The Wilds Season 2 Review: Prime Video Picks Up The Wilds With A Darker Second Season That Introduces Many New Characters

Starring: Charles Alexander, Sophia Ali, Shannon Berry

Directors: Alison Maclean, Nima Nourizadeh

Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Spoiler-free review of The Wilds Season 2, now available on Prime Video. The first season of The Wilds was a true revolution in Prime Video, assuming an audience hit for the streaming platform. The second premieres today made up of only eight episodes, which are still around 55 minutes long. Before starting to analyze The Wilds 2 it is necessary to recapitulate a bit to understand where we are left: Leah managed to escape from her confinement and discovered the program “The twilight of Adam”, ergo Gretchen’s investigations included a group of men who would be tested in the same circumstances as the group of women under the program “The dawn of Eva”.

We also discover one of Gretchen’s motivations for conducting the study: her son Devon had taken a prank in his fraternity too far by ending the life of Quinn, Nora’s best friend. So her great goal is to show that toxic masculinity is capable of ruining any group dynamic while harmony reigns among females. Created by Sarah Streicher, The Wilds on a good slice of the public thanks to a well-written debut capable of adequately mixing drama and survival. Although the latter component proved to be the most difficult to bring out, the show succeeded in its intent to represent group dynamics exasperated by a complex situation with realism, all cloaked in the charm of secrets and twists. The second season of The Wilds is back on Amazon Prime Video on May 6, 2022 (along with the Amazon series of May 2022), with news already anticipated from the previous season finale. Will the new eight episodes keep the promise of an increasingly intricate and nuanced story?

The Wilds Season 2 Review: The Story

A group of girls (Leah, Fatin, Dot, Martha, Rachel, Shelby, Nora, and Toni) sign up – more or less voluntarily – in an all-female retreat, with which they hope to escape from the problems of everyday life and from the aspects that weigh it down: complicated relationships, unhappy family situations, doubts, trauma, and insecurities. However, what should prove to be a useful project for their well-being ends up being a nightmare, when the plane on which they travel loses altitude and ends up in the sea, near an abandoned island. In a risky and unknown context, eight of them must learn to form a united group and work together to survive, unaware that the promise of the retreat was just a pretext to involve them in a social experiment with disturbing implications. Without revealing all the mysteries that emerged during the episodes, the last season finale gave viewers some answers, anticipating important information: the eight girls are not the only castaways, but another island has welcomed eight boys (Rafael, Henry, Josh, Kirin, Seth, Ivan, Scotty, and Bo), involved in the same experiment.

With these premises, The Wilds 2 However, what should prove to be a useful project opens, which seems to have to face – even before starting – a great obstacle, namely the risk of being repetitive compared to the first season. How will the new episodes – focused on children’s survival – fail to differentiate themselves from what we have already seen in 2020? Although the first episodes seem to confirm this weakness in proposing a new version of events to the viewer, the good quality of the writing reappears. On the island of boys, similar dynamics are created, but not the same as those of girls, while in the female group the situations become complicated. The Wilds 2, therefore, puts a lot of meat on the fire and cooks it slowly, giving constant and well-balanced twists, which create the right conditions for a marathon.

Part of the success of The Wilds 2 lies precisely in keeping this dynamic valid, which oscillates in each episode between the small details that are given to the public and the mysteries that have yet to be revealed. Although the cliffhanger and the ambiguity remain two central elements of the product, there is no feeling of being left dry: the series continues to complicate things (especially with the fact that the male group – as happened for the girls – has infiltrators), but advances in the development of the plot, deepening some themes already analyzed, but without going around empty.

With this subtle balance between what can be revealed and the charge of mystery that must be maintained to pique the interest of the public, he does not always manage to escape some of the same problems encountered in the first season. The focus placed on the dramatic component of this title sometimes risks taking away some space from the survival one, whose references create good moments of tension which, therefore, deserves to be further investigated.

