The Wilds Season 1 – Teen Survivor Thriller with Touch of Mean Girls
The Wilds is an Amazon Prime Original series written and produced by Sarah Streicher which covers the story of a group of teenage girls who end up stranded on a deserted island after their plane crash but are oblivious to the fact that they are subjects of a social experiment.
Series starts with a group of teenage girls charted on a plane en route to Hawaii for a retreat called ‘The Dawn of Eve’ only to end up stranded on a deserted island after sudden crash that instantly kills the crew.
Coming from different backgrounds, all stranded girls are shown to have different attributes as they try to survive the deserted island on their own. Leah Rilke (Sarah Pidgeon) is a bookish girl who has recently broken up with her boyfriend. Fatin Jadmani (Sophia Ali) is a rich kid who is obsessed with social media and fashion. Rachel Reid (Reign Edwards) is a professional diver who starves herself to perform better, her sister Norah (Helena Howard) is a quiet and intelligent kid.
Martha Blackburn (Jenna Clause) is insecure about her looks matter what her hot-headed basketball player friend Toni Shalifoe (Erana James) tells her. Dot Campbell (Shannon Berry) is a tomboy with great wilderness survival skills. Shelby Goodkind (Mia Healey) is a pageant contestant from a conservative Christian family. Jeanette Dao (Chi Nguyen) is excessively chatty and the only one who does not know anyone on the plane.
As the series starts to develop, the girls realize that there is something more than a coincidence about where they are, how they ended there, and how each of them has their secrets which they brought to that deserted island.
Each episode goes back and forth between the present time when the girls are stranded on the island and the time before it – telling the backstory of each girl. As each episode helps us learn about the past of girls, we get clearer picture of their personalities and each of the characters start to make better sense and differentiates from one another.
There are many plot twists in this show which is mixed with the constant need of making the characters likable and interesting within the construction of its plot. Some of the backstories are more realistic and believable but there is no lead character which you can pinpoint as a weakling. This is the only factor which makes the show fun and interesting to watch.
The format of this show helps to keep the viewer intrigued and hooked. The girls are being interviewed by the FBI agent after being rescued with the scenes from the island and what went wrong there. This format also keeps us guessing what happened in the girl’s lives and what happened on the island which led to such disaster.
The main success point of this series is its cast. Each of the leading stars has given their respective character more depth and aspect. We can also see how they have adapted the personality of their character perfectly.
This series currently has released one season with 10 episodes and its second season has already been by Amazon Prime which will probably air in early 2022.