The 17 Wildest Things to Happen in ‘The Wilds’ Season 1

If you haven’t seen Amazon Prime Video’s The Wilds Season 1, let me preface this by saying, go do that right now. It has a little something for everyone: dubious morals, strong female friendships, unreliable narrators, and a drug-induced dance number to a pop song.

The premise is simple enough. A group of teenagers, each dealing with their own hardship and traumas like teenagers do, set off on a girls’ retreat to Hawaii when their airplane goes down in the middle of the ocean. And the plane crash isn’t even the wildest part!

The twists and turns over the course of ten episodes kept me on edge the entire time, adding up in an incredibly bingeable debut, so fair warning on the spoilers below. For those of you dying to find out what’s going on for the Unsinkable Eight, let’s revisit the top wildest moments from The Wilds Season 1.

1. Jeanette (aka Linh) Dies on the beach (Season 1 Episode 1)

The Wilds truly starts off with a bang, killing off a character within the first episode and throwing us into the meat of the story’s mystery immediately. When we first meet Jeanette, we assume she’s just one of the girls, bonding with her fellow “retreatants” about dogs and pop music. We are wrong!

Her demise comes shortly after, having suffered a major internal injury in the apparent plane crash. It’s jarring, for sure, under the guise that she’s another teen subjected to this sudden horror.

It’s just as shocking once we find out she was actually Linh, a part of Gretchen’s team, and perished by accident.

2. The girls sing P!nk at Jeanette’s “funeral” (Season 1 Episode 1)

Our #2 wildest moment is a direct result of #1. The poor girls decide to bury their fallen comrade, feeling called to send her off properly (and likely not wanting to see a dead body hanging around the beach).

Now I’m sure there’s no etiquette for a shoddy beach funeral, but singing P!nk’s “Raise Your Glass” is a… choice.

3. Rachel’s missing a limb (Season 1 Episode 2)

One of the next major shockers early on in The Wilds Season 1 happens on Episode 2. Leading up to this episode, all we know about Rachel Reid is that she’s a passionate, determined, character who is devoted to her craft — diving.

We see her come head-to-head with many of her companions on the island, often at odds about how to deal with their situation. Intermixed with the island scenes, we see the good and bad of her high school diving career.

All of that is to say, it is a major shock at the end of the Rachel-centric episode when she reveals to the audience that she has somehow lost her hand in between landing on the island and getting rescued from the island.

4. Dot’s tragic backstory (Season 1 Episode 3)

I’ll go ahead and say it — Dorothy Campbell is the heartbeat of this show. Without her love for Bear Grylls, none of those girls would have survived past the first night on the island.

Which makes it even more heartbreaking to uncover the reasoning behind her involvement in the retreat in the first place. The Dot-centric episode of The Wilds Season 1 is the most emotional by far.

Finding out that she is her father’s primary caregiver at such a young age, and then the reveal that she helps her father overdose to end his suffering is heartbreaking and puts a lot of her actions into perspective.

5. Fatin & Leah’s fight + aftermath (Season 1 Episode 4)

What can I say about Fatin and Leah other than I just want them to be best friends. Unfortunately, that is not their relationship dynamic at the beginning of the season, even though they kind of knew each other before being stranded. It doesn’t take long for Fatin to irritate Leah to her breaking point.

Leah, who, and I say this nicely, is unstable at best by this point, shoves her classmate into a piece of driftwood and draws blood. Fatin, not one to lose a fight, then has the AUDACITY to wipe the blood from her scratch on Leah’s face.

It’s wild!! Fatin is equally as unhinged at this point, and I don’t blame the girl. Leah copes like Leah knows how to cope, by completely shutting down and deciding to walk into the ocean and submerge herself.

Side note: One thing I love about The Wilds is how unafraid they are to let these girls use curse words liberally. As Fatin says when Leah does her Virginia Woolf walk into the ocean, “that bitch is crazy.”

6. Fatin’s oblivious to the chaos (Season 1 Episode 5)

Dorothy might be the heartbeat of the show, but Fatin has to be the most iconic character. Fresh of her blood fight with Leah, the girl goes apparently missing, prompting mass chaos.

Worried that their companion (friend?) has seriously hurt herself, the remaining islanders set off to find the missing girl. One quicksand incident and many hoarse voices later, they come across the girl completely chilling, having found a water source.

It’s not wild in the sense that something shocking happens, but it is a nice little surprise that this character you’ve been primed to hate (she steals Le Croix from the sleeping girls because she mismanaged her own water supply) becomes the girl who has the most significant contribution to their island life.

