The Wilds

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Fandom
Name: The Wilds
Abbreviation(s):
Creator: Sarah Streicher
Date(s): December 11, 2020 – May 6, 2022
Medium: Live-action television show
Country of Origin: United States
External Links: [Wilds] on Wikipedia
at IMDb
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The Wilds is a television show about a group of teenage girls who believe they have become stranded on a deserted island after surviving a plane crash, not knowing that they are part of an elaborate social experiment.

Canon

A group of teens must survive after a plane crash leaves them stranded on a deserted island. The girls tell their stories to investigators who slowly piece together what happened to them..[1]

Told in two timelines — during their time on the island and reporting what happened to them to "investigators" after being rescued — The Wilds season one follows a group of eight teenage girls who believed they were on their way to an empowerment retreat when the plane they were on crashed. Everything, from their parents agreeing to them attending the retreat through to the plane crash and many events on the island, turned out to be engineered as part of a social experiment by Gretchen Klein, a disgraced researcher.

Season two introduced a group of teenage boys as Klein's control group, placed in the identical situation as the group of girls. In the post-rescue story-line, some of the girls are becoming suspicious about exactly what is going on.


Main Characters

  • Leah Rilke
  • Fatin Jadmani
  • Dorothy "Dot" Campbell
  • Rachel Reid
  • Nora Reid
  • Martha Blackburn
  • Toni Shalifoe
  • Shelby Goodkind
  • Gretchen Klein
  • Daniel Faber
  • Dean Young

Major Characters

  • Rafael Garcia (Season 2)
  • Kirin O'Conner (Season 2)
  • Josh Herbert (Season 2)
  • Seth Novak (Season 2)
  • Ivan Taylor (Season 2)
  • Henry Tanaka (Season 2)
  • Bo Leonard (Season 2)
  • Scotty Simms (Season 2)


Representation and Diversity

LGBT+ Representation in The Wilds

Toni Shalifoe and Shelby Goodkind are lesbians. Toni is open and proud of her sexuality and flashbacks from her story-line establish this has been true for a long time, whereas throughout season one Shelby is deeply closeted and carries a lot of internalised homophobia due to coming from a homophobic and religious family. A sub-plot in seasons one and two is the rivals to enemies to lovers arc that unfolds between Shelby and Toni, a story-line which was not guaranteed to be well-received given how many people have tired of the "the homophobic character is secretly closeted" plots in many TV series, but ended up with a lot of fan support due to how it played out and Shelby's backstory.

Really turned around on Shelby. Just seemed like an annoying, privileged, do-gooder white girl at first but her flashback really humanized her.

[1]

Yes, ‘homophobes are really gay’ storylines can be problematic. They paint people who weaponise prejudice against lesbians and gays as sympathetic figures. But that’s not what happened on The Wilds. Instead, they told a moving story about a young woman who lets go of her internalised homophobia to find self-acceptance.

[2]


Fatin Jadmani is not canonically stated to be bisexual or pansexual, but she does flirt with other girls during the show and, when Shelby expresses her love for Toni being the motivation for wanting to learn the truth about the island, Fatin's reply of "Ditto bitch, different her, same kinda idea" is widely considered amongst fans to be about Leah Rilke. Given the context of having Fatin say this to parallel Shelby's romantic love for Toni while at the same time being a single line, this leaves the possibility of Fatin being a sapphic character somewhere between fan-interpretation and canon.

In Season 2, Ivan Taylor, on the boy's island, is canonically gay.

Cancellation

On July 28th 2022, Amazon announced that they were cancelling The Wilds and gave a reduced engagement to season two, compared to season one, as the reason. The fandom had been split over season two, primarily because of the introduction of an island of teenage boys which necessitated taking screen-time away from the original survivors. The Wilds is one of the shows commonly mentioned when fans discuss the growing number of shows with sapphic representation being cancelled in the past few years.


Fandom

The Wilds maintains a relatively small to moderate, but enthusiastic, fandom more than a year after cancellation, with social media platforms, forums, and AO3 all having recent posts, works, and discussions about the show and characters.

Shipping

The most popular ship is the canon pairing Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe, also known as Shoni by fans. In the 2023 shipping stats[2] collected by centreoftheselights, Shoni were 77th on the all-time F/F pairings list, having gained 8 places since the 2022 list. The other popular pairing in the fandom is Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke, also known as Leatin.

There are other, smaller pairings in the fandom such as:

  • Leah Rilke/Rachel Reid
  • Fatin Jadmani/Dot Campbell

Platonic pairings are also quite common and the friendships between various members of the girls' island (the unsinkable eight) are commonly featured in fan works.

Fanon and Common Tropes

  • Continuation fics - Given that season 2 ended on a huge cliff-hanger, works that focus on what could have happened next are fairly popular.
  • Alternative Universes - High Schools AUs and AUs where the plan crash did not happen are two of the tags in AO3's top 10 additional tags for the fandom and explore dynamics and story-lines between the characters outside of the canon of the show entirely.

Cancellation Response

In response to the cancellation, fans started a "Save the Wilds" campaign across multiple social media spaces.


Fanworks


Fanfic

  • Season 3 by anonymousbardrollsnat20, root_chakra, and tnr92

Fan Art

Fan Vids

GIF Sets

Other Fanworks

Archives and Communities

References

  1. ^ IMDb - The Wilds
  2. ^ AO3 Ship Stats 2023 by centreoftheselights
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