You know I have obsessed about a lot of shows. I feel completely in love with Marvel’s Runaways, I went crazy for Motherland Fort Salem and Warrior Nun has a special place in my heart. With all these show I fell in love at the very first episode and I loved everything about it. The characters, the world building, the story it was easy and quick to fall in love with them.
But The Wilds? It was the opposite. The first story episode was intriguing and interesting but it had a lot of things that would normally turn me off a series. The most glaring one being a middle aged men preying on a teen girl. I hate this trope with all my heart. And the lead the episode was not the kind of character you easily fall in love with. Leah is neurodivergent and not in the cute sympathetic way. He is emotionally messed up and had deeply obsessive personality that constantly makes her sabotage herself and take out her frustration on others
Episode 2 was not easily palatable either. Rachel is also not a very sympathetic character. She is a psychotically obsessed with her achievements, she bullies her sweet sister to the point of abuse and just has the kind of personality that drives you nuts
In a normal mediocre show these things would have easily made me quit and yet it was so well written that I kept going not being able to stop the binge and with every episode my love for the show and the characters grew more and more to the point where this became my new obssesion
And I kept wondering. Why structure the show like this? Why not start with Fatin and Nora or Martha which would make it much easier for us to fall for the show ? And the more I think of it the more I think that this was the point. In our society we tend to let men get away with anything. We constantly excuse their behavior, we give them infinite chances but women? We always expect women to be perfect, we are ready to dismiss female characters for things we outright celebrate in male characters and as soon as female character is not sympathetic enough the hate against her becomes almost scary . But this show? This show said we won’t let you dismiss difficult girls. We will force you to look at them. To see their pain, to see their trauma, to see their growth to treat them like human beings Or maybe I am wrong and I am reading too much into it but honestly no other show has ever made re examine my thoughts and feelings about characters the way Wilds has, no show has ever made me try to understand them as this. To see them and their worst and at their best. To see their bond, their growth to such a degree and in such a short amount of time. It’s just such a beautiful and brilliantly written show with such an amazing cast
