The Wilds Review: Analyzing Agency and Identity in Times of Crisis
Over the holidays, I binged Amazon Prime’s recently-released show, The Wilds, in two days. The ten episodes were a whirlwind to watch, and I’ve been left thinking about them in the days since I finished. As a serial consumer of media, rarely does a show sit with me like this. Usually I move on quickly, often so quickly that I don’t have time to internalize the content, making it easy to forget. So as a lover of media that features powerful stories about women, I wanted to provide a recommendation for this powerful show with a young feminist lens.
It’s almost impossible to talk about why this show was a standout without providing an obscene amount of spoilers, but I’ll do my best to summarize before revealing any of the plot points. Hopefully, that can convince you to watch, then you can come back to this article afterwards for a full debrief in the spoilers section.
WHY I LOVED IT (Without spoilers)
The basic premise of The Wilds, created by Sarah Streicher, is seemingly simple: a group of teenage girls crash on an abandoned island, left to fend for themselves and hope for rescue. One might assume that this is just another survival story, a trope that feels overdone in Hollywood, and I’ll admit that I remember sensing strong initial Lord of the Flies and LOST vibes. However, the show makes it clear that the true heart of the tale is in its characters and their relationships — both with people back home and the ones that begin to develop on the island.
Representation
It’s easily visible that the casting and writing teams on this show were interested in representation. Of the nine young women in the cohort, more than half were women of color, and the girls’ backstories embodied diverse lived experiences when it came to socioeconomic status, culture, mental health, and sexuality.
Knowing that there has also been a push in recent years for greater representation of Indigenous peoples in television, it was also exciting to see two characters of Native American heritage on the show, both played by young actresses with Indigenous heritages. The plot embraced this aspect of representation, exploring the choices that lie behind engagement with culture and community through the lens of life on a Native American reservation.
In general, it also feels pleasantly unusual to have a show that is this woman-centric. Very few men are prominently featured, leaving audiences to truly focus on the characters’ experiences of womanhood. The focus on the relationships that these women form on the island in absence of men is refreshing, while the off-island flashbacks provide needed balance and context as to how these young women moved within the “real world,” including their relationships with the men in their lives — fathers, boyfriends, and friends alike.
Storytelling
With scenes flashing between the girls’ lives off-island to their experiences as a group on the island, a masterful thread was drawn between behavior on the island and formative experiences in each character’s life before the crash. This character-centric flashback structure, popularly pioneered with great success by LOST, serves the audience well to break down stereotypes and offer a glimpse into how characters are influenced by their pasts. When the show leads the audience to make assumptions about each character, it is even more powerful when those assumptions are taken apart.
I will always be a sucker for strong character-building, and these young actresses were all stellar at bringing their characters’ stories to life on screen. Every story felt authentic, raw, and realistic, while still being able to provide broader commentary on the complex experience of being a young woman in America.
WHY I LOVED IT (With lots of spoilers)
Reader beware — here is where I’ll be going into detail on some of the major plot points of the show. If you care about spoilers, go watch the show before reading the content below!
A Unique Concept
At the end of episode 1, it becomes clear that these women did not crash on this island by accident. In fact, they did not crash at all. These young women have the misfortune of unknowingly being part of the Dawn of Eve — an experiment with the intent of proving that a women-run society can flourish in a way that patriarchal society cannot.
This element is what makes The Wilds different from every other survival show, because we quickly realize that this experience has been curated. It makes the show especially interesting as we follow the experiment leaders as they make decisions around intervention, even in the most hectic of circumstances.
A Lens for Feminism
Although this premise was not without its missteps, I also found it to be an exciting way to engage with feminism. As a long believer in the power of women’s leadership, the concept of trying to scientifically demonstrate its effectiveness is alluring.
It’s an exciting lens to view leadership: In what ways do we exceed expectations, and in what ways do we fail to meet them? The simple truth is that even in a society populated and run entirely by women, humans are chaotic and messy, regardless of gender.
With that simple truth, The Wilds does not try to reaffirm the hypothesis of women’s leadership being more effective, instead taking a storytelling approach that remains agnostic on this subject. Rather, the show chooses to explore other themes, like scientific ethics, forcing readers to frequently ask themselves questions about their limits.
Examining Agency and Identity
The show also employs the plot to explore themes of agency and identity. As the girls on the island make choices to deal with their circumstances, they believe they have agency over themselves, but they are often restricted or influenced by controlled elements of the experiment of which they are entirely unaware. The pressure cooker that is being in this survival situation forces them to confront themselves and their choices in full force.
Consent and Agency: Linh
As an undercover representative of the scientific team who was meant to oversee the experiment on the ground, the character of Linh (Chi Nguyen) is especially compelling. An enthusiastic graduate student, she is confident and wholeheartedly believes in the purpose of the Dawn of Eve experiment. She is excited to become “Jeanette,” her undercover identity as part of the crash group.
However, when it comes to finally executing the experiment, Linh’s comfort with the experiment is shaken when she sees the subjects unconscious as the scientific team prepares to plant them on the island. A sexual assault survivor herself, Linh is forced to confront her own experience with being drugged and harmed.
Linh’s personal connection to the importance of consent makes her hesitate, yelling “I can’t do this! They didn’t f***ing ask for this!” before panicking and accidentally sustaining a significant blow to the stomach, falling off the dock.
The sad injustice of it all is that her hesitation inadvertently leads to her death, with her injuries causing the internal bleeding that soon led to her death. Although unpleasant, this ruthless writing is an aspect of the show that I also appreciated — the writers were not partial to happy endings, highlighting how even in an environment that is supposed to be controlled, tragedy can still occur.
Culture and Community: Toni and Martha
Toni (Erana James) and Martha’s (Jenna Clause) different experiences with embracing their Native American identities also makes for an interesting perspective to explore the nature of community.
Best friends, Toni and Martha go to the same high school and live in the same community, but they have drastically different relationships with that community. From what we can tell, Toni has been in the foster system for most of her life, and she is not very involved with the reservation community. On the other hand, Martha has parents who are seemingly involved and supportive in her life, and she is more connected to “res” life than Toni.
This juxtaposition outlines how culture is passed through families and communities, and if someone does not have a meaningful connection to their community, their heritage alone does not compensate for that. Culture is intentional, but that doesn’t mean that someone can’t claim their own culture later in life if they want to.
Decision-Making and Manipulation: Nora
Very late in the series, we get one of the biggest plot twists. We learn that Nora (Helena Howard), one of our most quiet characters, is another undercover representative of the experiment.
However, a flashback shows us that Nora was not given an accurate description of what she was getting into. Watching her being convinced to opt into the experiment is a master class in manipulation, with Dawn of Eve leader Gretchen Klein (Rachel Griffiths) making promises that she surely can’t keep. Nora ultimately had the agency to decide to join the study, but not without being misled as to the safety and efficacy of the experiment.
There is another element of agency here to analyze: Nora’s decision-making on behalf of her sister, Rachel (Reign Edwards). One of her primary motivations to participate was that she could bring Rachel, who was unaware of the experiment but in large need of help after struggling with an eating disorder induced by athletic pressure.
Gretchen promises Nora that the experience can help “fix” her sister, knowing full well that she had no evidence that this would be the case. By opting herself and her sister into the experiment, we see Nora acting paternalistically for her sister, and it eventually leads to tragedy as Rachel loses an arm in an implied shark attack at the end of season 1.
I’m overjoyed that Amazon announced the renewal of The Wilds for season 2, and it can’t come quickly enough. In the meantime, I’ll keep rewatching and encouraging my friends to watch as well so that we can share in this matriarchal magic.
