Update (March 21st, 2022): After appearing in a vision to Alex (Rowan Blanchard) and Mr. Wildford (Sean Bean) earlier in the current season of Snowpiercer, Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) finally reappeared on the TNT sci-fi drama in season 3, episode 9, which revealed how the character had survived on her own with little to no supplies for six months.
Original Post (April 4th, 2021): Snowpiercer just aired its season 2 finale last week, and since it ended with Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) seemingly sacrificing herself to save the data at the remote research station, a lot of fans started to assume that Melanie is dead and that Connelly will no longer be part of the show’s season 3.
But in a recent interview with TVLine, executive producer Becky Clements revealed that Connelly is not leaving the show, confirming that the Oscar-winning actress will come back for season 3. Connelly was a main cast member in the first two seasons of the TNT and Netflix series, but it’s not clear yet whether she’ll return in the same capacity in the upcoming season.
Connelly’s season 3 return, however, doesn’t guarantee that her character is not dead yet. “I don’t know if I’m going on record that she is ‘done for,’ but I don’t know that she is alive,” Clements told TVLine when asked about Melanie’s fate.
At the very end of season 2, Melanie’s daughter Alex (Rowan Blanchard) and Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) arrive at the research station where Melanie was carrying out her mission. Although they didn’t find Melanie at the station, they did discover her data and a notebook with a letter addressed to Alex inside.
The content of the letter suggests that Melanie left the station with the knowledge that she wouldn’t survive out in the cold. But as avid fans of TV series know, as long as a character’s body is not shown on screen, there’s always a possibility that they are still alive. So the fact that Alex and Layton didn’t find Connelly’s frozen corpse in the season 2 finale is a sign that fans may still see her in the flesh next season.
One of the most popular fan theories proposes that Melanie was rescued by a group of survivors in the mountains and brought her back to their colony to recover. On the other hand, it’s also possible that Connelly will only reprise her role as Melanie in flashback scenes, which will probably show her last few moments before her potential death.
Filming for season 3 began last month, and while the new season doesn’t have a release date yet, it will probably premiere on TNT and Netflix sometime in 2022.