While “Yellowjackets” stars and fans alike were sad to see Coach Ben Scott die in Season 3, Steven Krueger said his murder was “necessary” for the show’s future.
Krueger, 35, who played the soccer team’s self-aware mentor, sat down with The Post to discuss his thoughts on his character’s death, revealing he knew Coach Ben’s fate long before they started filming the latest season.
“They [the showrunners] said, ‘Hey, this season is going to be the end for Coach Ben,’ which I kind of had an inkling. We had discussed it kind of informally at the very beginning of the show,” he explained to The Post. “So, I kind of knew Season 3 was like about the time range.”
In Episode 6, viewers watched as teen Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) kills Coach Ben behind her teammates’ backs after the “Yellowjackets” turned on him.
The teens held him hostage and cut his Achilles tendon so he couldn’t escape after they found him guilty of burning down the cabin they were staying in following their plane crash.
After repeatedly pleading with Natalie to end his life, she did, resulting in her being dethroned as the leader of the group. Coach Ben’s corpse was then beheaded, cooked, and eaten by the group — poetic justice for his character, Krueger said.
“This is really poetic. It’s like a strong hero’s death in a way,” the star told The Post. “The second thing is, it’s really, really necessary because, truthfully, the rest of the story needs this death to happen for, like any of this, to continue.”
Krueger shared that Coach Ben’s death was a “chain reaction” that ultimately “sets off everything else down the road.”
He pointed to the frog scientists and their wilderness guide — Hanna (Ashley Sutton), Edwin (Nelson Franklin) and Kody (Joel McHale), respectively — being captured and two-thirds of them being brutally murdered after witnessing Coach Ben’s bloody head on a stake.
“I don’t think that any of that would have taken place if Coach Ben was still alive,” Krueger explained. “If they knew in the back of their heads that they didn’t have to answer for this guy’s head being on a stake right here. I think this all would have gone down very, very differently.”
While Krueger appreciated his co-stars telling The Post that his death was the hardest for them to come to terms with this season, which saw many main characters meet their demise, the actor appreciated knowing that his time on the show was ending in advance.
“I’ve never been given like the courtesy of being told well, in advance, you know,” said Krueger, who has also starred on shows like “Pretty Little Liars,” “The Originals” and “Roswell, New Mexico.”
“This was like 4 months before we ever started filming, so truly everything was done in such a kind way, and it allowed me to kind of also prepare for exactly what I needed to do for kind of the overall arc of the season.”
When asked if he would change anything about the way Coach Ben was taken out, Krueger responded, “Honestly, I think, for the way that the story went, this is exactly what I would have wanted. I love the idea that this death was like a mercy kill. And yet it still was probably not the right thing to do.”
He then joked that he would have obviously preferred his character stay alive.
“Let’s make Coach Ben alive in the future, and maybe he gets taken out by by Shauna or one of the other ladies in the future,” Krueger teased. “I think there was like a lot of fun story stuff there, but at the same time it’s hard to complain because I really do feel like it was a beautiful story. You know there’s not a lot of qualms that I have with the way that the story turned out.”
At a finale event last month, several of Krueger’s “Yellowjackets” co-stars told The Post exclusively that the group “bawled our eyes out” when they had to say goodbye to this character and their real-life friend.
However, the actor said that he’s still close with several of his former colleagues.
“I have a very close relationship with both Sophie Nelisse (teen Shauna) and Courtney Eaton (teen Lottie). We have a little group chat, and we connect all the time,” he said, adding, “We all love to cook, so we randomly send each other, like little recipes.
Coach Scott wasn’t the only original character to lose his life this season.
The murders of adult Lottie (Simone Kessell) and adult Van (Lauren Ambrose) were also hard for fans to digest. Kessell’s character takes a nasty tumble down the stairs after an unlikely killer pushes her to her death, and Ambrose’s Van is brutally stabbed in the heart.
The 10-episode thriller jumps between the teen soccer team’s 1996 plane crash and the survivors in the present day, which include stars Melanie Lynskey (adult Shauna), Christina Ricci (adult Misty), Tawny Cypress (adult Tai) and Oscar winner Hilary Swank (adult Melissa).
“Yellowjackets” Season 3 is now available to stream on Paramount+ with Showtime.
