mari and akilah analysis because they are so important to me
based on their first interaction on the plane, it didn’t seem like they’d ever really spoken before. mari starts off by messing with her, but she seems to discover pretty quickly that akilah is someone who takes things to heart, and she quickly tells her she was joking. mari speaks very gently to akilah compared to how she interacts with everyone else. after the crash they became very close very fast. it seems like they leaned on each other for emotional support, as we often see them with their arms around each other or akilah doing mari’s hair. in season two, mari also goes to akilah to help her investigate the dripping sound, because she knows akilah wont brush her off like the others have.
it seems like akilah probably kept to herself prior to the crash. she wouldn’t have been there if she wasn’t a sub for allie, and she’s one of the youngest of the girls. we know that she was close to rachel, and losing her was probably a large part of why she befriended mari so quickly, she didn’t want to be lonely and lost in grief.
in season three, they suddenly stop sharing any scenes together. mari seems to hang around gen and nat the most, and akilah strikes up a friendship with robin, based on a scene where they sit and pet bunnies together. she also gets close with travis and “close” with lottie. i have a few theories on why her friendship with mari dwindled between season two and three.
first, mari is obsessed with status and popularity. her first line of dialogue tells us this. she is also secretly deeply insecure and wants to belong. this makes her latch onto whoever is in power. at first it’s jackie, but she quickly turns on her once she senses that the others are beginning to resent her, and in season two she glazes lottie non stop. in season three, she seems to check out of the cult, and natalie is the newest object of her affections, this connection seeming more genuine than mari’s relationship to their previous two leaders, given that nat is clearly a more stable person for mari to put her faith in. watching mari suck up to people and then ditch them when they no longer held power was probably beginning to wear on akilah. maybe it was making her wonder if mari was trustworthy, as well as making her worry that mari might ditch her, too. akilah also still believed in the wilderness and by extension lottie, though she was definitely hesitant since she’d seen what lottie’s influence could do, given that she originally refuses when lottie approaches her in season three. this sudden clash of faith when she and mari were originally on the same page about the wilderness cult probably created some unspoken tension between them
secondly, prior to season three, mari and akilah found comfort and emotional support in each other. after the cabin burned, mari because more brash and abrasive, as she had lost a profound sense of trust and security. unable to deal with all the trauma and stress of the winter, she projected her feelings outward. we know mari to be someone who likes to mess with other people but doesn’t actually want to hurt them, but i think the line between those two things blurred when she was reeling from the loss of the cabin. akilah, though we’ve seen that she can be bitchy too, she is a teenage girl, after all, is at her core, a kind-hearted and gentle person, and mari growing more callous and refusing to take anything seriously probably made it difficult for akilah to confide in her like she used to. akilah was also dealing with the trauma of delivering shauna’s baby almost entirely alone, and watching mari relentlessly coming after shauna when she had just traumatically lost her baby would likely make akilah distance herself from her.
as of season three, akilah also had a lot of responsibilities. she was the main care taker of the animals, and it was her job to make sure they stayed alive and healthy. this would require a lot of time and effort, and it wouldn’t give her much time to sit around and gossip, which we know mari likes to do.
the two of them were both a part of nat’s escape plan, and they worked together to make it happen. in the few scenes where they interact with each other during the planning process, you can tell they still deeply care for each other and are not harbouring hard feelings, they’ve just grown apart a little and are prioritizing other things rather than constantly being around each other like they were before. as we know, winter was a very stressful and traumatic time for all of them, and this would’ve made the two of them need to be around each other more, but they don’t have that desperation for closeness now.
when shauna shoved mari down after she picked the queen card, akilah was one of the first people to hurry over to her and physically support her before she ran off. while gen was trying to buy more time for mari during the hunt, akilah most likely knew there was nothing she could do to help mari, and chose to confront lottie instead. i think that lottie being the one to start counting after mari pulled the queen card added to akilah’s feelings of anger and betrayal towards her. not only did she feel used and manipulated by lottie, but she had also watched lottie enthusiastically start the hunt of the girl who was once her most loyal follower, and once akilah’s closest friend.