On December 11, the debut season of a new Amazon Prime Video original series titled The Wilds arrived on the site, as reported by TV Line. The show is allegedly the first official young adult series to come from Amazon’s scripted television department, according to IndieWire. W Magazine sums up the show’s basic premise as follows: “A group of teen girls on private jet… crash land on an island.” Over the course of the series premiere, “it is revealed… that the women’s empowerment retreat… they were headed to in Hawaii is a sham. There is no retreat– it’s all a front for a scientist’s experiments,” via W Magazine.
Those without Prime subscriptions can watch the first episode of The Wilds for limited time on the streamer’s social media accounts. For those more partial to communal viewing experiences, the BuzzFeed Video YouTube channel is hosting their own watch party for the first episode of The Wilds on the date of the premiere at 3 P.M. EST. Should anyone happen to miss the YouTube watch party, second screening of Episode 1 will reportedly take place on the Amazon-owned live-streaming site Twitch at 10 P.M. EST on Twitch partner CupAhNoodle‘s personal channel, according to post made by the show’s official Instagram account.
The official Twitch premiere occurred at 1 P.M. EST on former Xbox UK presenter Leahviathan’s channel. Leah and her all-female panel consisting of lifestyle blogger Oloni (My Mate’s Bad Date), journalist/DJ Vick Hope (Strictly Come Dancing) and YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg (Chicken Shop Date) offered their real-time reactions during the episode and bookended the screening with in-depth discussions of the teenage girl experience as it relates to The Wilds.
It is that same focus on the internal hardships of young women that inspires Sarah Streicher (Drunk History), who created The Wilds. According to W Magazine, Streicher wrote The Wilds to address her own emotional state after a poor turn of events in her personal life: “She was fueled by the devastation of a breakup, which sent her back to wallowing like she once did as a teenager. Eventually, she decided to turn those feelings into a television series about the teenage experience to honor those feelings, rather than dismiss them.”
Four-time Daytime Emmy nominee Reign Edwards (Snowfall), who plays the competitive diver Rachel, told Bello Magazine that she sees the low-concept conflicts of the show’s characters as a key draw. “The audience can expect to not only see the struggle each of these adolescent girls have but feel it too. Every single character has a struggle and a pain that I feel audience members will yearn to heal,” she professed.
Season one of The Wilds is available to stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.