7. Gretchen checks herself into rehab (Season 1 Episode 6)

In the middle of The Wilds Season 1, we see Gretchen check herself into a mental institution, and then accidentally end up stuck there overnight.

Now, this alone isn’t that strange. Gretchen seems to be quite affected by Linh’s (Janette’s) death, and I’d assume psychologists spend a bit of time prioritizing their mental health. So we think she’s talking to somebody about that trauma.

We’re wrong! Gretchen intentionally locks herself in this institution with the sole intent of reaching Dr. Faber, a psychologist who seems to be well known for getting information out of his patients.

Dr. Faber turns out to be one of the “FBI agents” questioning the girls in the post-island bunker scenes, which means that even though we thought they were rescued, alas, they are not. Poor girls.

Also, it seems like Gretchen goes to recruit Faber to join her team AFTER the girls have already been stranded on this island. Seems a little last minute for such a professional research study, no?

8. Two more girls almost die (Season 1 Episode 6)

Now, I’m not a fan of shellfish but I’m sure if I was stuck on an island without substantial food for a while I would devour mussels like the girls did. Unfortunately, since these girls can’t catch a break, they all get severe food poisoning from their only real meal in days.

Shelby, who didn’t indulge due to her shellfish allergy, is the only one stable enough to help her friends stay hydrated amidst the puking. Toni and Martha end up having the worst cases of stomach issues and are essentially knocking on death’s door.

Since anything could happen on this island, I wouldn’t be totally shocked if subsequent seasons of The Wilds would kill off significant characters (Nora’s and Martha’s fates are unknown still!) but, thankfully, they pull through with the help of some conveniently provided pills.

9. Martha hallucinates (Season 1 Episode 7)

In this post-Glee world we live in, you can’t have a YA show without at least one musical number. In the most absurd scene of The Wilds Season 1, poor Martha, recovering from her post food poisoning dehydration, hallucinates a vision of the plane.

In this, our flight attendant (Gretchen’s reluctant crony, Alex) performs what can only be described as a one-man show set to DNCE’s Cake By the Ocean.

Is this Martha’s subconscious trying to tell her the flight’s cake was drugged, causing them to all pass out and the researchers to stage a plane crash?

10. Shoni’s first kiss (Season 1 Episode 7)

I think from the beginning, Shelby and Toni’s contentious relationship had hints of a little something more brewing. Toni herself mentions that Shelby’s deep devotion to her religion is probably a ruse to mask some other “issue.”

Having her fake teeth condition exposed by Leah, our favorite blonde has reached her own breaking point. Toni and Shelby come to a head in the forest collecting firewood, where they spark an argument trying to “out-sad” each other.

Shelby, realizing she has nothing left to lose, and that her homophobic father is hundreds or thousands of miles away, finally lets down her walls and kisses Toni. And then promptly runs away.

I would hazard a guess that many viewers saw this relationship coming, but if you hadn’t seen spoilers or if you were blindsided by the kiss, it’s always exciting for a character to do a complete 180° and break the mold they were set in.

11. #Shelbald (Season 1 Episode 8)

The Wilds does an excellent job at showing how much the island has changed the girls in the bunker scenes. Many of them are more subdued and some even have physical changes, leaving us to wonder what happened.

Shelby, like Rachel before her, has undergone a significant physical change between the early days on the island and the days we see during the bunker interrogations. She’s buzzed her hair.

Of any of the girls on the island, Shelby is literally the last one that I would have guessed would have done that. She’s steadfast in her pageant girl image, of which her long blonde locks seem to play an important role.

The reveal in the Shelby-centric episode, that bunker Shelby is crutching along with a bad ankle and with a freshly shorn head was another MASSIVE “uh…what?” moment from The Wilds Season 1. Her bunker circumstances are definitely at the top of my burning questions list I hope are answered in The Wilds Season 2.

12. They take edibles (Season 1 Episode 8)

In one of the lighter episodes, our girls are treated to a new backpack washing up on shore, this time full of vodka and what appears to be candy. Turns out the gummy bears were actually laced with pot.

The high allows our poor heroines a chance to cut loose for a while, especially since they think a plane that flew over is going to save them and their days stranded are coming to an end. Spoiler alert: they’re not!

The wildest moment from their high is courtesy of sweet, innocent Martha, who accidentally ate the edibles before realizing what they were. She sees Gretchen’s Alex, who had gone to the island on a mission, up in a tree.

To her credit, Martha does tell the girls she sees a man… she just tells them she saw their mannequin alive in the forest. Good try Martha!

