The Wilds: Season Two

The second season of gripping YA drama The Wilds (from writer and executive producer Sarah Streicher) elevates the existing narrative and pushes the ten-part series into the territory of all-out psychological thriller.

The first season unfolds around a group of teenage girl air crash survivors who end up as castaways on a tropical remote island. Unaware they are part of a social experiment orchestrated by Gretchen Klein (Rachel Griffiths), called Dawn of Eve, they also have no idea there’s another control group called Twilight of Adam on another Island fabricated in exact replica, but this time with a group of eight testosterone-fuelled teenage boys. 

As the second season gets underway, a spate of previous flashbacks give viewers a background story to each individual girl and flash-forward scenes show them separately talking to FBI agents after their supposed rescue from the island. Introducing an entirely new cast of boys at the very start of their survival journey is a bold move from the series show-runners, but it seems to work by sensitively constructing the same individual backstory approach and introducing a multitude of relatable personalities. 

This series reveals the coping methods of two very different groups as they navigate their predicament. The girls look inwards and towards each other to survive. Shelby (Mia Healey) and Toni (Erana James) firm up their romance in this series, and Leah (Sarah Pidgeon) warms up to shark attack survivor Rachel (Reign Edwards) as she pulls her out of her own personal trauma. The boys, on the other hand, take longer to bond. There’s a whole slew of aggressive comments and homophobic slurs and an immediate pecking order that puts lacrosse-playing jock Kirin (Charles Alexander) at the helm against the quieter boys like Rafael (Zac Calderon) and Josh (Nicholas Coombe).

There’s something very cult-like about the entire series. The girls come across as heroines and LGBTQ+ icons, whilst the boys turn the tables on the subtle nuances of shows like Lost and push into darker themes with something like  a remake of Lord of the Flies. The casting is superb and there are so many layers, but it’s the the time away from the islands, where Leah and Raf meet, that starts a whole different arc and it’ll be interesting to see what another season will draw out of that.

Ezelle Alblas

The Wilds: Season Two is released on 6^th May 2022.

Watch the trailer for The Wilds: Season Two here: