Is Ye Wenjie in season 2 of 3 Body Problem?
No. Ye Wenjie is already dead when season 2 begins. She dies at the end of season 1, at the ruins of the old Red Coast base, sitting and watching the last of the sunset fade. So she is not part of season 2's living timeline.
On the surface that's the same answer you get for whether Jack carries into season 2 — both characters are gone before it starts — but the two cases could not be more different. Jack was a glue character written out with a knife. Ye Wenjie is the show's first cause: she is the one who pressed the transmit key at Red Coast decades earlier and sent Earth's coordinates into the cosmos. Everything the Dark Forest era is about traces back to that single act. If you want the specifics of how she reaches the end, start with how Ye Wenjie dies in the show and the book.
Why does her death still matter for season 2?
Because her death is the starting gun, not the finish line. Netflix moving her death to the end of season 1 converts her role from "the answer to season 1's mystery" into "the fuse for season 2."
In her final stretch, the show has her hand a seed of an idea to Saul Durand — the character who occupies Luo Ji's place in the story. She doesn't give him an answer, only a cold prompt about how civilizations might treat one another. Saul brushes it off at the time. But that seed is what grows into the entire Dark Forest deterrence framework in season 2.
So Ye Wenjie herself isn't in season 2, but her thinking is its operating system. That's also why the arc where Saul is chosen as a Wallfacer holds together dramatically: the least likely man inherits a question, planted by a dead woman, that turns out to decide whether humanity survives.
Could Ye Wenjie still appear in season 2 at all?
Only in flashback. Being dead isn't the same as vanishing. Season 2 could bring Ye Wenjie back briefly, especially to explain why Saul's mind runs toward the Dark Forest at all — his whole chain of reasoning starts from what that old woman told him. There's also Da Shi to consider: the two had a strange, almost affectionate cat-and-mouse dynamic in season 1, and Da Shi does continue into season 2, which makes his perspective the natural doorway for any look back at her. Keep expectations grounded, though — the Dark Forest era scales toward cosmic stakes and usually leaves little room for early-character memories, so expect a few shots rather than a subplot.
Does the show match the book on when she dies?
Yes, and this is the part fans often get wrong. Unlike Jack, Ye Wenjie is a central figure in Liu Cixin's trilogy, and having her die at this point is actually faithful to the source.
In the opening stretch of the second novel, The Dark Forest, Ye Wenjie is already elderly. She gives Luo Ji the two founding axioms of cosmic sociology, then returns alone to the ruins of Red Coast and dies quietly at sunset, with the line often rendered as "this might be humanity's sunset." All Netflix did was move that nearly unchanged death scene from the start of book two to the end of season 1 — the character, the place, and the imagery (Red Coast, the sunset, the passing-on of an idea) all line up. To see this kind of "timeline-shift" adaptation across the whole cast, compare it with the structural differences between the Netflix version and the novels, or read why Ye Wenjie is the trilogy's deepest tragedy.
Bottom line
Ye Wenjie dies at the Red Coast ruins at the end of season 1, won't appear as a living character in season 2, and at most returns in flashback. But she is the true origin of the Dark Forest era — both the person who pressed the transmit key and the one who handed the decisive idea to Saul. The entire Dark Forest standoff of season 2 is, in effect, humanity answering a question posed by a woman who has already left the stage.