Warning! The main spoilers for The Wilds.
The Wilds ended on an explosive note, with virtually no answers to the riddles that have been teasing all season. From the very beginning, it was revealed in the Amazon Prime series that the girls got off the island, but how and why everything happened remained a mystery. Here’s an explanation of The Wilds season finale.
The YA thriller tells about a group of girls stranded on a desert island after a plane crash. Everything that happens on the island is a flashback, as the girls are currently being held in a bunker, completely separated from each other. Each of them tells about what happened on the island after being interrogated by two men.
The season finale of The Wilds shows their last day on the island. The girls are still being closely watched by Gretchen and everyone else at Eve’s Dawn. After a whole season of severe paranoia, Leah realizes that she was right all along, and Nora was the one who had something to do with their accident. Their last scene on the island shows Rachel being attacked by a shark, which explains the missing arm during the interrogation scene. What happened between the shark attack and their rescue remains a mystery.
Eve’s Dawn and Gretchen’s Motives
Gretchen is the inspiration behind everything the girls have experienced. Throughout the first season, The Wilds shed light on Gretchen’s motives. Gretchen Rachel Griffith wants to prove that women are capable of being better leaders than men. So, the girls found themselves in a chaotic situation to prove that women are able to rise above and unite to solve the problem. But the most interesting thing is that stranding them and rescuing them from the island is only part of the plan.
The season finale of The Wilds reveals the reason why Gretchen was so eager to raise women in such a perverse way. Her college-age son participated in a fraternity bullying ritual that led to the death of another boy. She admits her son’s guilt in the incident, but blames the patriarchy for forming the system that allowed this to happen. Gretchen’s rage at toxic masculinity blinded her, pushing her to an extreme decision to end it. She represents a dangerous definition of feminism, and the girls will most likely unite to show her that in the second season of The Wilds.
The Wilds presents a complex view of feminism. Gretchen considers herself a kind of feminist icon who takes a group of young women and shows them that they are more than the patriarchy tells them. She forces girls to defend their point of view and rely on themselves, not on men. But she comes about it from the wrong place. Feminism is supposed to be about gender equality, not about one taking over the other, as Gretchen wants. This idea will most likely be revealed in the second season of “Wild Nature”, where Gretchen will turn from an undefined villain into an obvious villain.
Why did Nora work with Gretchen
At the beginning of the first season of “Wild Nature”, it turns out that two survivors are involved in the “Eve’s Dawn” plan. One of them is Jeanette, who dies in the first episode, and the second eventually turns out to be Nora. She became connected to the organization through a tragic connection with Gretchen-the boy killed by Gretchen’s son was Nora’s friend and lover, Quinn. The two women cross paths in the prison where Gretchen’s son is being held. They transfer their conversation to the pancake shop, where they discuss the dangers of toxic masculinity and Nora’s current dissatisfaction with her life.
Gretchen takes advantage of Nora’s vulnerable state after Quinn’s death and convinces the teenager to join the experiment. The patriarchy created the brotherhood system that killed Quinn, so Nora joins in to end it once and for all. Gretchen seems to have completely convinced her of the power of Eve’s Dawn mission, as she asks if she can take her twin sister Rachel with her as well.
The Wilds hints at Martha’s Death
The Wilds follows the lead of Lost and focuses on one character in each episode, providing flashbacks to inform the audience about a person’s backstory. These memories are usually intertwined with the fact that the character is telling his story to federal agents these days, but the exception to this rule is Martha. Her episode ends with agents rummaging through her belongings in search of something substantial to provide Gretchen so that Martha’s family doesn’t sue. This means that Martha died at some point between the shark attack on Rachel and the evacuation of the girls from the island.
However, Martha’s probable death points to something more. Whether it was the consequences of confirming that Nora was part of the scheme, or something else completely unrelated, it points to the fact that eventually everything became violent. Since the organization expressed concern that Martha’s parents might sue over her death, it also means that her death could have been avoided.
