The Wilds, after two seasons, has been cancelled. Primarily playing on Amazon Prime Video as a part of their original content, season one was a success, but season two proves getting renewed once isn’t enough for streaming services to commit long-term.
The Wilds represent a mix of the popular dystopian franchises The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner with a group of teens trying to survive against an adult governing body with the post-plane crash struggle documented in the six-season series, Lost. The Wilds promised an ensemble cast full of young women from different backgrounds, following their stories and their survival after a supposedly accidental aeroplane crash as they’re en route to Hawaii.
Season two saw a new ensemble of young men added to the cast after the first season left an audience discovering an all-male group being monitored. It’s clear fans felt the distance from the female core and the introduction of new characters caused a detachment. The original cast got less time in a bid to develop new characters’ storylines. Unfortunately, The Wilds was left with another cliffhanger, so fans are sure to be disappointed without the continuation.
Amazon Prime has been launching a lot of original content, particularly targeting young adult audiences. Programmes like I Know What You Did Last Summer (which has already been cancelled after one season) to Cruel Summer and The Summer I Turned Pretty, which are already renewed for a second. It’s clear The Wilds‘s alternate route in introducing a new range of characters to get invested in didn’t work in their favour. Like many streaming services, original shows have to do a lot to remain a long-running feature.
With a rating of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.2/10 on IMDb, The Wilds can be rated a considerable success critically. Rated ‘good’ on Parrot Analytics‘s scale for demand in the UK, it is surprising The Wilds lost out on a renewal—particularly after that cliffhanger. Despite the disappointment, it is becoming a recurring theme for TV-watchers to refrain from getting too attached thanks to the brutal cancellations of beloved shows (which is even stoking petitions to bring them back).
Words by Annabel Smith
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