Why The Wilds Is Exactly What Feminism Needs Right Now

The Wilds is a show streaming on Amazon Prime written by Sarah Streicher. It wrapped up its first season in early 2021, promptly got renewed for a second season, and burrows directly into the gaping hole of a question about what it means to be a girl right now.

The show is about eight teenage girls on a private flight to some lesser Hawaiian Island for a luxury, borderline ridiculous, female-oriented weekend retreat. Before they get there, however, their plane goes down and they find themselves stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean. With a nearly identical premise—excepting one large difference—it’s a nod towards Lord of the Flies. It’s way more than just “Lord of the Flies but make it girls,” though. It empowers that identity, yes, as anything will that's about eight young women fighting for their survival and passing the Bechdel test ten times over every episode. But it also validates the scale of the situation and feelings adolescent girls find themselves with today.

The show was so satisfying to me because the hyper-extreme nature of their circumstance —cut off from the larger world, forced to work together to survive, etc.—felt like the necessary response to the everyday reality of girlhood. A fairly prominent part of me was wondering as I was watching the show if maybe I wanted to be dropped onto an island in the middle of the ocean, cut off from the larger world, forced to survive with seven other deeply fantastic young women. My brain kept circling: no, of course not. I do not want to die. But also… maybe?

I’m eating out of the show’s palm here, because as the first episode comes to a close and we learn that there may be more behind the characters’ predicament than just a freak accident, the show’s main ethical questions begin to surface: What does it actually take to deconstruct sexism? What does it take to actually be free? Is there some kind of humane equivalent to being dropped onto a desert island in the middle of the ocean that we can adopt?

Almost like magical realism, The Wilds deals with everyday, “real” world problems within an unreal context. And this unreal context feels like the scale that the conversation around feminism today deserves. It was empowering that the show's answer to the problem of our ingrained and internalized sexism was to be dropped onto a desert island and forced to survive. It was validating that that kind of extreme felt like an appropriate response.

If your ethics permit you to watch a show about feminism on Jeff Besoz’s streaming platform, then I recommend checking it out.