‘The Wilds,’ the YA Version of ‘Yellowjackets,’ Shoots Itself in the Foot in Season 2

Every couple of months, there emerges one TV show that seems to grip the entire internet at the same time—the COVID-era iteration of the water cooler show, but instead of chatting about it with your coworkers at work on Monday morning, you retweet memes of Sydney Sweeney crying in a bathtub on Sunday night.

Late last year, Yellowjackets was that show. A psychological drama from Showtime, Yellowjackets was a sort of gender-swapped take on Lord of the Flies about a high school girls’ soccer team in the ’90s that gets stranded in the remote Canadian woods for 19 months following a plane crash. It featured excellent performances from Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci as the adult versions of the survivors. Seemingly overnight, it became the buzziest thing on TV (yes, pun intended). Viewers tuned in week after week to flinch at the unabashed grittiness, revel in the nostalgic soundtrack, and patiently await the moment that the desperate teens would finally resort to the cannibalism that was teased in the show’s opening minutes.

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But before Yellowjackets, there was a little-known Prime Video series called The Wilds. Released in December of 2020, almost a year earlier than the critically acclaimed Showtime series, The Wilds has a near-identical basic premise. A group of teenage girls with little in common besides the melodramatic anguish of adolescence is forced to band together to survive in the wilderness after a traumatic plane crash leaves them in dire straits.

Unlike Yellowjackets, however, The Wilds decidedly falls into the young adult, or YA, genre, which basically means that they say “fuck” less and the gore is dialed way down. Instead of gratuitous close-up shots of a redheaded goalie whose face has been half-eaten by wolves, we get a montage of a girl flailing in the ocean set to a Taylor Swift song to signal that she was attacked by a shark. It features gems of heavy-handed dialogue like, “Being a teenage girl in normal-ass America, that was the real living hell.” In other words, it is absolutely so much fun, and the second season just premiered on Amazon May 5.

Season 1 of The Wilds introduced us to Leah (Sarah Pidgeon), Dot (Shannon Berry), Shelby (Mia Healey), Fatin (Sophia Ali), Martha (Jenna Clause), Rachel (Reign Edwards), Toni (Erana James), and Nora (Helena Howard). Coming from all different backgrounds and locations across the country, they find themselves on the same ill-fated charter flight to what they have been told is a female empowerment retreat. But early in the season, it is revealed that the girls did not crash-land on the deserted island by accident. Rather, they are unwitting participants in the Dawn of Eve program, a morally dubious experiment developed by a disgraced former professor (Rachel Griffiths) to prove that matriarchal societies are superior. Or something like that. This part of the plot really falls apart with the tiniest poke.

True to genre, each character fits a little too neatly into a stereotype—the Christian beauty queen from Texas, the intense Stanford-bound athlete, the bookish weirdo. As the show progresses, flashbacks convey that the girls are far more nuanced than they appear, and this, too, follows predictable clichés. Shelby, the Jesus-obsessed pageant star, is actually a closeted lesbian whose homophobia is a projection of her own insecurities. Rachel, the competitive diver, is secretly struggling with bulimia due to the pressures of excelling at her sport.

And yet, for its needlessly convoluted plot (the experiment is somehow related to a tragic fraternity hazing incident?) and familiar character tropes, the first season of The Wilds was surprisingly excellent television. It was well-acted without taking itself too seriously, a crucial balance for a show in which a bunch of teenage girls unironically sing “Raise Your Glass” by Pink while burying their friend who has just died of internal bleeding.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the new season, which bites off way more than it can chew by attempting to introduce eight new main characters in as many episodes. Not only that, but the new characters are… wait for it… boys. The Season 1 finale left off on a cliffhanger with Leah discovering that there is another island where boys are undergoing the same experiment as the control group. (The other group is called the Twilight of Adam, because of course it is.)

There was really just no reason to bring testosterone into the equation when the whole point of the show is to explore the everyday struggles of teenage girlhood through the lens of a survival story. Plus, it just does not make sense on a fundamental level. We don’t need the boy version of Lord of the Flies! It already exists. It’s called Lord of the Flies.

There are fleeting moments that recall some of the fun of the show’s freshman season, like when the original gang decides to throw a surprise birthday party for Dot complete with foraged flower crowns, a sandcastle cake, and found bottles of prosecco. But overall, the result is less time with the characters we already know and love, and half-baked backstories for the new guys, who never get the chance to evolve beyond their crude caricatures the way their female counterparts did.

So, if you’re looking to fill the Yellowjackets-shaped void in your heart and haven’t yet watched The Wilds, the great news is that Season 1 is well worth your time. Just do yourself a favor and stop after episode 10.

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