- Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "Yellowjackets."
- During a PaleyFest panel for the Showtime series, a fan asked about the mysterious "man with no eyes."
The "Yellowjackets" showrunners finally opened up about one of the show's biggest mysteries: The man with no eyes.
During a Monday night PaleyFest panel comprised of the series' three showrunners and a dozen cast members, a fan asked if there was anything the group could share about the creepy character who Taissa (Tawny Cypress) briefly catches sight of in a mirror on the show's third episode, "The Dollhouse."
After a rousing murmur of anticipation from the Dolby Theatre crowd, showrunner and executive producer Bart Nickerson said, "Absolutely not, next question," eliciting laughter from fans.
Not accepting that response, Cypress unexpectedly got up out of her chair on stage and said, "We all want to know."
After 10 seconds of applause from the crowd, the showrunners gave in and discussed the mystery character, played by Brahm Taylor, for the next two-and-a-half minutes.
The hit series, currently in its second season, follows a girls' soccer team whose plane crashes in the wild with no rescue in sight and the fallout 25 years later of those who survived the ensuing chaos as the group tried to make their way back home.
The "man with no eyes" has most noticeably appeared in the show's third episode of its first season as Tai's grandmother was dying. However, he also appeared briefly during a speech Taissa gave later in season one, popping up among a group of journalists.
It's much easier to catch the eyeless man weekly in the show's title sequence in the woods.
Coshowrunner and executive producer Ashley Lyle stepped in to give some insight into the creepy nightmare fuel man who may be plaguing some fans' dreams.
"All I'm going to say about the man with no eyes is that we see in the first season that Tai has lived as this person who's based her life on pragmatism," Lyle said. "I personally believe that she would define herself as an atheist, if not, an agnostic."
"And yet as a young child, she had this incredibly informative, traumatic experience when her grandmother, who she was very close to, was close to death and had this sort of terrifying moment where she was anticipating, you know, the transition to the next life and expecting sort of angels and trumpets and instead had a terrifying vision," Lyle continued, referencing how Tai sees a glimpse of the man in a mirror.
Lyle said the figure's inclusion wasn't random, adding she's done a lot of research on the visions people have in their final moments.
"I've gone down the rabbit hole of things like near-death experiences and there are a lot of threads about hospice nurses and what people do in their last moments. And, I've lost a lot of sleep because of it because it's a not uncommon experience that people will see something... disturbing," Lyle said.
"And so I think that for Taissa, who's very much not in touch with her spiritual self, and very much not in touch with her ability to believe, or, her faith, there's this sort of symbolic character of, you know, you could look at him as death incarnate," Lyle said of the man.
At that point, Cypress jumped in to say that's how she views the man with no eyes as well, adding that "he's been cut out of scenes," implying that fans were maybe supposed to see more of the character.
When it comes to the mystery unnamed character, Lyle boiled it down to two words.
"I think what he represents is 'the unknown' and the unknown is something that Taissa is very uncomfortable with as a character," Lyle said. "And we will dig further into that."
"You will rue this day," Nickerson added.
Renewed for a third season in 2022, the showrunners told Insider on the PaleyFest red carpet that "none of" the next season is writtten yet. Lyle added they're in "early stages," gearing up their writer's room.
When asked how how many seasons of the show they have laid out, Lyle said, "We have a plan, but the plan can always change and evolve. We're always a little reluctant to set things in stone because what's most important to us is telling the right amount of story. We don't want to rush things and we don't wanna over welcome or drag things out simply for the sake of continuing to have a show."
New episodes of "Yellowjackets" season two air on Showtime on Friday at 9 p.m. ET.