The Wilds Season 2 Review And Analysis

This is going to make us move in three different time planes: we resume the action in parallel with them from day 30 and with them from day 1 until reaching the end of their respective experiences while the bulk of the revelations will be in the future, since later we attend the interrogations and the rebellion of the subjects, with Leah leading a mutiny to flee. With these wickers, it is already understood that the critical points are those that have to do with the escape plans: either to end the coexistence on the island or to escape the control of the manipulative Gretchen.

Along the way, still, on the island, many of the open themes of season 1 are explored: Shelby and Toni deepen their relationship, Martha must deal with her contradictions, Leah (who has hallucinations that lead to a funny cameo in the series), and Rachel lean on each other to cope with their sadness and Dot learns to enjoy her leisure time and even have fun. From the dramatic events of the first episode of The Wilds Season 2, they join together and become a kind of family, with disagreements at times, but with cohesion. Fatin provides comedic relief, as well as discovering Nora’s secrets when her diary falls into her hands.

The men grapple with a host of other issues including a savage predator, violence, punishment, exile, camp division, resentment, and differing leadership styles. In a nutshell: there is a lot of fighting between alpha males and strategies typical of Survivors to reconquer territory. In short, The Wilds has evolved to be more than just a study of femininity and a showcase of multiple and different sensibilities to open the focus to an even broader spectrum of realities.

In addition to the success of the male casting (the new faces fit their roles very well), it is worth noting the curious choices of the soundtrack to illustrate certain moments. It has many aces up its sleeve for the final episode and it is designed to be marathoned by proposing a series of cliffhangers at the end of each chapter that makes it almost irresistible to keep pressing play… but it is also true that the structure, full of flashbacks that repeat the formula of the girls with the boys, slows down a bit to get to the heart of it.

In the first place there is the excellent construction of the characters, only apparently endowed with slightly stereotyped characteristics, but more and more complex and multifaceted as the plot unfolds. Their emotions are carefully explored throughout the episodes, sometimes responding to audience expectations, other times overturning them, and even touching very important issues. Even though only one episode is dedicated to each character in-depth, during both seasons there is a way to accumulate information on all of them.

This gradual knowledge of the figures involved is not always well balanced: some emerge more, others deserve more exploration, but the overall result is the creation of two credible groups, characterized by alliances and tensions. As the second season unfolds as well, the viewer forms a strong opinion on the socio-psychological experiment on which the survival of the protagonists of The Wilds is based – basically siding against it from a moral point of view.

Despite this, we are witnessing with increasing interest the most extreme manifestations of the project that analyzes the behavior of groups, their clashes, their demonstrations of courage, their pain, and their resistance, even (or perhaps above all) when things seem to get bad on the island. Supporting this valid second season is a well-structured montage – which constantly emphasizes flashbacks, memories, ambiguities, and revelations – discreet acting by the full-bodied cast, and a good musical choice balance intimate reflections, dynamic moments, and dramatic situations. Finally, the choice of setting does not hurt New Zealand for the first season and the landscapes of Queensland for the second.

As in 2020, even this finale – ever closer to solving the mystery linked to the island, but still full of doubts about who is an accomplice to the experiment – deliberately leaves the narrative pending, waiting for the third season, which should be officially confirmed, it should maintain the high quality already encountered in the first two and opt for increasingly original solutions.

The Wilds Season 2 Review: The Last Words

In The Wilds 2, the narrative becomes complicated, giving the viewer an intriguing vision, made up of twists, revelations, and continuous mysteries. The real strength of this product – designed for a young audience, but far from exclusive – is the excellent construction of the characters, characterized by complex emotions that make them pleasantly realistic, especially in group dynamics. Between memories, flashbacks, and cliffhangers, The Wilds 2 holds up very well the comparison with the first season, proving to be not without flaws, but matures in the exploration of the psychology of the protagonists and in the ability to relate them in a difficult situation like that of the island.