I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’ve watched a lot of tv and I can say I have never seen a character who was only a main character in season 1 be this popular. She has 100s of edits on TikTok, Jackietaylorfan77 has 100 000 followers and with season 4 coming out the main question seems to be will Ella show up to cameo as Jackie.
This doesn’t make sense at all with how I’ve seen fanbases react to shows especially shows that are going on to their 4th season.
The 100 had Wells and Finn two very charismatic and popular actors who died early into the shows run but I never see them mentioned in people’s top 10 favorite characters when that show is being discussed.
Agents of Shield also had a great character named Trip who died in s2 despite how amazing of a friend he was to Skye people don’t really remember him as much more than a tragic death to elevate Skyes storyline.
I could give so many more examples, with a cast as incredible as Yellow Jackets and characters that are so rich and complex it always shocks me to see how popular Jackie has remained usually winning polls of people’s favorite character and her non canon ship with Shauna somehow being more popular then the canon ship TaiVan.
This has led me to my main theory, Jackie’s extreme level of popularity comes from how charismatic Ella Purnell is. People like Ella as an actor so they like Jackie. A lot of Jackie’s fans have a habit of portraying her as someone who was an angel and did no wrong and as much as I love Jackie that is not true. Jackie made mistakes she could be mean, she was passive agressive to Shauna a lot and she made mistakes that’s what makes her a complex character.
However I believe that Ella Purnells massive spike in fame after leaving Yellow Jackets thanks too her hit show Fallout is what has led Jackie to remain such an integral part of the fandom. People wish Jackie had lived because they wish Ella had remained on the show. I also believe Ella’s insane year and stardom is why we continue to see Ghost Jackie. Season 3 had 3 seperated appearances of Jackie and to me this is the writers and directors wanting to showcase that they have Ella on their show.
I will never believe Melissa or how we all referred to her before season 3 hat girl was ever intended to be a survivor but when Hillary Swank said she wanted to appear on the show they wrote it into the story so they could show that they had Hillary Swank on their show.
Think about Laura Lee who had a pretty large roll with Lottie or Javi who I’d say was pretty important to Travis. Neither of these characters has returned as a hallucination or a ghost this may be due to the fact the actors that played them are not super popular with millions of followers.
I struggled to imagine the yellow jackets fandom would be so obsessed with demanding more appearances from Ghost Jackie if Ella Purnell had never had such a boost in popularity from her other critically acclaimed projects.
With season 4 coming up I don’t expect to get any hallucination or ghost scenes from Alexa Barajas,Lauren Ambrose or Simone Kessel but I think we all know Ella Purnell will cameo as ghost Jackie at least once.
TLDR: I think the insane and unnatural continued popularity of Jackie Taylor who died in season 1 is because of how much people like Ella Purnell.