Yellowjackets’ Newcomer Ashley Sutton on Her Wild Season 3 Intro and How the Show Helped Cure Her Fear of Spiders

After her role was kept a secret all season, Ashley Sutton makes her debut as Hannah in one of the show’s wildest episodes yet

Yellowjackets is not holding back on making bold twists and turns, with season 3’s “Croak” one of the series’ wildest, most Lost-like episodes yet. 

Picking up immediately after that episode 6 cliffhanger, which gave a brief glimpse at three outsiders — researchers Edwin (Nelson Franklin) and Hannah (Ashley Hutton) as well as their survival guide Kodi (Joel McHale) — coming upon the survivors’ mid-ritual as they cannibalize Coach Ben (Steven Krueger), audiences are delivered another shocking blow as a distraught Lottie (Courtney Eaton) comes up from behind and hits Edwin the back of the head with an axe, instantly killing him. 

Of course, the episode takes some time to flash back to three days prior to show what Edwin, Hannah and Kodi were doing out in the wilderness — and sadly for the remaining players from the soccer team, it wasn’t to rescue them. 

In fact, they were out there to study rare Arctic Banshee frogs during a screech-filled breeding season, answering one of the mysteries about the woods, with Kevin Alves (who plays Travis) telling PEOPLE that when it comes to the noises in particular, “The show’s doing a pretty good job of answering a lot of questions this year. We’re getting a lot of answers to what’s happening and why they feel the way they do and what they’re listening to. And I’m excited for people to see that.”

But that flashback gives viewers a chance to know Hannah, a teen mom turned scientist who now finds herself running for her life after stumbling upon the left-for-dead survivors as they deal with the sudden shock of meeting people from the real world again — and murdering one of them out of fear of what comes next.

For Sutton, 37, reading the script for her introduction was just as surprising as it was for fans of the series. “When I got the script for [‘Thanksgiving (Canada)’] and [‘Croak’] I was just so shocked,” the actress who most recently appeared on Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story tells PEOPLE, excited for everyone to finally know who she’s playing after her casting was first announced in January. “It’s just so huge.”

“We’re walking into this crazy world that the Yellowjackets have created and I get to experience firsthand,” Sutton continues, explaining how Hannah serves as a proxy for viewers. “It’s kind of like their point of view.”

Not only that, but for Hannah, her time in the woods has been a misdirect, with Edwin suspicious of Kodi and planting seeds of doubt about him in her ear all the while she has this flirty banter with the mysterious outdoorsman. “The whole time Edwin thinks something is happening with Kodi and they’re just at each other’s heads and Hannah’s is like, ‘It’s fine, we’re gonna find frogs.’ Nothing is scary, nothing is spooky,” Sutton says of Hannah’s mindset.

Then cut to later: “We’re just walking up willingly to this camp. And for Hannah, it’s more shocking that there’s other people. At first, she doesn’t think it’s real, especially because it’s so spooky. What they’re seeing is very ritualistic, with them around the fire, screaming and dancing and wearing weird outfits,” she continues.

Sutton adds, “At first Hannah’s like, ‘Oh, this is okay. They’re gonna welcome us. They’re gonna be so kind.’ And then she starts to take in all of those things and is like, ‘Oh, Kodi’s right. Maybe we should really listen to him a lot more than we do because this is not okay.’ And I just don’t think there’s any time for any of them to respond before Lottie just comes in and does what Lottie does, which is terrifying and gross.”

Before she can even process what has happened, Hannah and Kodi run for their lives and eventually get split up in the darkness, with the former taking refuge under some hedges and quickly attempting to record an audio message for her daughter. “I don’t think it was a very thought out decision on Hannah’s part,” Sutton says of her character’s choice to break away from Kodi. But then again, “she’s just remembering everything Edwin’s been putting into her brain the last few days.” 

While what ultimately happens to Hannah, who gets found and captured by Shauna (Sophie Nélisse) and some of the other girls, and Kodi, who nearly falls off a cliff before Travis and Akilah (Nia Sondaya) save him, remains to be seen. Especially knowing that there are only three episodes left in season 3, Sutton can only tease, “I had no idea what was in store for Hannah.” 

As it turns out, when Sutton auditioned for the role, “the scene that we auditioned for was one of the scenes in the tent with the two gentlemen,” she says, adding, “That’s all I knew. I knew she was a scientist. I knew there were frogs. I knew we were going into the wilderness.” 

When it comes to those frogs, Sutton says they had real ones on set to work with. “We used a couple of frogs. But I named one Kermit and he was great. He was very adorable,” she says of the one that appears in a jar that she’s examining after Hannah, Edwin and Kodi come across their breeding grounds.  

She adds, “There were a couple of takes where the frog would grab my finger. So yeah, we got to play with real frogs, which is really cool.” 

The frogs weren’t the only animals she interacted with on set, especially considering that the Yellowjackets camp has numerous animals, including rabbits, goats and ducks — all of which was a delight for Sutton. “I love working with animals,” she says. “There’s so many animals… The ducks, at one point, were all sleeping near me and everyone’s like, ‘You must be the animal whisper,’ because they’re all just taking naps around me.”

There was one creature, however, that Sutton didn’t enjoy meeting in real life. “The team on Yellowjackets would bring other things and they actually brought a tarantula one day because I’m so scared of spiders,” she says, recalling how one of the animal handlers was “like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna get you over your fear.’ And he brought me three different size tarantulas and let me play with them and hold them.” 

“I could only do the small size. The bigger one, I was like, ‘Uh, there’s no way.’ But they were really lovely,” she says, admitting now, “I’m cured of spiders in, like, a very controlled environment.” 

New episodes of Yellowjackets season 3 debut Fridays on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME before airing on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.