . "[We kept them] really weird," Ready said, pointing out the inspirations for Season 1. "What we see at the start, Queen Antler and the big mystery of the show, also in [Episode 9] 'Doomcoming ", there's this amazing aesthetic and these things are still problematic...