13. Shelby cuts her hair (Season 1 Episode 8)

Still grappling with her sexuality, having acted on her desire for Toni, and then having been metaphorically dumped with ice water when the plane flew over and rescue seemed imminent, Shelby goes off the deep end.

At her breaking point, and fed up with trying to be the perfect, straight, southern belle, she takes the scissors to her hair and lops off a chunk. So she’s not totally bald yet, but she’s on her way!

14. Martha kills the goat (Season 1 Episode 9)

In another heartbreaking reveal, we unlock the backstory for another one of the girls and uncover some more trauma, this time for Martha. In a ripped-from-the-headlines storyline, we find out she had likely been sexually assaulted by her physical therapist.

In order to cope, she seems to have overcorrected, finding the bright side of any situation and choosing to see the best in all living beings. While admirable, that’s not a sustainable quality for being stuck on a deserted island.

Martha has encountered a live goat on the island a few times. But when they cross paths again during a food scouting run, she finds the possibility of killing the goat for food hard to swallow, even though they’re all essentially starving.

After some strong words from Toni, who knows her whole situation, Martha finally comes to terms with what she has to do, and in a powerful scene alternating between her in island clothes and her jingle dance dress, she is able to kill the goat.

Is it a little bloody since she bludgeons it with a stone? Yes. Is it a little wild? Yep! Is it still an incredible show of strength for this young woman to take control of her life at that moment. You bet!

15. [Redacted] is the other confederate & she tries to get rid of [redacted] (Season 1 Episodes 9 and 10)

Ok, so what I think is the other major reveal of The Wilds Season 1, besides the fact that the entire crash was staged and the girls are lab rats, is that one of the girls is in on the whole thing!

By the time it’s revealed that Nora is the second confederate, we’ve already become attached to all of the characters, making it hard to fathom any of them are working for the enemy.

There are a couple of red herrings, leading us to believe maybe Fatin was sus or showing us Dot and Gretchen meeting pre-island (we still don’t know what that’s about). But it’s always the quiet ones that you have to look out for.

The circumstances that bring Nora and Gretchen together as unlikely allies are traumatic for both women in their own way, but it’s still a shock to find out the quietest islander is working for the other team.

And then Leah, in a drug-induced haze, comes upon Nora recounting details to a hidden camera. Nora tries to cover her tracks, convincing Leah she was seeing things, but for all her issues Leah isn’t one to lose sight of important details.

It all culminates in The Wilds Season 1 finale, where Nora TRAPS LEAH IN A PIT! A pit! Wild! Did she just think the others wouldn’t notice their friend missing? I don’t know what Nora planned to do with the pit, but I have to say it didn’t seem well thought out.

16. Shark attack? (Season 1 Episode 10)

Now we come to the cliffhanger portion of wild moments from The Wilds Season 1. Remember back to where we found out Rachel is missing a limb post-island? Well, it might be a casualty from a shark attack.

We leave our older Reid twin floating in the ocean, at peace for once since getting stuck on the island. *Cue JAWS music.* In the closing seconds of the finale’s island timeline scenes, we see a shark circling the water swimming straight toward Rachel.

The other girls on the island also notice said shark and are trying to flag the girl’s attention, some maybe even rushing into the ocean to save her. We don’t know what happens from there, but fingers crossed, The Wilds Season 2 picks up where we left off.

17. Leah breaks out of her cell (Season 1 Episode 10)

In a sneaky bit of manipulation, and because “Agent” Young is really a big softie, Leah is able to get out of her bunker cell for a while. In an even sneakier bit of ingenuity, she’s able to jam a piece of paper into her door jamb when Young returns her to the cell.

This prohibits the door from locking and allows her to try and escape the facility. Again, I’m not sure what her game plan here was, because Young had just told her she was on an island off the coast of Peru.

Regardless, Leah is able to maneuver her way through the bunker hallways and ends up in a room empty except for a few computer screens. Approaching them, she sees live feeds of what appears to be a group stranded on an island.

The difference? Instead of a group of teenage girls, these appear to be teenage boys! Fade to black. End of season. The ultimate wtf cliffhanger to leave us until The Wilds Season 2 premieres, hopefully, sooner than later.

—

Amazon’s The Wilds truly lives up to its name, providing quality entertainment and some genuine twists that you don’t see coming. With such a wide variety of female characters and the hint of their male counterparts coming next season, there are many opportunities for more wtf moments on the horizon.

Is there another wild moment from The Wilds Season 1 that didn’t make the list? Let us know in the comments below!

The Wilds Season 1 is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.

 Follow us on Twitter and on  Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

Where Will ‘The Wilds’ Go in Season 2?