Snowpiercer fans react to frustrating twist at the end of season 3 premiere

***This article contains spoilers for ‘Snowpiercer’ season three episode one***

The first episode of Snowpiercer season three was released on Netflix on Tuesday night (25 January), and fans are all asking the same question.

Daveed Diggs and Sean Bean have reprised their roles in the new season, which follows the world’s final survivors as they fight for their lives on the Snowpiercer train.

The second season, which finished in March last year, ended on a cliffhanger, and fans have been waiting until season three to find out if Melanie Cavill is actually alive, or if Jennifer Connelly’s character really did die in the last moments of series two.

The last time fans saw Melanie, she had gone on a mission to figure out if the Earth had started to warm up after freezing over.

After collecting scientific data, she was supposed to jump on Snowpiercer, but was abandoned by the train.

When Layton went to find her at the science station, he discovered she had run out of resources and had wandered out into the snow, presumably freezing to death.

But the death did not actually happen on screen, and so many viewers have been expecting her to reappear in the new episodes.

Alas, Melanie did not appear in the season three premiere as many had hoped.

In the new episode, set six months on, Layton bumped into another mysterious person in the wild and, after fighting with them in an underground bunker, carried their unconscious body back to Snowpiercer.

The survivor’s face was finally shown, with them lying in a hospital bed – and it wasn’t Melanie.

Viewers were not happy.

Last year, executive producer Becky Clements teased that Melanie could still be alive, with actor Connelly confirmed to be returning for season three.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Diggs spoke vaguely about her return, saying: “Uh, honestly, I have no idea. I haven’t seen anything, so I don’t know. We shoot out of order, so who knows? I can’t reveal in what capacity she is returning.”

The next episode of Snowpiercer arrives on Netflix on Tuesday 1 February.