Day 42/15
Episode 4 of The Wilds Season 2 begins with Fatin commenting on how they’ve been on the island for 42 days. It’s July 18th, and that’s big news. Why? Well, it turns out it’s actually Dot’s 18th birthday. Fatin is delighted and decides to throw her a birthday party. ..
The girls are excited to bring out the party supplies box again. Eventually, they all party down on the beach. They have their piñata, champagne, sparklers, and plenty of laughs. Well, most of them anyway. Rachel isn’t in the laughing mood. She lies down next to them all, stares at the dancing flames and points out how much she hates birthdays. After all, she only has one birthday to celebrate now rather than two. Happy birthday Dot!
Rachel and Shelby sit together on the beach, discussing how the pain won’t end. Shelby opens up and reveals her backstory about best friend, who killed herself last year. She repeats everything that happened, including the tragic tale of Becca and how the guilt and shame Shelby felt threatened to consume her. Until she turned to faith in order to steady her.
Leah tells Daniel Fabe that she’s struggling to keep up this charade, unsure whether she’s able to work with Raf or not. Gretchen listens to this and isn’t sure she’s telling the truth or working the room again. Faber eventually “convinces” Leah to continue, where she bursts into Raf’s room and claims they’re running out of time.
Leah is desperate to know what tore the kids apart and what happened on that island. Raf eventually agrees to open up and reveal all.
The kids are up to day 15 of the jaguar hunt. They are disagreeing about the best way to take it out, but Seth is the one who comes up with the idea of baiting it into a trap.
Seth is trying to be someone he isn’t. He’s pretending to be a carefree camp counsellor, but he’s really just looking for a way into the group. Kirin seems to know this and is moving towards him, so Seth has no choice but to back away.
Seth starts to feel like he’s not being himself around girls. He’s always been a bit of a ’tough guy’ and this seems to be starting to show. As they start discussing girls, snapping twigs in the distance put them both on high alert. Seth starts to feel like he’s not being himself around girls and doesn’t know how to show his softer side.
Josh and Raf head to the bunker to collect supplies. Raf starts to get angry as Josh starts digging himself into a racist hole. Speaking of which, there’s also some dick-swinging down on the beach too, as both Scotty and Ivan come to blows over what constitutes as a real man.
Josh admits that he was sent on this retreat to “learn a little grit.” His parents are hard on him and worse, they even regret spending money on getting him a speech therapist. ..
These two are broken up by the rest of the boys showing and setting the trap. All of them are unsure whether it’s going to work but a growl from afar later that evening, sends them out to the bunker where they find the jaguar has fallen for the trap and is stuck in the bunker. Only, it’s still alive. So Kirin and Ivan step up and manage to kill it.
The boys are all dancing around the campfire when Ivan and Scotty start to argue. Seth is told to speak up and give a speech, but he gets angry in the middle of it. Kirin pulls Seth’s trousers down and that sends him off alone, angry.
Raf continues his story to Leah in the present, revealing something big that happened on the island. Leah catches sight of the hidden camera though and gets cold feet. Leah hugs Raf quickly and whispers to him that “They’re listening. We’ll find another way.” Gretchen, Daniel, and Dean are livid at Leah’s betrayal, with Gretchen bitterly disappointed by what’s transpired.
That night, Seth’s true colours are shown as he pins Josh down and masturbates over him alone. Josh is understandably traumatized as Seth heads off and nonchalantly sits by the campfire. The episode comes to a close on a rather dark and nasty note, leaving things wide open for the second half of this one.
The Episode Review
This show feels like it’s about to come to a close. There’s very little action on the plot and while this isn’t exactly a filler – especially given how this ends – you could easily skip almost everything that’s in this episode and not miss much.
The new timeline continues to interweave and jump all over the place, but it’s done at the expense of character development for a lot of the new cast. We’ve learned barely anything about Bo, Henry and Ivan thus far, while a lot of the boys are walking clichés. ..
Seth is an interesting character who has a darker side that’ll be interesting to discover but for everyone else, there’s just not a whole lot else here to cling to.
Nora’s death has left the island in a state of flux. I understand that all of the girls are struggling with how to deal with her loss, but without Nora around there is very little going on in the story. They’re just doing the daily grind and partying it up when the island isn’t trying to kill them.
This season has been largely inconsequential thus far. ..
