In the 2020 Amazon Prime Video TV series that critics have coined “the female version of ‘The Lord of the Flies,’” eight teenage girls are displaced from their hometowns and tasked with surviving a stranded island and womanhood all at once.
Frankly, the eight girls represent eight painfully overused archetypes. Among them are your boy-obsessed average teenage girl (Leah Rilke, played by Sarah Pidgeon), rebellious South Asian wild child (Fatin Jadmani, played by Sophia Ali), sweet Southern pageant girl (Shelby Goodkind, played by Mia Healey), basketball player with anger issues (Toni Shalifoe, played by Erana James), outdoorsy tomboy (Dot Campbell, played by Shannon Berry), kind-hearted pacifist (Martha Blackburn, played by Jenna Clause), clever bookworm (Nora Reid, played by Helena Howard), and her star athlete twin sister (Rachel Reid, played by Reign Edwards). Although these characters could easily be viewed as stereotypical, the entire show is rooted in feminism. Whether it’s navigating love, struggling with body image, or even getting your period on a stranded island, The Wilds tackles uniquely female issues with witty humor and honest dialogue that speaks to the experiences of real teenage girls everywhere.
The show is organized into ten one-hour episodes, each focusing on one of the girls and her backstory. Weaving clips from the girls’ former lives with real-time events unfolding on the island, the audience is transported in and out of the island to unearth character development in all eight girls. Such structure allows viewers to get to know each girl on a deeply personal level, analyze how her upbringing has shaped the woman she is on the island, and predict what her next move towards survival will be.
Truthfully, few shows have achieved representation quite like The Wilds. Jenna Clause, a Native American actress, plays Martha, a Native American dancer who learns to embrace her heritage. Toni is portrayed as a lesbian and a foster child, Fatin as a Pakistani-American struggling with family relationships, Nora and Rachel as complex and individual black twins, Dot as a girl tightrope-walking the line of poverty while taking care of her sick father, and Shelby as someone struggling with the intersection between religion and sexuality. The recognition of growing girls’ struggles and strategic use of “Gen Z humor” to highlight them creates for the perfect mix of representation, relatability, and reality.
The most unique development in the show that had viewers begging Prime Video for a second season was the romance that emerged between Shelby and Toni. Shelby begins the show quoting the Bible and voicing her opposition to homosexuality to the group, but ends it with a touching relationship with Toni and newfound self-acceptance. Above all, their relationship illuminates an important conversation about upbringing and internalized hate that undoubtedly opened the eyes and touched the hearts of viewers everywhere.